Blog post

How to use analyzers

April 19, 2018Misc Inc

Mixing your own music can be a challenge. After countless hours of tweaking and arranging it’s easy to lose perspective on your track. Therefore receiving visual feedback can be helpful to achieving a clean and powerful mix.

Get things started

Choose an analyzer and stick to it! You need to know how it responds to your input, and therefore it isn’t very helpful to switch between different ones.

Place your analyzer right at the end of your masterbus. It has to be the last slot no matter what you’re doing.
Now you can check what going on in your track.

Have a reference track

Talking about perspective on your mix, it’s essential to compare your track to other tunes from the same genre. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t sound as brilliant and clean as your reference track. We’re here to improve and make your work better, so compare your pieces to the best!
Try to achieve the same frequency response as your reference.

VPS Scope comes with frequency response, stereometer and a scope to check the waveform

Get the low end right

Working on headphones or having a poorly treated room will kill your judgement on your bass. Set a lowpassfilter on your master to 100 hz to check your low end.

You will hear what going on down there. Are any instruments fighting with your bass and kick in that area? Cut them away. Your kick is too loud and the bass sounds too muddy? Use sidechain compression and EQ to make room for everything.

When your low end is sitting as tight as it can, try to achieve the same volume in the frequency chart as your reference track.

Check for clashing frequencies

Mixing a pad, piano and vocals together can be tough. Check where each instrument has its essential frequencies and make space for each by cutting away those frequencies on the other instruments. Panning and/or using reverb to place some elements in the back of your mix also helps.

 

Prev Post Next Post