The objective of doing this mix is to make your work realistically sounding as possible. As if it was being performed by real orchestra musicians inside the concert hall.

In Notion3, there is a mixer console feature that you can use to enhance the sound of your mix. This is usually found in the upper left, see screenshot below:

At the end of this tutorial, you will know how to mix a simple symphony orchestra and actually apply effects settings particularly reverb and panning. This tutorial assumes that you have completely notated your symphony or musical piece. Notating can take a lot of time and patience. This is usually done by music degree students or music professionals. In this tutorial, it will be using Mozart Symphony No.25 First movement in G Minor as an illustration.

How to mix symphony orchestra music in Notion3

If you click the Notion3 mixing console. You would immediately see all the instruments in the orchestra used in Symphony No.25 by Mozart. For example, Symphony#25 has one oboe, two horns, two violin section, one viola and one cello sections. To begin with, you need to concentrate on the most important settings which are the following:

a.) Reverb
b.) Panning

Reverb can add warmth and ambiance to the musical instruments. Most orchestra music are performed inside a concert hall which has high reverberation. As a beginner the most appropriate way to set a reverb is to apply it on the master output.

Feel free to click the “Reverb” button and then it will be highlighted. Set your reverb like as follows:

In the above setting, dry/wet is set to 20, room to 50, damping to 0 and 25 for pre-delay. Once you start becoming familiar with the mixer console; you can then apply individual reverb settings for each musical instrument. You can insert them on the track. To do this, click “Insert” below the instrument and then you can use any VST supported reverb.

Aside from reverb, you can insert any plugins possible with Notion3 and VST. For example, you might want to insert compressor, EQ, etc on each of the instruments. However the most tricky thing to do are the panning settings. By default, all musical pieces you created with Notion3 does not have any panning so they don’t sound good in stereo.

Also the panning feature in Notion3 can be a bit confusing to use for beginners. For example, this is an panning example setting that implies the instrument sound should cover the entire stereo field (shown by the gray white area region):

Another example below shows that the instrument sound should basically cover to the entire right region of the stereo field:

Or below is a much more specific panning example; putting the sound to concentrate midway to the far left and center of the stereo:

If you like to concentrate the instrument sounds in the center region, you can do it like this:

Now that you understand the basic principles of panning instruments in Notion mixer, let’s proceed exactly how to pan symphony orchestra instruments.

Panning Symphony Orchestra Instruments

OK, the first thing that you need to do is to understand how different instruments are located within the symphony orchestra. With this information, you can derive vital information on how you are going to panned each of them accurately in the stereo field.

Start with looking at the screenshot below:

Photo credits: thinkquest.org

Its obvious that the violas are on the center, violin on the left-center region, cellos on the right, percussion on the back, etc. So how are you going to translate the above information to actual panning settings? See the final panning settings implemented below:

For the reason why the above settings was done, take a look at the symphony orchestra instruments layout shown before and use the Notion3 panning settings guide discussed earlier. For example, cello is placed on the entire right region of the orchestra, so it is also panned to occupy the entire right region of the stereo field. Also Oboe is placed on the center and it should also be panned on the center.

How to make it sound the instrument more up-front or back?

The easiest solution is to simply use the following rules on setting levels (volume) for each instrument:

1.) For instruments placed on front of the audience, it will have more volume due to the direct nature of sound reaching the audience ears.

2.) For instruments placed on the back of the orchestra (e.g. oboe, horn, etc.), assign a lower volume levels. Below are the assigned volume level settings for each instrument Symphony #25:

As discussed, since Oboe and Horn are placed on the back of the orchestra, they should have lower volume levels set (-6dB in the above screenshot). While Viola, Violin and Cello should be made to sound louder since they are directly fronting the audience. Careful not to clip the master output(exceeding 0dB showing red), allow -3dB maximum to be safe. See a sample screenshot below for Notion3 master output level meters:

Listen to the 1 minute mix down of Symphony #25 by Mozart using Notion3 with the audio mixing settings:

If you want more information regarding this topic, you can read the tutorial on symphony orchestra panning and reverb settings. If you want to download Symphony #25 First movement sheet music, you can do it here:
http://www.free-scores.com/PDF_EN/mozart-wolfgang-amadeus-symphony-kv183-1st-movement-10489.pdf

So the client sent me a sample mix of the original vocal mixing in mp3 format. The background instrumentation has been done entirely with a software (no live music instrumentation). That works well except that client is unsure how to mix the vocals particularly adding reverb to it.

