Tips for mastering your original beats by dirtyscopebeatz.com

Lets get straght to what you came here for. You want your beats to sound like the pros, and have all the rappers buy your tracks for their music. Problem is you are not getting the sound you want out of the mix. Well today we are going to remedy that, and hopefully make a drastic change in your mix quality.

For years I have studied the art of mixing. I found a few things to be very much "Common Sense" and other things were like "Rocket Science". Lets take the topic of panning into consideration. When we think of this topic a few questions come to mind like.........

Whats should the first step be in mixing beats?

The first step in mixing beats should be the volume. If you are already dealing with instruments that are playing at peak or actually over peak and distorting, nothing you do will help much. So you need to bring DOWN the volume on most of your tracks. Here is a tip for setting volume of the instruments in your beats.

1. Make sure your drums are the loudest thing in the mix.
2. Kicks should hit between -2 and -4 db, in ITS OWN mixer track
3. Snares once they are normalized are normally good, but anywhere between -8 and -12 is a good volume for your snares.
4. Here is a fact most people don't know... -12 is actually the equivilent of  -0  when it comes to volume in your instruments (not speaking about the snares and kicks) Start all of your instruments off at -12 when mixing and you will notice that your ability to hear the instrument is not affected to much, in fact at times I beleves it makes it heard even better.
5. Volume of bass should be where ever it sounds best alongside the kick..

Does panning help the mix?

The answer is yes, if used properly panning can make a big difference in your mix. I find it more effective to pan the percussion than the actual instruments. The reason I say this is because instruments almost always have a natural pan going on. A simple pan is good on the percussion though. No need to put your high hats 50% to the right thats just over doing it. Just slightly mover your percussion around.

I normally move my high hats slightly to the left, and open high hats I move to the same position.  Everything is a slight move as well. Bongos slightly outside of the high hats, and effects I sometimes pan to the outside as well if its a sweeping effect. Claps slightly to the right of the snare (which I leave centered) works real well too.

Another thing producers are missing in their mix is e.q.. No two instruments should ever have to fight for frequency space. I always find it in your best interest to find instruments that already work farely well with each other frequency wise. Sometimes though we end up with instruments that don't quite agree with each other though and eq is necessary. Then comes the question.....

How does e.q. work?

First thing to remember is eq is all about the frequency. Lets take the strings for example, and assume they are played in a high key. Chances are that since they are played in a high key, we may get some unwanted high frequencies in there. Actually the chances are pretty great and there is something you can do about it. High cutting eq is the best for this. By adding an eq to the mix, and bringing down the highest frequency, I have just eliminated my problem.

Set the frequency that you want to affect to the desired level, and play around with the sharpness of the cut to really get the sound you are looking for. If you have two instruments fighting for the same frequency space. Decreasing a frequency level in one instrument in the problem area, and increasing the the level of the same frequency in the tho other will create a little room for each of the two instruments. This is a great trick to get the bass and kick to agree with each other.

How to use reverb and other effects to achieve a good sound?

One thing people get mistaken in thing reverb is meant to make something sound like its in any sort of room. Reverb is actually meant to give the instruments room from each other. Space in other words is what reverb gives you. I recommend a drum room reverb on the snares and have it to where it is barely noticible on the snare. Just enough to blend the snare more with the rest of the beat is alright. As for your instruments go... know which instruments already contain reverb and try not to add reverb on them.

Also if you find that you like the reverb on a particular instrument alot, its not a bad idea to blend the reverb on the other instruments to match the reverb on that instrument. Really to be honest thats all I really do.. make sure your master channel has no effects on it. If you use fruity loops, you know they always have a limiter on the master channel to begin . Leave the limiter there up until all the mixing is done. When you are done mixing remove the limiter. That will help clean up the mix alot.

I would like to mention this very important note very quickly. Alot of people hear their own music and get over judgemental of it. If you are critiquing your own music and not letting the world get an opinion you are digging a whole for your self in the music industry. Over the course of my career I have realized that the beats I hate the most are sometimes the fans and THE CUSTOMERS who came to buy beats like most.

To hear some examples of good mixes on beats visit http://dirtyscopebeatz.com
Right now I am Gold Status Seller - Over 120 beats sold _ http://rocbattle.com/dirtyscopebeatz
Like us on facebook _ http://www.facebook.com/pages/dirtyscopebeatzcom/121564417891282

Follow me on twitter. _ http://twitter.com/dirtyscopebeatz

I am also top 10 in the word for dirty south beats, and original beats