Thank you all so much for taking to time to watch :) To sum up a lot of the information in the video, here is an oversimplified list to guide your process: 1. Mix Down via Gain Staging 2. Apply compressor to Master Track 3. Apply EQ Eight to Master Track 4. Boost/Cut frequencies in MONO 5. Boost/Cut frequencies in Sides Only 6. Apply Limiter 1 to boost DB 7. Apply Limiter 2 to boost more and Limit Final Output to -1 Db
@@marotid941 Hey! thanks so much, and yes, I mix to taste and then gain stage. Im planning on making a more in depth video series on mixing decisions to hopefully clear that up! once again, thanks for watching the vid!
This was so helpful! Thanks a lot, Okkii! I took some notes in case anyone wants a visual breakdown of this video: How to mix and master by Okkii on RUclips -Start off by gain staging -set a target decibel limit for all of the elements within your tracks to hit -negative 18 for most of them, while setting your drums (mainly the kick/snare for negative 12) and your bass for negative 16 -goal is to make everything audible & prevent sounds from clashing/ becoming one big reverb muddy mess 1.) go to every track and add gain stage audio effect rack 2.) Solo the bass and loop it at its loudest part Ex: his bass hits negative 6 decibels, so all he does is lower the gain knob on the utility audio effect until it reaches around -16 decibels -goal is to balance everything to make sure there's a "flat surface" for when you start mixing 3.) after you've balanced all other tracks, go to kick, snare, other percussive elements & choose between what you want to pop out more than the rest -ex: he wants the kick and the snare to pop out more/ hit really hard -anything extremely loud (people cheering) he puts down at -24 dB or lower 4.) after all the, play track -ex: his full track is maxing out at -7.5 dB, which gives him about 7 dB to work with when mixing 5.) go to loudest section of track and loop it on a continuum throughout process so we can manipulate the sounds to the way that we like it 6.) go to the master track; Billy's simple master which consists of a couple audio effects that are stick plugins in Ableton -pull up a compressor: this recognizes the frequency and squishes the sound down so if something passes the thresholds and gets too loud, it will squish it so it doesn't hurt anyone's ears/ speakers; prevents clipping 7.) put track down to about -30 and play around with it -too much compression will make track sound really thin -UNCLICK THE MAKEUP BUTTON when playing around with threshold level knob Bc the more you put your threshold down, the louder your track will get and details everything else you're about to do 8.) turn on EQ button: allows you to select a frequency that you want the compressor to focus on -ex: if anything within this frequency range of 900 (mid range) passes the threshold of -25 dB, it will compress the sound -when playing w compressor, be sure to mess with the release and attack (He doesn't personally touch the 2:1 compression ratio) -Attack: affects how clicky the sounds are gonna be (9-20 is a good range) (fuller, thicker: around 28-30) -release around 30 9.) now focus on the frequency boosting and subtracting within your track -basically when you have a lot of audio, you'll have certain frequency ranges where sound tends to collect (mainly in the midrange or around 3k) bad sounds 10.) go to audio instruments and click on utility -turn on Mono button: allows you to master in in mono (mastering for the people using phone speakers, Bluetooth speakers, laptop speakers) -turn EQ Eight in audio effects (double click to pop up at bottom) -snoop around the track to see if anything sounds bad -cut anything under 20 Hz and anything over 19 kilohertz (human ear cannot hear that anyways) -type "20" to be precise and do a x4 hard cut -start sweeping back n forth throughout the track & listen for muddiness/ shitty whale sounds -put the cue at about 1.4 & once you find a range you wanna cut down, just drag the gain a bit down (-2) -boost the bass by 2 -search around 3000 range for other unpleasant sounds -check for clean sounds, no distortion, everything is much more audible -make sure mode on EQ is in m/s 11.) now just raise the volume to see if we end up clipping on any of the sounds -put look ahead at 1.5 ms to hear any audible distortion quickly -start at 0 and raise the volume til we see that the limiter is working; then tone it back so that at no point throughout the track this limiter on the left is doing anything other than raising our volume -ex: at 4.4 dB gain on his track, we noticed that the limiter on the left was doing some work so he just toned it back a little bit so nothing is going to activate the limiter on the right -now turn on second limiter; set look ahead at 3 ms -Trick: 2 diff types of dB info were receiving: light green and dark green. We want the light green to hit 6 dB on the master track -raise the gain all the way up til we see the light green hit around 6 dB Hope this helps!
Man, this video is so helpful, so thank you. I'm going deaf and blind, and trying to get my music out there before I can no longer write. But I was struggling with mastering and this was a huge help
Hey man, really sorry to hear that. I’m really happy to have been able to help with your mastering process! Please do let me know if you have any questions I can help answer :)
Well detailed and explained. Honestly I know NOTHING about mixing and mastering and I’ve been watching multiple video on how to get my beats sounding better and louder. Imma try your method thanks to you!
This was the EXACT video I needed to see, you have no idea how much I'm smiling right now. I liked and subbed and I'll share with my friends but seriously, thank you.