This is a original sample of the vocal mix done by the client:

Quick comments on the original mix:

1.) Simple listening reveals that the vocal is too strong with respect to the background instrumentation.

2.) Too much reverb has been applied on the vocals. It does not match with the background instrumentation or the entire track as a whole.

3.) The vocal does not sit properly with the mix, indicating that it has not been applied with proper EQ and compression settings.

4.) Quick inspection when the sample mix is loaded in Reaper DAW reveals a clipping particularly associated with the vocals. See below (see the red on top of the level meters):

5.) The vocal quality and recording is good only that it needs more work in the mix to make it sound right.

Being conservative with reverb and processing could sound best

When I have original vocal recording wav file; I provide him a sample of what a vocal mix would sound good according to my ears.

This is what I did:

Step1.) Load the vocal recording in Reaper DAW as well as the minus-one background instrumentation. I then add a volume envelope to automate the control of vocal volume throughout the track.

For example, I apply silence before the start of the vocals to remove unnecessary background noise. Then I also apply silence in between the long pause of the vocals for the same purpose. This would allow me to non-destructively edit the vocal volume.

Balancing the vocal volume with the instrumentation is then done by adjusting the faders as enclosed inside the yellow box.

I then look at the master level meters to make sure there is no clipped signal throughout the track.

Step2.) I only apply 3 effects. The vocal reverb has been placed at the last. And in this example, I am using a Focusrite reverb plug-in.

In the original recording, the vocal mid and highs is a little bit lower and the vocals are a bit bassy. So I apply a mild EQ using the following:

Low shelf 150Hz, -3dB
2000Hz, Q=1.0 +2dB
15,000Hz Q=1.4, +1.0dB

I then apply a vocal compression using Waves C4 mono effects to balance the weak and strong section of the vocals. It is using the pop vocal preset. The reverb is using a small bright room presets which will apply a very small amount of reverb to the vocal track. This is the setting I used.

Finally this is the complete mix using the vocal processing procedures above:

As you have observed the vocal now sounds tight and balance in the mix. The vocal reverb has been set to low and the vocals are made to sit with the instrumentation with appropriate EQ and compression settings. Personally, I love the vocals to sound up-front and dry.

But what if you want more reverb? Make sure it sounds great

The reverb depends on the expectation of the producer (depending also on the targeted genre). Sometimes being tight sounds great but the producer might want a longer reverb tail. This requires a lot of listening, balance and experimentation to ensure that the reverb added would not be detrimental to the mix.Also moderation is the key.

Below is a sample vocal mix done with moderate reverb setting (medium jam room presets in Focusrite reverb plug-in):

If you like to use an entirely free plug-in that comes along with Reaper DAW, you can use “insert-live vocal” plug-in. Below is a setting if you want a longer reverb tail:

The trick is to lower the “wet” settings until the desired reverb tail has been achieved. For example in the above screenshot, I set it to -7.

This is a sample vocal mix done with Reaper “insert-live vocal” plugin.

To accurately set reverb and other vocal processing effects, you need to have reliable audio monitoring systems in your home studio and mix at low to moderate volume (friendly to your ears). You should be using nearfield monitors and not computer speakers. Also with reverb processing, I tend to double check the vocal mix with headphones to make it sounds nice in any monitoring environment.

Burning a Audio Mixing Session to a CD

I’m taking a class and I’ve received a session to mix. Every time I burn the wav files using windows media player turns it to regular audio. The problem with that; it loads as audio so it’s a stereo file, can’t get around that. A single kick would load on track 1 and 2. Explain to me when I burn wav files to disc it stays as a wav file. I’m using windows vista.

Potential Issues

a.) Your CD burning software (Windows media player) creates an audio CD. This would automatically mean that even if the audio is mono (as what most tracks for mixing are) it would automatically be converted to stereo.

b.) If you burn the recorded tracks to audio CD, it would lose its original recording resolution since audio CD always has a 16-bit/44.1KHz. Most recording are done at a higher resolution such as 24-bit/48KHz.

