Tips for the brostep (Spag Heddy, EH!DE, Panda Eyes, Virtual Riot, etc.)

Keep making tracks and focus more on how your sounds naturally lock together,rather than making them "work"with one another through copious amounts of processing (especially directing this towards eq).that’s the key to superior mixdowns. it actually has little to nothing to do with how well you can eq,compress,excite,sausage fatten etc etc if you are finding you are having to do a lot of that to get the result then something is obviously not quite right about your sound selections in the first place.

Instead of thinking you can make your shit loud at the end for example,think about what actually makes sound loud,and every decision has to keep that in mind right down to the timing of your hi-hats and the patterns you choose.it’s much more of a mind set you need to get into rather than the jigsaw puzzle that people make it out to be.make loud arrangements,use loud sounds,utilise such sounds so they are always perceived as intended throughout your arrangement=loud mixdown (assuming that is your intended end result)

1 BigUp

And on top of this. U will never get a loud mix without compressing the tracks properly especially the low end

uummm…4 sausage fatteners BAM

In all seriousness…this is so important to understand. Mixing starts at the sample / patch. Hands down.

Actually, i’d argue that’s a bit of a myth or a misnomer.it’s not about squashing anything,it’s about the length of time something lasts and whether or not it has other things treading on its toes.if it does have things treading on it’s toes then you’ll perceive it as weaker or maybe it will sound like it is too loud or something along those lines,but compression is really only good at achieving MINOR peak reductions and even those can be brought to nought during the arranging of sounds,dynamic levelling (sidechain if you like)it sucks at providing sustain because as a by product to achieve that it flattens the energy of those frequencies in TIME and magnitude,and despite what you have read or heard compression doesn’t do much to the perception of energy (last i checked audio is all about perception and not RMS readouts) if it is flattened (i’m speaking specifically about this practice of murdering sounds with dynamic processing)

I suppose most would say to do that with multiband compression,but that also presents its own problems.honestly, the ONLY key is to get a good at making,choosing,combining sounds in TIME and arranging them well in TIME.anything you want to achieve,any kind of perception of your sounds is achieved through that,everything else is icing or completely unnecessary.i think the reason people don’t think about this way is because DAW’s cause people to think linearly so they plot what they want how they want to (usually poorly) and then they try piece everything together with an abundance of plugins and processing and this and that because that is what they have read,been taught etc etc.there’s nothing wrong with doing that,but you are kidding yourself if you think you are going to get a mix that ticks the amazing sonics checklist (Although if your ideal benchmark is Zomboy and his Skrillex biting ilk,continue down that path)unless you mix analogue,which is a bit more forgiving

Think of EQ like masking your frequency masking.no frequency in an arrangement sustains for the duration of an entire envelope (if it does then you may wanna re-evaluate your approach to music)if you think about it that way then all you are doing is killing energy where it does not need to be killed.you don’t have the benefits of sounds hitting air or a medium,if you play sound into the air or onto magnetic tape,into an amp loud,it automatically sounds loud, if you are working entirely digitally,you need to create your own dynamics to impression upon people whatever you want to impression upon them e.g Loudness.this whole idea of flattening already fully sustained envelope sounds is just a really bad practice and shunning dynamics because you don’t think they will lead you to loudness is beyond daft.if you want something to seem loud,you can’t have everything loud,so to put distortion and OTT’s or whatever on all of your sounds thinking you are adding loudness,you are not.as a single unit?definitely (albeit with questionable results) but as a composite piece of music? hell no.just listen to the way Knife Party and Noisia (for example) arrange their sounds.pay attention to how things come in,where they place transients,where they don’t place transients,how you perceive that sound proceeding the sound that didn’t have a full transient and so and so forth.it also helps to listen to music as passages of time rather than looping a short portion of audio e.g looping a kick,growl,bass.arp.have you noticed that when you cut that kick out or if you loop only a single portion of the phrase prior to the kick hits you perceive it differently than what you did when you first thought "woah,that kick is sick man,lets analyse it to death so i can understand it"it sounds less impressive doesn’t it?that is because it’s perceived impact is reliant on EVERYTHING,that came before it within that time-frame that the artist,producer wanted the tension to last for and the kick or whatever the other sound is being the crescendo if you like.making kicks,snares,claps,growls without the context of groove,rhythm,passages is an exercise in futility…i can’t really speak for what a lot of what you like here cause i honestly think Zomboys arrangements and a lot of the people you place in the upper echelon of producers is a little on the shit side of execution-o-meter IMHO.Zomboys music is monotonous and creatively bankrupt. it’s Dubstep reduced to its bare essentials with a sprinkling of pseudo aggression and a lot of killing the natural inherent energy of sounds to get things to forcibly sit where they do and forcibly loud (oh, and a lot of Skrillex’s sonic tropes)Skrillex is the only real "Brahstep"producer i can appreciate, his mixdowns aint the best,but his relentless creativity and execution of that energy gets top marks.you can tell this guy is not forcibly trying to express something he isn’t (another problem with a lot of brahstep)the guy genuinely excels at making retarded music with the utmost authenticity and you can hear it in every single placement of a note,every note he shifts to,the general aesthetics of his sonics etc etc.so if you aint generally good at expressing that kind of emo “fuck this man i don’t give a shit” attitude you are kind of wasting your time making that kind of music.unless your ultimate goal is to have people to wank over some 0:02 sound out of a rather mediocre 5:32 track.i suspect that is what a lot of you are hear for (the ultimate growl thread would suggest as much) (Bigger rant)

Then again, this generation is all for being something you are not and obfuscating who you truly are through a social media,internet presence with a misplaced bravado,sense of being talented and all that comes with that self deluding practice :slight_smile: etc etc (miniature rant)

1 BigUp

Dude ur gonna have to compress an unprocessed snare to make it longer tho etc. It is true what ur saying longer sounds are usually perceived as louder up to a certain point . and something with a high peak level might not be perceived as that loud if its really short.

This is like the best advice, Wish I had this 3 years ago. I had to learn the hard way lol

Go to virtual riot’s youtube page, he has video’s of him producing. Watch them it helps a ton. Also there are other artist who do the same. Just have to do some digging.

What plugin do you use to analyze mid side splitting?.. and multiband splitting?.. I just have SPAN so I can take a look at how hard each range is hitting but nothing having to do with specific spectral placement.

Monitor on laptop speakers.

Ozone imager (?) is free right now, might be just what you need

1 BigUp