Just happened into this video via a Bing page indexing answers to "should I mix and master Ableton songs in another Daw". Glad I found this, and you.... Great info, communication skills, examples, and vibe. Subscribed, thanks so much!
DUDE!! thanks so much for this video. I was getting so lost, with no structure. But how you explained things made more sense than most of the youtubers that i have seen. Truly thankful. Hope all is well with you and please keep posting. You are awesome :) !!
How do you do the thing where you listen to specific frequencies when you are using eq eight? like when the spectrum goes from blue to grey? Thank youuuuu for this and the video!
Great question! So if you hit the little blue headphones on the top right of the plug-in window, then click on any of the frequency bands (ex: the circles the say 1, 2, 3, etc.), then change the Q to achieve different widths. When you hold those frequency bands, it only plays that small section of frequencies :)
Thank you so much for this! I'm also learning from RUclips and its AMAZING to find a video that explains EVERYTHING in one on a topic! There are some great teachers on RUclips and i'm grateful to all of them but I wanted to let you know that taking the extra time is REALLY appreciated from this beginner's point of view. Thanks again!
EXACTLY the video I needed, this really helped me figure out general mixing and mastering for Ableton. I do have a question though if you can, please help. :) I'm still learning so any help would be appreciated. A: Should I freeze and then flatten all my tracks on a new save file and then master on those files, following all the basic steps of mixing and mastering. A problem i run into btw is on tracks that are grouped with an effect like RC-20 how do I flatten that effect to each track that is under that group? The pro in doing this is if I have returns for reverb and delay already set up I don't have to fix that sine they are already applied to specific tracks. B: I stem out all my tracks bring it into a new Ableton project file to mix and master. The problem I run into this, is that I have my Returns (reverb, delay, other sfx returns) in separate export and so now a lot of my instruments and vocals are flat so I have to reapply effects to get it sounding similar. I can fix with problem by applying the returns to each track individually but cpu usage goes up a lot doing this.
Hey! Amazing questions, and thank you for watching. Ill try to answer to the best of my capabilities, but a lot of my answers will be subjective since there is no right or wrong way to go about this. A: I don’t export my stems and usually mix in the session. Reason being I find that some of my best tweaks and changes happen while I’m putting the mix together and I don’t want to spend time exporting audio back and forth. For grouped tracks, in order to keep the effect printed on the group, you can always select the group, then go to preferences and export selected tracks. That should print your FX on the audio if I’m not mistaken. B: I find that I have a similar difficulty with sends. Although I still use them, my preference would be to apply the effect, such as reverb, directly on the track or group. I haven’t had CPU issues often, but when I do; Ill freeze the track that’s giving me trouble (usually serum related for me). If you still want to mix with the sends, I assume technically its the same as a Dry/Wet knob so my approach would be to have the wet at 100 percent in the send track, then mix in the exported effect to taste. My two cents about it would be that if its still sounding dry then mix more of the send track in. I hope this helps, please don’t hesitate to ask more questions, Ill try my best to answer :)
@@pablocubicomusic ofcourse!! and it just started to feel like i was sectioning off the track too much, although we cant hear anything over 20khz, cutting the high end there was loosing some of that Hiss and Crispness that I like in other tracks, partially because of the shape of the low pass. might be a mental thing, but figured its best to let the high end be free :P
You're awesome!! Thank you for the great tutorial. I'm struggling a lot with mixing and mastering esp. with Ableton, thank you:) Looking forward to your other videos and love your music too!
Thank you so much Casey :) feel free to reach out to me on instagram if you get any questions! Im active on there so we can chat if you need some 1 on 1 help!
Hey! You can totally use izotope to mix! You can issue anything to mix, this is really just to explain the thinking process behind mixing/mastering, why we do it, and a simple way that you can approach it! Let me know if you have any other questions!!
Thank you so much for this Okki! I put off trying to mix and master my songs before watching this video. Now I have the confidence to mix and master them myself. You made the process very easy to understand as well as entertaining to watch. Thank you again!
I’m so happy to hear this! Mixing and mastering can be daunting at first, but I’m glad you stuck around with it! Let me know if you get any questions along the way
Thank you so much for this vid. You explain it very well, where others baffle, and I shall be going back over this info and adapting it to my tunes. Very much appreciated. Subscribed and liked.
wow I will use this video as a guide from now, I have wasted a lot of time following procedures , in wich I did not fully understand why I was doing some of the processes, really really useful, thanks
Really great tutorial man, well explained, well presented, well said. About to really take my time implementing these techniques! Def keep these kind of things coming! ☕🌱🖤
I have a question, i just switched to ableton from fl studio, fl studio has a gain knob pre fader to do gain staging first. I used to do my gain staging first, and then level my sounds with signal coming in at -16 or -18.. how can I do this on ableton? Because I saw you gain staging and also leveling at the same time.. am I correct? I need to gain stage and also level with the same knob on ableton?