Potential Solution

a.) Some CD burning software (like Nero) does include a data disc feature. In this case, you can burn the recorded tracks in its original form and they are not converted to audio CD format (16-bit/44.1KHz).

b.) If you want an open source solution, you can use Infra-recorder:

http://infrarecorder.org/

Then create a data disc. Since most mixing session file are rather big in file sizes, I would recommend creating a DVD Data Disc using Infra Recorder; see screenshot below:

Simply click the DVD button in the data disc options.

c.) Bear in mind that since this is now a data disc, it cannot be played in CD players, etc. To get the data from the disc, put it in your computer DVD drive and simply copy the files to your DAW hard drive; that’s it. The sampling rate, bit depth, etc would be preserved and the same as the recorded files (they are not altered during the CD burning process.)

Windows Software Sound Recorder No Sound

Hi. I wanted to ask you about an issue with using Window’s software Sound Recorder. I can’t get the Sound Recorder to record using my microphone(s) on my Vista computer. I click Start Recording then, when I’m done, I click Stop Recording, save the recorded audio as a Windows Media Audio (WMA) file (it’s set by default), but when I play the saved recording there is no sound.

I followed the instructions in:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Record-sound

I can see, in the Sound window (in the Recording Tab), the microphones volume level fluctuate when I speak through it so the microphone is working okay. The volume icon for my computer is turned up, and it’s not muted.

The levels (Hardware and Sound > Manage audio devices > Recording tab > Properties > Levels tab to find volume slider) under microphone properties are turned up too. I have both a sound card and speakers installed on my computer.

My sound card is updated. I’ve read somewhere to Right-Click in the blank white area in Recording Tab and select “Show Disabled Devices” that, if supported, new selections will appear such as: Stereo Mix, What U Hear, etc. Right-Click on “Stereo Mix”, “What U Hear” or similar and you to select “Enable”, and Right-Click on the same item again and select “Set as Default Device”, then click OK.

But nothing comes up and “Show Disabled Devices” was already selected. The only existent selections apparently in Recording tab are my microphones. I’ve done pretty much what I’ve read to do and am stumped on this problem.

Other software, like the free software Audacity gives me the same issue. Toshiba (my computer brand) told me my warranty expired 2009 and will have to charge me over $40 to assistance me with something that may not need any fixing but is just not working due to something I’m overlooking. Doing a web search, I’m apparently not the only one with this issue.

Any help you could provide me with on this subject would be is appreciated.

Potential Issues and Solutions

Looking upon your problem, one could the issues:

1.) Your player does not support the playback of Windows Media Player (wma) files. Have you tried playing the recorded audio in Windows Media player as it natively supports wma files?

Of course this assumes there is no problem in the recording.

2.) Try saving the files as other file types such as WAV instead of WMA. Then play it in media player after recording.

3.) Since you are using a default sound card, set the bit depth and sample rate to 16-bit/44.1KHz. You should find in Sound Recording – Properties.

If you record beyond that, your players might be having some playback issue.

4.) Make sure you have enabled the microphone for recording. You can see this in your sound device. See screenshot below:

5.) It would also mean that your sound device drivers are corrupt; even though you find it working. Try reinstalling the drivers; do this at your own risk. Make sure you install the right drivers for your sound recording device.

6.) Windows has some guidelines on how to troubleshoot sound recorder related issue. You can read it here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Recording-audio-in-Sound-Recorder-frequently-asked-questions

If the above suggestions still do not work. I recommend doing a hardware troubleshooting process as suggested by Microsoft. You can read the details on that page. Good luck.

Never cut or boost more than 12dB

While it will not hurt to cut or boost 12dB, one of the best practices is to minimize EQ reduction and boosting as possible. It is because it will:

a.) Introduce more audible artifacts due to some extreme boosting/cutting. This can be phase related issues or errors related to digital summing/calculations made by your DAW or plugin.

Also this will tend to worsen if you are using a combination of bad EQ plug-in, poor quality DAW (digital audio workstation) and bad recorded sound.

b.) Introduce more problems in maintaining a good level. Cutting or boosting can introduce drastic changes in volume level. An EQ boost can increase the volume of the track while an EQ cut can decrease volume. These big changes in volume can take a lot of time to balance in the mix.

c.) Can either make your mix to sound too thin, too much bass or too much mid-range presence; which is usually not good if you want a more balanced mix.

What you will do if you really need to cut and boost more than 12dB?

