The REAL Question: How loud should you mix instruments and bandwidths?

Tips & Tricks
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I wondered why I hadn’t put any of my finished tracks out there for a decade. It occurred to me there is only one reason. I do not know what the accepted levels for frequency occupiers. I’ve searched… Please assist me, but the agreement seems unseen and I reject totally the idea that it is up to me. Yes, it is. I want to fit in (that was a joke). Here are my burning questions, but ultimately they come under the same one. If you have a sound and its peaking within a certain range, what db average should that range be? What does the industry expect? ‘Should’ is not a trap. I want guidelines.

I’m open to making changes afterwards, of course. But lets say you have your kick drum at x, how does everything else relatively compete? And what are the standard places to ‘place’ said instruments, e.g vocals in the centre, hats wide, etc. I’m tired of trawling forums with the answer being ‘it depends’. Sure, so after what it depends on, whats the bottom line? :wink:

Kick
Snare
Hat
Crash
Sub bass
Bass mid lead
Lead
Vocal
And more!

and/or talk specifically in Hz.

Share links as this seems to be an obvious question I can’t find the answer to.

Can I please ban ‘it depends’ answers unless they are resolved with a firm expectation? What are the industry standards or tendencies?

If you really need a genre bracket to help me specifically, I make dubstep, but I want this question to be applicable across the genre trap. Share best practice.

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well, it sure depends on. If you look at DNB, you will (mostly) have dominant drums (right?), well there are examples talking opposite as well, but it depends of mood overall. Talking about peaks, why don’t you consider RMS value for example rather than peak itself?
From my perspective (looking at one genre, and varieties) there is dnb with stick, there is dnb with roaring snare, there is dnb with some smack, but the rule is that the rhythm itself is dominant and important…

  • well, mastering guys have job to glue it together, to make it “even”, and rich but making all exposed, but not too much sooo it doesn’t ruin balance… i don’t really see reason why you ask this? “I do not know what the accepted levels for frequency occupiers” to me it sounds a bit too deep to think while making music, at least at creative stage, the mixing and mastering afterwards are different story - and there are people who live off of it. Ask some mastering engineer, i’m sure they have answer, maybe regarding balance between different elements, and what it is more important, kick or the flute in the background (both if you ask me xD) - rather than exact value (either Hz or Db). I’ve studied music theory on Academy and the most important rule is to not follow rules, i mean they are there like example. Imagine everyone following the same rule i guess…?

I suggest that you watch this very old and very useful video about mixing, as it is very good!


Cheers
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Here are my (unfinished) Notes for Drums
Source are the Book: Drum programming a complete guide to program and think like a drummer - By Ray E Badness and the Roland SC-55 General Midi Drum Standart

Compare a real Drumset with Human (List 01-13) to Roland the Genreal Midi Pan Specs (Drum Programming.xrns - Renoise - Sampler - Sample Properties - Panning)
it looks similar

01 Kick Bass - 036 C1 (C4) Kick 1 - Foot R
02 Snare - 038 D1 (D3) Snare Drum 1 - Hand L
03 Closed + 1/4 O Hihat - 042 F#1 (F#3) Closed Hi-Hat - Foot/Hand L
04 HiHat - Pedal - 044 G#1 (G#3) Pedal Hi-Hat - Foot L
05 Open HiHat - 046 A#1 (A#3) Open Hi-Hat - Hand L
06 Ride Edge - 051 D#2 (D#4) Ride Cymbal - Hand R
07 Ride Cup - 053 F2 (D#4) Ride Bell - Hand R
08 Tom 4 - 041 F1 (F3) Low Tom2 L
09 Tom 3 - 043 G1 (G3) Low Tom1 L
10 Tom 2 - 045 A1 (A3) Mid Tom2 R
11 Tom 1 - 047 B3 (B3) Mid Tom1 R (Org Tune)
12 Crash - 049 C#2 (C#4) Crash Cymbal1
13 China - 052 E2 (E4) Chinese Cymbal

Drum Programming

Don’t use max Volume (127) for your Instruments, rather some air up (100)
because people with “real” instruments do it also (accent)

the standard tuning of a guitar starts with E-2 and on a bass guitar with E-1
The difference is an octave, that works also well with electronic instruments

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@krahz. A question. Is it customary for you to place each sound on separate tracks? Is there a special reason? Could you explain it to me?

For me it is coherent to use separate sounds in tracks, so you have individual control of each sound. But I want to know what people usually do with this type of batteries, or percussion in general.

Do you usually separate percussion with tracks, each track with a sound type?

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Basically, this is only (for me) a clear Drumcomputer Layout (Hardware Displays are small) with the difference that mute Groups, Samples are on the same Track as in old Trackers

Apart from that i usually do not use many Samples, Tracks.
Rather variations, Try to make Music that is monoton as possible without sounds boring

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I don’t think any beginner would be all too happy with fixed frequency/db charts per instrument/drum hit. I think such formulas exist (as rough recommendation, per genre…) and are valid knowledge of the sound designers, composers and mixing/mastering engineers, but should not be given too much weight, rather be seen as guidelines and not fixed recipes. For example certain genres are defined by certain characteristics of the mix, and having knowledge of these (i.e. found by analysing songs or experimentation) can be helpful if you try to achieve a similar sound.

It really varies greatly, for example an accoustic drumkit is mixed very differently to a drum&bass breakbeat which will have different gravity centers because of being pitched up and processed, and also being in a very different mixing context.