Hey Isaiah! Really good question, so basically I’m using the utility tool as the “pre fader” gain control in order to gain stage. Then you can level using the faders and that’s where you get into mixing the track by ear after you have gain staged. Hopefully that makes sense! I will say that I have since changed my mixing technique, now I just highlight all tracks and turn them down all the way to -inf, then I brink my kick up to -12 db and mix the other tracks up by ear :) Let me know if you have any other questions about ableton btw!
Thanks for such a great and informative tutorial man! This has really helped me out! Mixed and mastered my first track following this tutorial! Keep on doing what your doing man :)
thats amazing!! so happy to hear this, let me know if you get any questions in the future :) im making videos all the time to try and help and spread the love
Great video! The release on the compressor is the rate of the compressor letting go signal as it drops below the threshold. I think. I’m pretty sure. 🙂
hey nic nac, i actually did some more studying on that since I made the video. What i found was that the attack is how quick the compressor reduces the volume of the track (once the threshold is triggered) and the release is how fast (or slow) the compressor stops compressing that track. compressors confuse me alot haha :P
What a great video! Thank you for such great tutorial man! I have done music years already but this helped much to understand how, why and when to receive ideal end result 👍 Great work man!
Yea for sure! If you search for the “reason” plug-in pack, it’s a set of free plugins from the reason website. They will work on any daw and the eq is pretty nice! Also you can check out plug-in boutique, they have a free plug-in section that is heavenly :) goodluck and let me know if there’s any questions
Great question! I used to go in with guidelines like -12 for kick and -16 for percussion to get me started. But as I continued to learn about mixing I changed my strategy. Now I turn all my tracks down, bring the kick up to -12 and then mix all other tracks up by ear. It creates a much more dynamic mix and you can mix with a little more intention. I’ll be making an updated video for 2022 and I will also be including vocal mixing/processing :)
hey 👋 thanks for the helpful content as i follow instructions i wonder if the gain stage step works on tracks where there is automated volume? for example i have 4 vocal-like harmonics tracks that increase and decrease in volume as the song progresses thanks to automation when using Voxengo on them it shows me the same value in dB for the whole track implying it's always as loud and ignoring it's been automated... do i make any sense ? the result (i'm still in the process of it) is a -6dB kick lowered down to -12dB kick that is barely audible and -24dB harmonics mixed up to -18dB that are loud as hell hehe before automating volume on almost all the tracks i've also mess around with gain on the different instruments in order to mix to taste any idea what's happening?
So I tried all this and it was really helpful thanks! But my exported file is still quieter than my project in Ableton, can anyone explain why this happens? Seems pretty weird that Ableton plays me the music at a certain volume, then exports it at a lower volume.
hey! thanks for your comment, there could a be a few reasons that i can think of off the top of my head. First being that your playback quality could be different in ableton than your stock computer playback quality (once exported). Also, are you exporting to .wav or .mp3 (exporting to mp3 can cause quality issues and maybe even volume differences). lastly, is there a chance that you forgot to raise the volume on the master after gain staging? (gain staging tanks the overall volume of your master, the intention is then to turn the overall volume up at the end). If your still having trouble you can always reach out to me on instagram @okkiimusic (im very responsive there) and we can try and figure it out more. hope this helped!
@@notokkii thanks for the response! The volume on the master is at max (no clipping). Ive had a few people tell me some volume loss is to expected when exporting. Both the WAV and the MP3 are the same volume for me. I’ve had some success rectifying the issue, I think the main problem is that I’m just very new to mixing so as I get better, I’ll be able to get things sounding better
@@ainsbass yes that might be the case, DAW volume will almost always be louder than your export. what I would suggest to be sure is to compare the volume of your export with other tracks that you listen to, keep in mind, if your still new (like you said), your track will still be lower, but you can compare where your at in your mixing with where the industry is at
Hey Okki, This tutorial is so helpful. Thank you. Just a quick question. I followed your tutorial to the letter and have mixed and mastered some great sounding tracks that I am really happy with. However, my most recent track I have mixed and mastered but accidently did not set the eq eight to M/S mode but left it in stereo mode and it sounds really nice like that. Can you just mix in stereo mode or would you recommended always setting the eq eight to M/S mode? If you could get back to me I would be very grateful. Thanks again for the great tutorial. :)
Hey! Glad to see that your liking the sound of your track after following the video! Just remember there’s no definitive rules to this. At the end, if it sounds good then its good! Mixing in mono is just a technique to help identify frequency issues in your mix. The M/S Mode is a Mid/Side EQ basically allowing you to eq the mono signal and the side signals separate. If you EQ’d only in Stereo mode; that is fine too! As long as YOU like the way it sounds :D In brief and to answer your question directly: It’s fine to mix/master with the EQ Eight on stereo mode, the M/S mode can really help to keep your low end in mono and to boost/cut frequencies in your stereo (or Sides) Good luck with the track and let me know if there’s any more questions :)
Awesome video! Thank you so much. Very helpful. edit. Question: at 13:30 you were able to see the highest level the track reached in session view. Mine does not have that there. Is there a way I can turn that on? I have Live 10 suite. edit2. Nvm. I'm just dumb. I had the mixer section scaled down so it hid the level.