1.) Listen to the track very carefully. Was it badly recorded? Sometimes a bad recording can introduce serious tonal problems. These are caused by a lot of factors, for example:

a.) Recording or tracking in an environment that does not have flat EQ response. Supposing you want a more mid-range sounding acoustic guitar but you are placing the guitar amplifier cabinet facing towards the corner of the room. Since corners can naturally boost the bass levels, you can hardly get that mid-range sounding guitar in the recording.

Instead what you will get is boomy sounding guitar. Even if you cut the bass frequencies on the guitar by more than 12dB, it does not sound as good and natural as those captured correctly. You really need to record your tracks correctly to avoid drastic changes in the EQ. In the above example, the guitar amplifier cabinets or microphone can be placed away from the corners of the room and in a more spacey surrounding to capture the natural mid-range sound of the guitar.

Another example is that the guitar already includes an EQ on it (included with the pickup amplifier) with pre-defined settings. It makes sense to turn all the EQ knobs to flat so that the guitar sound can be captured as flat as possible.

2.) If re-recording seems impossible; then use a highly accurate EQ made for this purpose. A good example is the Waves LinEQ plugin.

You will be able to set critical parameters such as Low Ripple, etc. all settings that you need to minimize the undesirable effect of drastic EQ changes.

3.) Do not make big EQ changes on all of your tracks. Making big changes such as reducing or cutting 12dB may sound reasonable for one track which cannot be re-recorded. But doing it for all of your tracks are not recommended. Fixing a recording related EQ issue is best solved by re-recording.

Always use a highly accurate Parametric EQ

Parametric EQ are important surgical tools in audio mixing that you can use to shape the sound. You should be using them. For most beginners that are just new in audio mixing; they mostly do not know these tools.

Instead what they know is a graphic EQ since these are the EQ they used to see almost every day in their mp3 players, etc. For example this is a graphic EQ:

Unfortunately, graphic EQ does not allow you to set how narrow or wide are the EQ settings. For more accuracy, you should be using a parametric EQ which is suitable for this job. Take a look at this parametric EQ and notice that it has one additional parameter setting which is Q:

Do not use a cheap and low quality EQ because they have poor accuracy. Instead invest in quality digital audio mixing plug-ins like Waves.

Cut more, Boost Less

Boosting adds more issues than cutting in mixing. It is why it is recommended that in all EQ problems you would be focusing more on cutting than boosting.

Let me illustrate an example: Supposing you are mixing a track with weak vocal mid-range sound. You listen and find out that the guitar mid-range strumming frequencies are conflicting with the vocal sound. You have two choices here to solve this EQ issue but only one is recommended, see below.

NOT RECOMMENDED = Boost vocal mid-range frequencies until it dominates the guitar sound thus making it sound clear in the mix.

RECOMMENDED = Cut guitar mid-range until the vocal sits properly in the mix.

See the difference? The second option is more recommended and this is how the pros in mixing would solve this issue. Instead of boosting vocal EQ, you would simply be cutting the offending frequency which is the guitar mid-range. These results in clarity without un-naturally increasing the overall volume of the mix which can either leads to undesirable:

a.) Distortion or clipping
b.) Less headroom, since boosting EQ pushes levels further up.

Boost wide and Cut Narrow

Boosting is more desirable with very wide Q done at low gain. For example if you want a more vocal presence; it would be much beneficial to boost with:

+2dB Q=0.7 at 1000Hz

Take note that this is a wide boost since Q=0.7. This would have a profound effect on the vocal presence in the mix.

On the other hand, cutting is more desirable when done at narrow Q at higher reduction gain. This is necessary for precise and accurate EQ in solving tonal issues. A classic example is removing the boxy sound of the kick drum. Sometimes by sweeping through parametric EQ you should find this somewhere 300Hz to 400Hz (a very narrow range). And to remove this boxy sound, you would be applying like:

400Hz Q=5.0 -9dB

Now that’s a high cut done at a narrow bandwidth.

Watch out for clipping in your EQ output meters

Often beginners do not know that the output of EQ can be clipped particularly if you are boosting something. This is often one of the reasons why you should not be always boosting when doing EQ because of the high possibility that the output of the EQ is clipped.

Clipping in digital is unacceptable and can seriously degrade the quality of your mix. If you have a parametric EQ with output level meters, then use it and watch out for red (clipping). If it occurs; take action immediately by doing one of the following:

a.) Lower the input level.
b.) Lower the boost amount.

a.) How to mix instruments so that they would sound like they are up-front or back in the mix?
b.) How to put instruments in the center, right, left or mid-right and mid-left in the mix?

