MixingHeavyMusic PDF

Mixing Heavy Music
Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

2
That Will Help Take Your Mixes to the Next Level
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................................................ 4
PART ONE: SETTING THE STAGE ..................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 1: Mixing Basics ................................................................................................................. 6
Chapter 2: The Tools ....................................................................................................................... 9
Chapter 3: Workflow ..................................................................................................................... 18
PART 2: TRACK BY TRACK TIPS & EXAMPLES FOR HEAVY MUSIC ................................................. 24
Chapter 4: Drums .......................................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 5: Bass ............................................................................................................................. 35
Chapter 6: Guitars ......................................................................................................................... 37
Chapter 7: Vocals .......................................................................................................................... 42
Chapter 8: Mix Buss ...................................................................................................................... 48
Chapter 9: Your Journey ............................................................................................................... 52

3
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Preface
I’ve always had a passion for music, and ever since I first stepped into a studio to record with my
punk band in high school, I knew I belonged behind the glass.
Many thousands of hours later, I had earned opportunities to work with great bands and labels
on records I can be proud of.
All along the way, I have had many conversations with other engineers, both aspiring and
professional. I love talking about this stuff, and can easily discuss mixing philosophies and favorite
audio gear for hours at a time.
Recently I started thinking of ways to take these conversations to a bigger audience and help
other aspiring engineers move forward in their ability and their career. Taking what I’ve learned
from almost 10 years as a producer / mixer, teaching it to others and then seeing their progress
has been just as fulfilling as working on a killer record.
This book is one more way for me to help mixers move forward and get better at their craft. I’ve
attempted to write down what I believe are the most important things to learn about mixing, and
the most effective tips for mixing heavy music specifically.
By no means is this a comprehensive encyclopedia of mixing. If you are a beginner, you may need
to fill in the gaps with your own research if something is over your head.
My goal with this book is to give you a foundation and purpose as a mixer, help you get a firm
grasp on the basics, and provide real-world examples that you can apply immediately.
I mix fast and I try to learn fast too. This book is written in the same spirit, with hopes that it will
help you take your mixes to the next level in a short amount of time.
-Jordan Valeriote

4
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
PART ONE:
SETTING THE STAGE

5
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 1: Mixing Basics

The Mixing Mindset
Since you’re reading this book right now, I can be fairly sure that you fall into one of two camps:
Either you already mix music, or you want to. And you feel like the results you're getting aren’t
up to the standard you want.
I’m going to help you with that. But first, I want to take a step back, zoom out and pose the
question:
What is your purpose as a mixer?
Or put another way, what are you trying to accomplish when you mix a song? What should your
mission be?
On the surface, this question might seem too obvious to bother answering. We’re supposed to
make it sound good, duh.
Wait a second, though. How do you define “good?” When do you know that the mix is “good”
enough, and stop working?
As mixers, we tend to get lost in all the tiny details of a mix. We spend hours tweaking EQ’s and
compressors, a half dB at a time, trying to get the ‘perfect’ drum or guitar sound. We allow
ourselves to get carried away with all the possibilities in front of us, trying out 6 different plugins
and being unable to decide which one does the best job. Pretty quickly, mixing becomes more
about the tools than the song itself.
Do you ever feel yourself getting lost in a mix, unsure of what to do next? Second guessing every
move that you’ve made, endlessly referencing other tracks and totally clueless on what you
wanted it to sound like in the first place?
This is what happens when you’ve lost sight of your role as a mixer. It happens to everyone,
myself included.
The cure for this problem is making sure your mindset is right before you start the mix. Like
anything else in life, if we want to achieve something, we need to have a clear goal in mind. Know
where you’re going before you start.
So, getting back to my question: What is your purpose as a mixer?

6
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Your purpose is to enhance the recording of a song in order to