Hey! super glad you managed to figure it out. I had the same issue when i was getting started with Ableton so dont sweat it :) let me know if theres anything i can do to help! and thanks for watching the vid, it means alot to me
Thank you all so much for taking to time to watch :)
To sum up a lot of the information in the video, here is an oversimplified list to guide your process:
1. Mix Down via Gain Staging
2. Apply compressor to Master Track
3. Apply EQ Eight to Master Track
4. Boost/Cut frequencies in MONO
5. Boost/Cut frequencies in Sides Only
6. Apply Limiter 1 to boost DB
7. Apply Limiter 2 to boost more and Limit Final Output to -1 Db
This was so helpful!!!!! :) thank you ! 👍! You explained everything so well!
@@barry-b9872 Thanks Barry! I appreciate your kind words :)
@@notokkii Np!
Thanks for the vid! Very helpful! However one thing that I didnt really get... Did you first adjust your levels to your liking and then gain staged?
@@marotid941 Hey! thanks so much, and yes, I mix to taste and then gain stage. Im planning on making a more in depth video series on mixing decisions to hopefully clear that up! once again, thanks for watching the vid!
This was so helpful! Thanks a lot, Okkii!
I took some notes in case anyone wants a visual breakdown of this video:
How to mix and master by Okkii on RUclips
-Start off by gain staging
-set a target decibel limit for all of the elements within your tracks to hit
-negative 18 for most of them, while setting your drums (mainly the kick/snare for negative 12) and your bass for negative 16
-goal is to make everything audible & prevent sounds from clashing/ becoming one big reverb muddy mess
1.) go to every track and add gain stage audio effect rack
2.) Solo the bass and loop it at its loudest part
Ex: his bass hits negative 6 decibels, so all he does is lower the gain knob on the utility audio effect until it reaches around -16 decibels
-goal is to balance everything to make sure there's a "flat surface" for when you start mixing
3.) after you've balanced all other tracks, go to kick, snare, other percussive elements & choose between what you want to pop out more than the rest
-ex: he wants the kick and the snare to pop out more/ hit really hard
-anything extremely loud (people cheering) he puts down at -24 dB or lower
4.) after all the, play track
-ex: his full track is maxing out at -7.5 dB, which gives him about 7 dB to work with when mixing
5.) go to loudest section of track and loop it on a continuum throughout process so we can manipulate the sounds to the way that we like it
6.) go to the master track; Billy's simple master which consists of a couple audio effects that are stick plugins in Ableton
-pull up a compressor: this recognizes the frequency and squishes the sound down so if something passes the thresholds and gets too loud, it will squish it so it doesn't hurt anyone's ears/ speakers; prevents clipping
7.) put track down to about -30 and play around with it
-too much compression will make track sound really thin
-UNCLICK THE MAKEUP BUTTON when playing around with threshold level knob
Bc the more you put your threshold down, the louder your track will get and details everything else you're about to do
8.) turn on EQ button: allows you to select a frequency that you want the compressor to focus on
-ex: if anything within this frequency range of 900 (mid range) passes the threshold of -25 dB, it will compress the sound
-when playing w compressor, be sure to mess with the release and attack
(He doesn't personally touch the 2:1 compression ratio)
-Attack: affects how clicky the sounds are gonna be (9-20 is a good range) (fuller, thicker: around 28-30)
-release around 30
9.) now focus on the frequency boosting and subtracting within your track
-basically when you have a lot of audio, you'll have certain frequency ranges where sound tends to collect (mainly in the midrange or around 3k) bad sounds
10.) go to audio instruments and click on utility
-turn on Mono button: allows you to master in in mono (mastering for the people using phone speakers, Bluetooth speakers, laptop speakers)
-turn EQ Eight in audio effects (double click to pop up at bottom)
-snoop around the track to see if anything sounds bad
-cut anything under 20 Hz and anything over 19 kilohertz (human ear cannot hear that anyways)
-type "20" to be precise and do a x4 hard cut
-start sweeping back n forth throughout the track & listen for muddiness/ shitty whale sounds
-put the cue at about 1.4 & once you find a range you wanna cut down, just drag the gain a bit down (-2)
-boost the bass by 2
-search around 3000 range for other unpleasant sounds
-check for clean sounds, no distortion, everything is much more audible
-make sure mode on EQ is in m/s
11.) now just raise the volume to see if we end up clipping on any of the sounds
-put look ahead at 1.5 ms to hear any audible distortion quickly
-start at 0 and raise the volume til we see that the limiter is working; then tone it back so that at no point throughout the track this limiter on the left is doing anything other than raising our volume
-ex: at 4.4 dB gain on his track, we noticed that the limiter on the left was doing some work so he just toned it back a little bit so nothing is going to activate the limiter on the right
-now turn on second limiter; set look ahead at 3 ms
-Trick: 2 diff types of dB info were receiving: light green and dark green. We want the light green to hit 6 dB on the master track
-raise the gain all the way up til we see the light green hit around 6 dB
Hope this helps!