I would recommend you to study music that sounds similar to what you would like to achieve. Choose some characteristic tracks/passages, load into a daw, and then listen to the sounds over and over again through different types of digital filters, so you can isolate frequency ranges and see what is going on there. Also watch analyzers, and scopes/meters of bandpass filtered music… You will see lots is stitching together, or interleaving sounds in the frequency range, or ducking some sounds in favor of others. Also you will soon notice that many sounds are very complex, going through wide frequency ranges, some more dominant, some less, and also you will see how a good mix will manage overlapping sounds in subtle ways. You can try to imitate the findings from such sessions, but you cannot always have a fixed recipe, each mix will be unique.

Other than that, one could roughly say that a master of a song will have a total frequency curve like pink noise (electronic bass music might have a bit stronger sub/lower bass) and will have a certain total “loudness” measurable in “LUFS”, so it is comparable to other songs. Ofc it will seldom be a flat pink noise curve, if the mixing and mastering engineers were talented and shaped some character into their tasks. You can also easily run a mastered song through a loudness meter and a spectrum analyzer to see how things are going. Basically - if you want your song to sound well next to certain others, try to imitate their mixing/mastering, it all can be found in analysing sessions.

I also once longed for such formulas, but now I think there are 2 things that will help much better. Thing one is good trained hearing and skill, and thing two is referencing to other songs, which you will have to analyze with care. It is really - a good mix depends on ears and feelings, in trying to craft sounds together so they sound natural. My initial experiments with trying to mix too “technical” were very frustrating - I found some training and then fitting together by ear can bring much better results.

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I had left this to grow hoping many would respond actually, I really feel like although that is a more nuanced and mature answer, it misses what im pointing to as truthfully, I want to people to share the must dos in this respect. Only in relation to -db levels and bandwidths. There are grounds to what you say of course but to be honest as there are advisory overall mix levels (at -3) or the kick that is mixed at -6 and so on. The fact that the snare to some should be the loudest thing in the mix will surely render this subject pointless to some, as for other genres the snare doesn’t have to be,- but those genres dont suddenly pale in the loudness war. There are genuine consistencies that I think are present in audio mastering irrelevant of genre and this thread was hoping to address that. Particularly with all this attention on the mixer, it would be cool to know what the contemporary industry standards are concerning levels. Quite honestly if it is genre specific, point me in the direction of a good guide and i’ll abondon this thread altogether haha.

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Haa I’m so bored into technical process and bandwidth stuffs that I have really difficlty to understand posts of this thread! :flushed: I admit that I’ll should learn more about mixing.

I follow this. If I’m happy with the result, then it’s ok. ^^

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A wonderful answer. thank you for the structure too, I’ll be referring to this a lot I’m sure. It’s a shame (look at me to the horse’s mouth) that you havent mentioned db levels. I am forever messing with my kick and subbass - I can’t say i get it wrong, rather I never know when it’s right. My studio is almost done, I’m a moment away from some slcik studio monitors but again product choice is just… anyway. the point is that I rely lots on visual mastering too, which I’m not ashamed of. I think bizarrely if it sounded right and looked wrong, I would have issues accepting it for the sole reason that I like to have consistency across my tracks but i like to vary the sounds and style. Even if you disagree with that proposition, part of what inyterests me about music-making is the refinement of the craft, so if we could have thoughts on db levels too that would be great.

I realize this topic is problematised by style - that’s why its a very open topic i think, with the hope of establishing some universals.

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I have watched the video on mixing and after a few watches, I now wish to ask, when we visualize as it does…

What is the tyoical image for dance music? surely, if bass and kick are centre, your leads arw wide, there are less dynamics. Thoughts?

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This is super useful actually.

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I have studies your response… added basslane etc.

I still find myself obsessing iover gain staging and wanting to specify -XXdb consistencies in my mix… What do you DO here?

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@Eatme What did you mean by whooming?

If you could specify the db you might consider for the ranges, that would really help :slight_smile:

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Aha - yeah i got that as soon as I did it. Thanks

hmm… For my own reasons i actually find this thread has been the most interesting but I have to disagree on the fixed levels. I think that musicianship is optimzing creativity - i started this thread after years of painfully watching thousands of tutorials paid for and not that indicate different standards of expectation with little elucidation about what that expecation actually is. To be a little tongue in cheek about this, i often hear something like this and it is the Barnum statement of music production if ever there was one:

“You should set your kick and snare first at xx-db and then depending on whether you’re making music for the clubs or just a something for yourself you can pout the faders where you think they should go [i wish i could insert a cheesy smile here and a thumb up]. Subscribe and like my videos to see me continue to experiment carelessly whilst i continue to appear to withhold knowledge that I do not actually possess. Knowledge that you need to know for this tutorial to be useful!”

Alright, so I went off the Barnum statement and made it a video, but the point is this. No one ever has an unmixed track ready to show you what levels things should be at before adding your awesome bus compressor or sending it to mastering… Yeah gain stage all you like… but unless there are guidelines we are just killing our dynamics. So I’m genuineyl asking,

What frequencies can’t go above certain decibels?
What are their sweet spots?
Are there ‘no-nos’

for the sake of argument, lets say i whack a booming triangle wave subbass and want it the loudest it can go… What is reasonable? The best ramen is “almost too salty but not quite” - So… How salty can I go?