maximize impact on the listener.
In heavy music, that means we want it to sound and feel heavy. When I think ‘heavy,’ I think loud,
aggressive, intense, and raw. A mixer should always be trying to identify and maximize the unique
parts of a recording and the emotion the artist is trying to convey.
What it’s NOT about is impressing people with your skills or your gear. The end listener doesn’t
care if something sounds “good” or “cool.” A listener will only think it sounds good if it feels good.
When I think about all the records I loved growing up, or that I love now, it strikes me how diverse
they are. They all have different drum sounds, vastly different guitar tones, and varying degrees
of polish or rawness. It doesn’t matter, because I don’t like these records because of the technical
excellence of the mixer. I like the records because I connect with them, and they make me move.
The real trick to mixing, then, is to make sure you don’t over mix something to the point that it
actually makes it harder for the listener to connect with the song. This can happen if you’ve over-
used some tools like EQ and compression, resulting in an unnatural sound. Or maybe you put too
much reverb and delay on the vocalist or mixed them too low (a horrible sin), so the fan can’t
hear the lyrics enough to connect. And definitely don’t bury the drums, because without a strong
pulse and rhythm, a song that’s supposed to be heavy is dead.
Yes, there are many ways to screw up a mix, but don’t worry - I’m not hear to discourage you.
Instead, I want you to escape these traps and free you up to mix from your gut. It really doesn’t
have to be that complicated. Remember, in the end, your job is just to enhance the recording in
order to maximize impact on the listener. That’s it.
How do you enhance the recording? There are many ways, and in the following chapters I’m
going to break down exactly how to get started with each instrument in a hardcore or metal mix.
But to put it simply, we enhance it by using a set of tools to manipulate the sound.
That can be as simple as panning something to the left or moving a fader up by 2dB. Or it can be
as complex as duplicating a track, treating it heavily and mixing it back into the original sound. It
doesn’t matter how you get there, the only thing that matters is that the result is something that
feels better to the listener.
I believe that adopting this mindset is the first step to becoming a great mixer. You need to free
yourself from technical details in order to connect with a song and bring out every last drop of
energy in it.

7
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
That means you have to be a master of your tools, not a slave to them. They exist to help you
achieve your desired result. That’s it! Don’t let any plugin, DAW or piece of gear consume your
process.

8
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 2: The Tools

Imagine you’ve just bought a picture and you want to hang it on your wall. There’s a simple
desired result: to hang the picture on the wall! You’re not going to line up and test 3 different
hammers with 3 different nails and choose the best hammer-nail chain. You’re just going to see
what you’ve got, choose something that will work, and do it. And if you step back and see that
it’s hanging level where you want it, you won’t try and do it a second time with different tools
just to see what happens. You walk away. Job done. That’s how you should think about the tools
in mixing.
Of course, you still need the hammer and nails - and need to know how to use them - to get the
picture on the wall. Likewise, even though the gear is not the most important part of mixing, it’s
still necessary, and the more you know how to use it, the better your results will be.
Let’s take a look at the most common & useful tools we use when mixing. Some of this stuff might
seem elementary, but you should have a firm grasp on it if you want to be able to mix easily and
avoid confusion.
Volume
The simplest tool we have is the fader, and arguably the most important. When all is said and
done, it’s the final balance between the tracks that makes the biggest impact on the mix. If your
vocal is too loud or too quiet, your mix sucks - even if the drums are slamming. You can get an
incredible snare sound, but if it’s too loud in the mix, it’s just annoying. We mixers have a
tendency to reach for fancier tools when the best solution is to simply turn it up or down.
Panning
Panning is our first line of separation in the mix. We can pan instruments to different locations in
the stereo field, giving them their own space away from other instruments. Since this is the
primary benefit of panning, I generally don't try to be subtle. Most tracks for me are either Left,
Right, or Center. If you put too many elements in between these positions, you start to cloud up
the stereo image and destroy the benefit of panning in the first place.

9
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Panning is also an effective way to catch the listener’s attention. Make a lead guitar enter in
loudly in one side, and the listener will perk up. Again, this is a simple tool that we overlook and
take for granted. Sometimes we choose to struggle with EQ to try and make a track stand out,
when simply panning it away from competing instruments will do a much better job!
EQ
Now we’re getting a little more advanced. EQ allows us to turn specific frequencies up or down.
This allows us to emphasize or exaggerate the pleasing parts of an instrument, and on the flip
side, minimize or remove the unpleasant or unnecessary frequencies.
An EQ plugin or hardware unit will have some or all of these features:
Filters
A High-Pass Filter will cut out anything below the chosen frequency, allowing the higher
frequencies to ‘pass through.’ A Low-Pass Filter allows the low frequencies to pass through while
eliminating frequencies above a set point. Filters are the most effective way of getting rid of
unwanted high or low frequencies in a sound.
For example, you should use a HPF on heavy guitars, set between 90-120Hz to eliminate the
rumbly low end and create more room for the bass. Likewise, put a LPF on the bass track at 4kHz
to get rid of any hiss or noise in the high end that could interfere with the guitars.
An example of high-pass and low-pass filters

10
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Filters can also be used to create effects by limiting the frequency range. The classic radio-voice
effect is achieved simply by limiting the frequency range - use a HPF at 500Hz and a LPF at 3kHz
to see what I mean.
Shelves
The next EQ type is a shelf. A high or low shelf raises or lowers all frequencies below or above a
set point. This is a smooth way to boost low or high end and make broad strokes. Use a high shelf
boost to make a track brighter; use a low shelf boost to bring up the overall low end of a track.
Bell/Peak
We can also boost or cut a specific frequency, leaving the ones around it more or less untouched
(more on that in a second). Using this type of EQ, we can zero in on problem frequencies to notch
them out without affecting the rest of the tone. We can also boost very specific frequencies to
help a track cut through the mix or emphasize its character.
Bandwidth
Sometimes labeled ‘Q’, this allows us to control the severity of the EQ for all types - filters, shelves
and bells. A low Q means a broad, gradual curve, thus it will affect more frequencies around the
point you’re boosting or cutting. A high Q means a narrow bandwidth, affecting less of the
surrounding frequencies. In general broad Q’s are great for boosting, as they sound more natural.
Narrow Q’s are great for cutting, as you can remove unwanted frequencies without harming the
original character of the instrument as much.