Not every hero wears a cape...
Your a legend!
Good gracious! I am going to study!
This was so helpful... 👌
Dude this video helped me tremendously. I just reached a new stage of musicianship. Thanks for sharing the knowledge ✌🏼
my man! it means so much to me that it helped! feel free to reach out to me with any questions if you have any :)
Man, this video is so helpful, so thank you. I'm going deaf and blind, and trying to get my music out there before I can no longer write. But I was struggling with mastering and this was a huge help
Hey man, really sorry to hear that. I’m really happy to have been able to help with your mastering process! Please do let me know if you have any questions I can help answer :)
Hope all is well man
I’d be salty asf
Well detailed and explained. Honestly I know NOTHING about mixing and mastering and I’ve been watching multiple video on how to get my beats sounding better and louder. Imma try your method thanks to you!
This was the EXACT video I needed to see, you have no idea how much I'm smiling right now. I liked and subbed and I'll share with my friends but seriously, thank you.
Thank you Ryan, you smiling make me smile! Glad to hear that the video helped
your house is on fire mate
Just happened into this video via a Bing page indexing answers to "should I mix and master Ableton songs in another Daw". Glad I found this, and you.... Great info, communication skills, examples, and vibe. Subscribed, thanks so much!
Well thank you very much! You’re a legend!
okkii you are awesome you kinda remind me of a Disney character because of your very enthusiastic and educational nature
Haha thank you! Happy to have helped :)
thank you so much man, this video is the best on youtube!!!
Man this is fire! The difference actually shocked me, thanks for this one!
Thank you so much my dude!!! I’m happy it
Helped!
Thank You Man!! I first read the comments and wow you helped a lot of people , Awesome!! This helped so much
It’s really nice to see people getting help from this :) that’s all I ever wanted from the video! Glad it helped you too!
DUDE!! thanks so much for this video. I was getting so lost, with no structure. But how you explained things made more sense than most of the youtubers that i have seen. Truly thankful. Hope all is well with you and please keep posting. You are awesome :) !!
We will keep posting I promise!! I’m so happy to hear that the video helped :)
How do you do the thing where you listen to specific frequencies when you are using eq eight? like when the spectrum goes from blue to grey? Thank youuuuu for this and the video!
Great question! So if you hit the little blue headphones on the top right of the plug-in window, then click on any of the frequency bands (ex: the circles the say 1, 2, 3, etc.), then change the Q to achieve different widths. When you hold those frequency bands, it only plays that small section of frequencies :)
Thank you so much for this!
I'm also learning from RUclips and its AMAZING to find a video that explains EVERYTHING in one on a topic! There are some great teachers on RUclips and i'm grateful to all of them but I wanted to let you know that taking the extra time is REALLY appreciated from this beginner's point of view.
Thanks again!
I appreciate you watching :) happy to have helped even if it’s just a little!
I saw aee make a video about gain staging but didn’t understand it because it’s been a long time. Thanks for this video. Helps out tremendously
My pleasure! Let me know if you get any questions !
Cool track bro! Thanks for your video!
thumbs up because your track that you used for the video was fire
thank you! I appreciate the kindness
Thanx Okii. Really helpfull tutorial!
Thank you for watching!
ADAM DRIVER!!! You rock
Lol! I’ve gotten that before!
Back here again! You are goated !
Hahaha good to see you back! Gonna be making an updated video soon on my 2022 method :)
a true g. Thanks man. I love you okkii!!!
Love you too bud! Thanks for watching !
You had a lot of relatable information here. Perfect! All the audio terms you used, you also explained perfectly ! Thank you!
EXACTLY the video I needed, this really helped me figure out general mixing and mastering for Ableton. I do have a question though if you can, please help. :) I'm still learning so any help would be appreciated.
A: Should I freeze and then flatten all my tracks on a new save file and then master on those files, following all the basic steps of mixing and mastering. A problem i run into btw is on tracks that are grouped with an effect like RC-20 how do I flatten that effect to each track that is under that group? The pro in doing this is if I have returns for reverb and delay already set up I don't have to fix that sine they are already applied to specific tracks.
B: I stem out all my tracks bring it into a new Ableton project file to mix and master. The problem I run into this, is that I have my Returns (reverb, delay, other sfx returns) in separate export and so now a lot of my instruments and vocals are flat so I have to reapply effects to get it sounding similar. I can fix with problem by applying the returns to each track individually but cpu usage goes up a lot doing this.
Hey! Amazing questions, and thank you for watching. Ill try to answer to the best of my capabilities, but a lot of my answers will be subjective since there is no right or wrong way to go about this.
A: I don’t export my stems and usually mix in the session. Reason being I find that some of my best tweaks and changes happen while I’m putting the mix together and I don’t want to spend time exporting audio back and forth. For grouped tracks, in order to keep the effect printed on the group, you can always select the group, then go to preferences and export selected tracks. That should print your FX on the audio if I’m not mistaken.