These are fundamental questions that are of so much importance in audio mixing. There are no short answers to these questions and it’s imperative that you entirely understand the concepts of front and back audio mixing.

“Front” and “Back” Elements Adds Realism to your Mix

Do you why live concert sounds so full and alive? It’s because the artists/performers are on-stage with live monitors placed on optimal listening locations. The sound combination of these monitors would make up a very nice front and back mix of the band performing on-stage.

On the other hand, even without live monitors, you can still feel the “depth” and “fullness” of the sound. Have you listen to a choir or musical ensemble playing live without microphones? The instruments in the front are the lead instruments while the back-up musicians are performing on the background providing the additional rhythm or harmony. The result blending of the sound mix is realistic and sounds great.

Problems will arise when you are mixing audio for an album or single. Aside that they are mostly recorded dry (no effects) and without stereo information (tracks are recorded mostly in mono). It is a crucial job for the audio mixing engineer to assign effects and locations of these instruments in the stereo field. The objective is to give life to the artist song/performance so that fans can relate to like they are playing live or in-front of them.

What will happen if there are no “front” and “back” information of the mix is that it would not sound realistic and the mix sounds dull.

“Effects” pull sound to the Front and Back

The first thing you need to learn is that there are lot of effects you can assign to make the instruments sound up-front or back in the mix. Refer to the list below:

a.) Reverb – this is the simplest effect for making the instruments sound up-front or back in the mix. Less reverb would make the instruments sound more up-front. More reverb would pull the instruments farther back of the mix.

It is why it is not appropriate to assign the same reverb settings for all instruments because the front and back image of the mix would be compromised. To have realistic reverb settings; you need to:

1.) Put less reverb on main or solo instruments such as the vocals. These would let them shine in the mix among other instruments in the background.
2.) Put more reverb on background or rhythm instruments so that they would sound like supporting the lead instruments on the front.

Again use you ear and imagine the mix as if the band/musician is playing in front of you. Ask this question to yourself: Does my reverb setting reflect a realistic front and back image of the mix?

b.) EQ – you can use EQ to make the instruments sound up-front or back in the mix. A good example is when you are mixing a combination of lead and back-up vocals. The lead vocals should occupy the most obvious vocal frequency range (where ears are most sensitive). This is usually 800Hz to 5000Hz. In this range, the lead vocals should be dominant. However the back-up vocals are reduced in this frequency range so that they would sound like supporting the lead singer (at the back).

A typical EQ setting:

1.) Lead vocal – Boost +3dB 3000Hz Q=1.0
2.) Backup vocal- Cut -6dB 3000Hz Q= 1.4

If you do not cut the back-up vocals using EQ, they would dominate the lead vocals in their dominant frequency range thus you are not providing an accurate front/back image of your vocal mix.

c.) Compression – when used creatively you can use compression to make instruments sound up-front or back in the mix. A good example is a weak bass guitar sound or a poor bass guitar player performance. Usually, when the bass player is not that good; the dynamics of the recorded bass are not consistent in the mix. This ends up the bass being buried in some sections of the song where other elements are loud.

To bring up the bass, you need to compress it so that weaker sections would become loud. As a result, the bass has more consistent volume even in louder sections and it will now stand-out in mix. Combine with EQ effect, you can even make the bass presence stronger and even.

“Panning” pulls sound left or right

Finally, you can use panning to assign instruments either in the center, left, right or even mid-right or mid-left in the mix. You can easily assign panning settings in your DAW or even in analog consoles they have a panning knob.

To sum-up the two dimensional mixing, just look at this screenshot:

An example illustration on the use of the above diagram when you are mixing:

a.) If you want the lead vocals to sound up-front and center on the mix. You would need either need to apply less cut on the crucial frequencies or boost them if you want to use EQ. Or use an even compression to make the vocals sound even. Or even apply less reverb to make them appear dry and up-front. Use panning to put the vocals on the center.

b.) If you have piano track that you wish should provide a background melody of the song (not a lead instrument), then you can cut the EQ where other lead instruments are dominant such as the vocals. This will pull the piano sound at the back of the mix. Or you can further add reverb to make the background effect significant in the mix.

By establishing a clear front and back image of the mix; you get clarity, fullness, ambiance and balance sound in your mix.