11
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
An EQ showing high and low shelves, as well as wide and narrow bells.
Besides volume and panning, EQ is our most powerful tool in creating separation between
instruments. We use subtractive eq to create space for other tracks, and we boost frequencies
to help an instrument stand out or cut through the mix.
EQ can also help create effects by playing to the way our brains are wired. For example, in real
life, low frequencies travel further than high frequencies. Something far away will sound dull and
dark. Therefore, we can make a track sound distant by simply reducing or filtering out high
frequencies. On the flip side, we hear high frequencies more clearly the closer a source is. That’s
why we like bright vocal tracks where we can almost hear the movement of the singer’s mouth.
It makes use feel like they’re right in front of us.
NINJA TIP:
Remember how I said panning is a powerful separation tool? Well, remember that your mix won’t
always be heard on headphones or in a scenario where the listener is perfectly placed between
the left and right speakers (think of a car)! In the real world, your panning wont mean as much to
separation as it does in the studio. To really exercise your EQ muscle, do your EQing in mono. This
forces all the sounds to come out of one spot, all on top of one another. So while your guitar and
vocal sounded plenty separated when it was panned 100% left, all the sudden in mono you hear
how the frequencies are covering each other up (aka ‘masking’). Now you’ll be forced to EQ in
ways that give each instrument its own space in the frequency spectrum. I’ve found this to be a
really powerful mixing technique. It’s a bit weird to get used to, but try it out next time. When you
flip it back to stereo, the mix will sound that much bigger.

12
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Compression
Compression is another incredibly powerful tool, but it’s not as easy to master as the ones above.
In the easiest terms, a compressor is basically something that allows us to turn down the level of
a track automatically. It allows us to control the dynamics - that is, the difference between the
quietest and loudest parts of a track.
A compressor has a threshold, either hardwired or set by hand. When the signal reaches or
exceeds that threshold, the compressor kicks in and turns it down. When we turn down the
loudest parts of a signal, it allows us to turn the whole track up, which means the quieter parts
can be heard more easily.
I’ll give you a quick rundown of the other basic compressor controls:
Ratio
This is a hard one to wrap your head around. The ratio is displayed as 2:1, 4:1, 6:1, etc. I can only
explain it with an example.
A 4:1 ratio means that for every 4dB the signal exceeds the threshold, it will only allow it to
exceed by 1dB (yeah, i know.. confusing). So if you're threshold is set at -10dB, and your signal
comes in at -6dB, it’s 4dB louder than the threshold. So it’ll kick in and output a final level of -
9dB, because for every 4dB over, it’s only allowing a 1dB increase. Truthfully you don't ever need
to think about that again. Just know that lower ratios are more transparent and smooth, and
higher ratios are more extreme and noticeable. For simple, gentle level control, use a low ratio
like 2:1 or 4:1. For heavy, intense compression, use a higher ratio.
Attack
This is how quickly the compressor reacts to the signal - or attacks it. A 30ms attack means that
the compressor will kick in 30ms after the signal hits the threshold. Again, I don’t want you to
overthink the numbers. Think of it in simple terms - fast, medium, slow. A fast attack time will
grab the signal quickly, reducing the transient. A slower attack will allow some (or all) of the
transient through, before clamping down on the signal. This creates the illusion that the transient
is actually louder than it actually was. That’s why we use a slow attack on drum tracks - it
emphasizes the transient. Now you’re starting to see why compression is really powerful.