B: I find that I have a similar difficulty with sends. Although I still use them, my preference would be to apply the effect, such as reverb, directly on the track or group. I haven’t had CPU issues often, but when I do; Ill freeze the track that’s giving me trouble (usually serum related for me). If you still want to mix with the sends, I assume technically its the same as a Dry/Wet knob so my approach would be to have the wet at 100 percent in the send track, then mix in the exported effect to taste. My two cents about it would be that if its still sounding dry then mix more of the send track in.
I hope this helps, please don’t hesitate to ask more questions, Ill try my best to answer :)
@@notokkii Thanks a bunch amazing reply, really helps me!
@22:10 i no longet cut my high end like that! just for anyone whose looking to keep up with my current mixing and mastering technique
Thanks for the update
Thanks for the video, man! Very easy to watch and down to the point. Why are you not cutting that high end anymore?
@@pablocubicomusic ofcourse!! and it just started to feel like i was sectioning off the track too much, although we cant hear anything over 20khz, cutting the high end there was loosing some of that Hiss and Crispness that I like in other tracks, partially because of the shape of the low pass. might be a mental thing, but figured its best to let the high end be free :P
No problem! Thanks for checking it out :D
yo that tune is so good !!!
Thank you so much!
great video. Can't wait to give this a try. One of the best yet simplest mastering tutorials for beginners I've seen on here. Thank you!
Bro this helped me so much thank you
Anytime brotha! Have a great day !
Hey I really loved your video ! thank you so much for introducing me to the mixing world
This video deserves more attention. It was very helpfull. Amazing work !
I’m just happy that the video made its way to you :) thanks for watching!
Just started with Ableton. Been working with FL for 5-6 years.
This tutorial really helped out in my mixing alot!! Thank you !!
Welcome to the ableton crew! It’s very intuitive once you get used to the user interface, I’m glad the video helped! Thanks for watching :)
One of the best videos on mixing and mastering I've ever seen. No bs straight to the point. Thank you
Really appreciate you! Thank you for watching !
Really nice video bro good job.
Thank you so much man! Have a great day!
You're awesome!! Thank you for the great tutorial. I'm struggling a lot with mixing and mastering esp. with Ableton, thank you:) Looking forward to your other videos and love your music too!
Thank you so much Casey :) feel free to reach out to me on instagram if you get any questions! Im active on there so we can chat if you need some 1 on 1 help!
@@notokkii Sweet! Thank you so much :)
Hi Okkii, I followed your tutorial and implemented all in my track. It works!! What a great tutorial. Thanks a lot
Im so happy to hear that! thanks for watching :)
i stayed until the end of this video and i appreciate your mentorship soooo much. Keep diggin!
Happy that the video helped:) thank you so much for watching!
if i did gain staging and apply all effect if necessary on the track in abelton ,can i use izotope nueron for mixing ,i am confuse ,please tell me
Hey! You can totally use izotope to mix! You can issue anything to mix, this is really just to explain the thinking process behind mixing/mastering, why we do it, and a simple way that you can approach it!
Let me know if you have any other questions!!
Thank you so much for this Okki! I put off trying to mix and master my songs before watching this video. Now I have the confidence to mix and master them myself. You made the process very easy to understand as well as entertaining to watch. Thank you again!
I’m so happy to hear this! Mixing and mastering can be daunting at first, but I’m glad you stuck around with it! Let me know if you get any questions along the way
Man i took my time to stay until the end of the video and glad i did, learned so much, bless
Love hearing this! Happy that the video helped :)
This is one of the best music tutorials out there. Thanks for sharing your wisdom along with some easy to understand explanations!
GREAT tutorial! Now it's time to go mix. Thanks!
Good luck! Let me know how it goes :)
Amazing tutorial for beginners
It was a great help for All ABLETON LIVE Music PRODUCERS
Thanks! 😊🎼
hey! thanks so much! I appreciate your kind words
🤘🏾🤘🏾🤘🏾 was totally awesome! Helped me a bunch
Thank you so much for this vid. You explain it very well, where others baffle, and I shall be going back over this info and adapting it to my tunes. Very much appreciated. Subscribed and liked.
I’m sorry happy to hear that! Let me know if you have any questions :)
finally a video where the music is good and within the realms of what i make. nice production man
wow I will use this video as a guide from now, I have wasted a lot of time following procedures , in wich I did not fully understand why I was doing some of the processes, really really useful, thanks
Really happy to hear that the video helped! Let me know if you get any questions!
Never give up, thank you so much this video! :)
nice vid and nice vibe man
i'm staying for longer u got a new sub
Thank you Jakub! I appreciate you being here
This was such a useful video. I'll probably watch it back 5 times do to it properly myself, thank you for sharing this video. You're very talented! 👏🏻
Thanks! Im really happy to hear that :) ill be here if you have any questions !
