MIXTAPE/CD Techniques,Pointers,Tips,Advice

I'm too picky to release an all the way live mix. I'm wayyy too self critical. I just give that shit away on CDR. I appreciate a live CD, but rarely do they blow my mind. Quite frankly, I thought stuff like Uneasy Listening wasn't all that amazing despite all the hype it got as being live.


My old Red Alert radio show tapes kind of rock though.





I have a new cool edit multitrack mix that's almost finished...will post some audio soon. I GUARANTEE I couldn't do this shit live.
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I just want to step my game up and have my mixes sounding perfect like all you other dudes. No more of that song A being a little louder than song B bullshit.
you can master your final product using a limiter and multiband compressor. that will help a lot.
Can you elaborate on this process?

I asked a friend with Protools to do this for me once and it completely changed the sound of the mix- as if it treated different frequencies differently or something. I am curious not only if Protools has the capacity to master a mix, but also how it goes about doing so if anyone knows. What I mean is how does it evaluate the sound and take the volume up/down in a way that does not affect the sound of the origianal recording.

If Protools is not an option for this, does anyone know any economical means of doing so? Thanks in ad.
thats kinda where i am with my shit, trying to get my mixdowns sounding as best as they can. my cd burner which i mix down to has a limiter function which i use and it does help somewhat but i think i could use some more help. this guy i know swears by something called a sonic maximizer(think thats the name), anybody use one of those????
 
I have a new cool edit multitrack mix that's almost finished...will post some audio soon. I GUARANTEE I couldn't do this shit live.
liljohn.gif
ya know p-ro, with my multitracked stuff i try to make it painfully obvious that they weren't done live. i want people to go "how the fuck did he do that?!?! theres no way he did that live!!!!!!!."
 
i want people to go "how the fuck did he do that?!?! theres no way he did that live!!!!!!!."
Absolutely agree man. If I want to do it, then I want to try and make it the best I can within the limits of how it was done.

Good example of what I think we all maen:

B00000GAJB.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg
 
i want people to go "how the fuck did he do that?!?! theres no way he did that live!!!!!!!."
Absolutely agree man. If I want to do it, then I want to try and make it the best I can within the limits of how it was done.

Good example of what I think we all maen:

B00000GAJB.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

never heard that one, dub trade???

this thread has me amped to go home and work on some mixes that i've been needing to finish up
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Seems like few are really answering dudes question, I don't think he wants to know 'live or multitracked:what's your standpoint?'... but rather some pointers to get started.

I'm a proponent of the live thing, just because I mix out live. But to do a multitracked mix, think about each new element (track, scratching, adding a sample, whatnot) as a new track and you can arrange each to each other.
Start with one tune at a certain tempo and that basically becomes the set tempo for the mix.
Now let's say you want to add another song. Play back the original song you just recorded while beatmatching your new song to it. Once you are satisfied with the tempo match, hit record and bring in that song while recording it. At this point you don't have to really fade in or out, just match the tempo the whole time (If it's a hip-hop or non-human drums this should be a breeze). Now play back both (should be two different tracks). the second track will come in abruptly and end abpruptly. At this point you can go in and draw in a volume curve to the track to fade in to your taste (just as if you were raising the fader on your mixer). you can also fade out the first track as the second comes in.
That's the basic gist behind it. Just keep beatmatching the new song to the last one and it will be seemless. you can add complexity with delays at the end of tracks as the go in to others, or extend certain bars, etc. etc. the possibilities of tweaking are endless.
As for scratching, once you have the tracks (songs) pieced together, you can add another track and just scratch on top (while recording the scratches to this new extra track) as it plays out. use the same basic philosophy to tweak this track in relation to the others. You can adjust the volume of each track if one is too low or high at this point.
When you are done, just output the mix as one track and there is your mix.

this is a basic outline, you can add on this with varying complexity, but hopefully has helped a bit.