Really great tutorial man, well explained, well presented, well said. About to really take my time implementing these techniques! Def keep these kind of things coming! ☕🌱🖤
my man! thank you for checking it out :) means a lot!
I have a question, i just switched to ableton from fl studio, fl studio has a gain knob pre fader to do gain staging first. I used to do my gain staging first, and then level my sounds with signal coming in at -16 or -18.. how can I do this on ableton? Because I saw you gain staging and also leveling at the same time.. am I correct? I need to gain stage and also level with the same knob on ableton?
Hey Isaiah! Really good question, so basically I’m using the utility tool as the “pre fader” gain control in order to gain stage. Then you can level using the faders and that’s where you get into mixing the track by ear after you have gain staged. Hopefully that makes sense! I will say that I have since changed my mixing technique, now I just highlight all tracks and turn them down all the way to -inf, then I brink my kick up to -12 db and mix the other tracks up by ear :)
Let me know if you have any other questions about ableton btw!
Thanks for such a great and informative tutorial man! This has really helped me out! Mixed and mastered my first track following this tutorial! Keep on doing what your doing man :)
thats amazing!! so happy to hear this, let me know if you get any questions in the future :) im making videos all the time to try and help and spread the love
@@notokkii Thanks man! Will do! Looking forward to your new videos!
Thanks bro. Awesome video on mixing and mastering. Watch a lot of these type videos for different DAWS, and yours was the best...
thank you so much man! that means alot to me, im glad you enjoyed it :)
Thank you Okkii its very helpful !
my pleasure! thanks for watching !
Awesome tips! Gonna try some!
Awesome! Let me know how it goes!
so much helpful tutorial to me! thank you
Anytime! Let me know how it goes :)
Great video! The release on the compressor is the rate of the compressor letting go signal as it drops below the threshold. I think. I’m pretty sure. 🙂
hey nic nac, i actually did some more studying on that since I made the video. What i found was that the attack is how quick the compressor reduces the volume of the track (once the threshold is triggered) and the release is how fast (or slow) the compressor stops compressing that track. compressors confuse me alot haha :P
Thanks for these valuable tips.
My pleasure!
This was fantastic. thanks Okkii, I learned a ton
Thank you man! That means a lot to me
Thank you very much for this breakdown. I struggled a lot with mixing. God bless you man
:) glad it helped!!
Great vid, I'm a beginner trying to wrap my head around things like muddiness, compression, and gainstaging and this helped a ton!
I’m happy to hear it! Let me know if you get any questions :)
thanks man! This is the only video I was able to understand how to mix and master
I appreciate your kind words! I’m glad to have helped
Great content! Thanks
Thanks man!
Best video ever ..thanks bro 🤟🏾
yoo thank YOU my dude!
Thank you soo sooo much.youre officially My new favorite teacher
What an honour! Thank you for watching!
Nice and useful, thanks!
This video was AWESOME!!!!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks dude that was a great help, cheers man !!
My pleasure! Thanks for watching !
This was super helpful to watch. Thank you! I also really love the song :-)
Thanks :) it’s out on Spotify if your interested! Thank you for watching :D
@@notokkii I'll be sure to check it out!
This was really helpful. Thank you for making this video!
You earned a subscription, bless you
Thank you sir!
Very well explained and full of gems to implement! Thank you okkii!
Hey! thank you for watching! and thanks for the kind words :)
You are insane, thanks so much for these videos buddy
My pleasure man! Thank you for watching !
Very informative video thankyou keep doing what you're doing 👍🏻
Thanks a bunch! I appreciate the kind words
@@notokkii you're very welcome 😊👍🏻
Excellent video!!! I learned a lot thank you for being simple and straight forward!
thanks shane! i appreciate the kind words
Thanks Okkii! I was looking for something like this 👌👌🙏🙏
Anytime! Glad it helped!
very nicely done!
What a great video! Thank you for such great tutorial man! I have done music years already but this helped much to understand how, why and when to receive ideal end result 👍 Great work man!
Dope vid bro. Thank you for the info
u need more subs bro, very understandable and well explained
thank you man, that really means alot to me
Thanks man, I’m working on learning mixing and mastering as I’m used to just production. As a beginner this helped a lot!
I’m so happy to hear it helped!
damn this track is so good! Thanks for the help!
Can i get a link to this one please??
Thank you so much man, it's so useful, it makes wanna deepdive into learning mixing and mastering, i might take classes online
Thanks. Hopefully I can get my tunes sounding better on different devices. Sound is great in my headphones and crappy on speakers
you got this man! i hope the video helps! and if you have any questions feel free to reach out :)
much love!!! thank you bro
Anytime!!!
I only have live intro and it looks like it doesn't come with EQ eight. any suggestions for free plugins that are similar
Yea for sure! If you search for the “reason” plug-in pack, it’s a set of free plugins from the reason website. They will work on any daw and the eq is pretty nice! Also you can check out plug-in boutique, they have a free plug-in section that is heavenly :) goodluck and let me know if there’s any questions
When Mixing and Mastering, how do you know what levels to put them at? Also do you have a video on mixing and mastering vocals within a beat?
Great question! I used to go in with guidelines like -12 for kick and -16 for percussion to get me started. But as I continued to learn about mixing I changed my strategy. Now I turn all my tracks down, bring the kick up to -12 and then mix all other tracks up by ear. It creates a much more dynamic mix and you can mix with a little more intention. I’ll be making an updated video for 2022 and I will also be including vocal mixing/processing :)
@@notokkii Thank you so much for your feedback and response! I'll be looking forward it to!
This was so helpful!!!!! :) thank you ! 👍! You explained everything so well!
Thank you so much! I appreciate you checking out the video :D
@@notokkii Np! It helped anyway!
hey 👋 thanks for the helpful content
as i follow instructions i wonder if the gain stage step works on tracks where there is automated volume?
for example i have 4 vocal-like harmonics tracks that increase and decrease in volume as the song progresses thanks to automation
when using Voxengo on them it shows me the same value in dB for the whole track implying it's always as loud and ignoring it's been automated...
do i make any sense ?
the result (i'm still in the process of it) is a -6dB kick lowered down to -12dB kick that is barely audible and -24dB harmonics mixed up to -18dB that are loud as hell hehe
before automating volume on almost all the tracks i've also mess around with gain on the different instruments in order to mix to taste
any idea what's happening?
So I tried all this and it was really helpful thanks! But my exported file is still quieter than my project in Ableton, can anyone explain why this happens?
Seems pretty weird that Ableton plays me the music at a certain volume, then exports it at a lower volume.
hey! thanks for your comment, there could a be a few reasons that i can think of off the top of my head. First being that your playback quality could be different in ableton than your stock computer playback quality (once exported). Also, are you exporting to .wav or .mp3 (exporting to mp3 can cause quality issues and maybe even volume differences). lastly, is there a chance that you forgot to raise the volume on the master after gain staging? (gain staging tanks the overall volume of your master, the intention is then to turn the overall volume up at the end). If your still having trouble you can always reach out to me on instagram @okkiimusic (im very responsive there) and we can try and figure it out more. hope this helped!
@@notokkii thanks for the response! The volume on the master is at max (no clipping). Ive had a few people tell me some volume loss is to expected when exporting. Both the WAV and the MP3 are the same volume for me. I’ve had some success rectifying the issue, I think the main problem is that I’m just very new to mixing so as I get better, I’ll be able to get things sounding better
@@ainsbass yes that might be the case, DAW volume will almost always be louder than your export. what I would suggest to be sure is to compare the volume of your export with other tracks that you listen to, keep in mind, if your still new (like you said), your track will still be lower, but you can compare where your at in your mixing with where the industry is at
@@notokkii yeah I’ve been doing this a lot recently, especially to see how my kick and snare cut through, in particular. Thanks for the insight!
Hey Okki,
This tutorial is so helpful. Thank you. Just a quick question. I followed your tutorial to the letter and have mixed and mastered some great sounding tracks that I am really happy with. However, my most recent track I have mixed and mastered but accidently did not set the eq eight to M/S mode but left it in stereo mode and it sounds really nice like that. Can you just mix in stereo mode or would you recommended always setting the eq eight to M/S mode? If you could get back to me I would be very grateful.
Thanks again for the great tutorial. :)
Hey! Glad to see that your liking the sound of your track after following the video! Just remember there’s no definitive rules to this. At the end, if it sounds good then its good! Mixing in mono is just a technique to help identify frequency issues in your mix. The M/S Mode is a Mid/Side EQ basically allowing you to eq the mono signal and the side signals separate. If you EQ’d only in Stereo mode; that is fine too! As long as YOU like the way it sounds :D
In brief and to answer your question directly: It’s fine to mix/master with the EQ Eight on stereo mode, the M/S mode can really help to keep your low end in mono and to boost/cut frequencies in your stereo (or Sides)
Good luck with the track and let me know if there’s any more questions :)
Awesome insight...thanks man
Anytime! Thanks a bunch for watching, it means a lot
Thank you so much sir. Blessings to you.
Thank you Fam! #PUREGOLD #FULLSUPPORT
Awesome video! Thank you so much. Very helpful.
edit. Question: at 13:30 you were able to see the highest level the track reached in session view. Mine does not have that there. Is there a way I can turn that on? I have Live 10 suite.
edit2. Nvm. I'm just dumb. I had the mixer section scaled down so it hid the level.
Hey! super glad you managed to figure it out. I had the same issue when i was getting started with Ableton so dont sweat it :) let me know if theres anything i can do to help! and thanks for watching the vid, it means alot to me
thank you so much for this!!!!!
My pleasure!
YOOOOOOO my guy thank you so much for this video really helped alot :)
Anytime my dude! Glad I could help !!
Great video! Keep up the good work!
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words!
This is soo good, thank you
Thanks for the content man. Now after that process of mixing, could you show us how to master the final mixed track?