13
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
A compressor with Attack, Release, and Ratio controls
Release
How quickly the compressor returns, or releases, the signal back to it’s original volume. A slow
release will gradually let the signal go, while a fast release means the compressor turns down the
signal briefly and immediately lets it go until the next time the threshold is reached. The best way
to think of it is that slow releases are smooth and more transparent, while fast releases create a
more aggressive sound (because the level is changing more rapidly and dramatically).
Like I said, compression is essentially a level control. Use it to automatically control the volume
of a track to a certain degree. We need to limit the dynamic range of instruments so that the
listener can always hear them loudly enough. You’ve probably had the experience of listening to
a song or person speaking on the radio and had to turn it up at times to hear it properly and then
turn it down when it gets loud. Compression helps to even this out for us.
But compression is much, much more powerful than that. In fact, once you get a little bit
advanced in your mixing, you’ll start to see level control as only the secondary function of a
compressor. The more interesting part is how it allows you to shape the sound using the attack
and release times.
With our attack/release definitions in mind, think about some examples. On a drum room track,
we could put a compressor on with a fast attack time and fast release. What’s going to happen?
It’s going to clamp down the transients and let go of it immediately, which will make the signal
in between drum hits louder. Result? The character and ambience of the room is emphasized.
Another example: Effective compression on a vocal track can emphasize consonants and make
the singer sound more intense than they actually are. As long as the attack time is slow enough,
the beginning of the word will get through before the compressor kicks in. That gives us the
illusion that the start of the word is louder than the rest. Voila, it now sounds like the vocalist is
attacking every word with intensity. Listen to a pop song on the radio and hear how the

14
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
consonants - the T’s, C’s, B’s etc. - pop out aggressively and energetically. That’s compression at
work.
See how powerful this could be? Not only can you control the level of a track, you can shape it to
change or emphasize its character. That’s why your hear famous mixers talk about the “vibe” of
certain compressors. Old units like the LA-2A have hard-set attack and release times that you
can’t change. That means they’ll always add a certain shape or character, and when that is
combined with the way certain tubes or electrical components color the sound, you get vibe.
Experiment with different compressors to see which vibe best emphasizes an instrument.
Over time, compression will be one of your top ‘character’ and ‘vibe’ tools - over and above what
it does for level control.
Limiting
Limiting is technically defined as any compression with a 10:1 ratio or higher. While compression
is useful beyond simple level control, limiting is more strictly about volume. A brick wall limiter
does exactly what the name implies - it doesn’t let ANYTHING go above the set threshold. This is
used for stopping rogue peaks from clipping and to really make a track stay at a constant level.
Limiters generally use super-fast attack times, since their function is to not let anything cross the
threshold. It’s a loudness weapon, mercilessly taming the peaks in order to raise the overall level.
With that in mind, you generally wouldn’t use limiters very often on tracks where transients are
important - like drums (but there are always exceptions). But when you want something to really
get nailed down and be controlled at a constant volume, like a bass or vocal, a bit of limiting goes
a long way.
Saturation / Distortion
Saturation is basically a subtle form of distortion. It gently distorts the source, creating harmonics
around it and thus thickening or fattening it. Depending on the type and severity of saturation, it
can either warm and smooth a track over, or it can add a little more edge and aggression.
By emphasizing the harmonics, meaning the complimentary frequencies above and below the
dominant range, it makes a sound bigger, fatter, thicker and louder. For example, it can help

15
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
smooth out harsh high frequencies by ‘padding’ them with complimentary frequencies around
it.
Distortion is, obviously, an aggressive tool. In heavy music we can use distortion creatively to add
aggression, bite and edge in unexpected ways. You can duplicate a scream track, add distortion,
and mix that in with the regular scream very subtly to add extra intensity. You can distort the
drums for effect, or again as a blended track to add aggression. We often don’t think of distortion
for things other than guitar or bass, but we should.
NINJA TIP:
Distortion is the ultimate loudness machine. That’s because it straight-up chops the peaks and
valleys of a waveform, which creates the distortion sound. Therefore, the more distortion you use,
the more constant the level. That’s why a distorted guitar track looks more like a solid block on
your screen, compared to a clean guitar with high peaks and valleys.
Effects
Finally, we have effects. I’m talking about things like delay, reverb, chorus/flanger, and other
wacky stuff we can do with the sound.
Effects help us to create space in the mix by mimicking the way we hear things in the real world.
Reverb works by simulating the way sound bounces off of walls or the landscape around us, and
that’s how a reverb plugin allows us to give the illusion that something was recorded in a big
room or a cathedral. Delay is similar, while chorus and flangers vary the pitch up and down to
create unique sonic effects.
For maximum effectiveness, these types of tools should be used wisely and sparingly in a mix. To
me, too much reverb is one of the dead-giveaways of an amateur mix. It clouds everything over
and gives it a lo-fi vibe (in a bad way). Just listen to the top 10 rock and pop songs right now. I’ll
bet you there’s hardly any reverb going on in most of those mixes.
It’s easy to fall into the reverb trap because when you’re listening to a track in solo, putting some
reverb on it usually makes it sound instantly better. But it’s a crutch, and it adds up in your mix
in a negative way. These days I hardly use any reverb in a mix, and when I do, it’s usually for a
special effect. I find delays to be much more useful in creating depth and space in a mix. I’ll get
into some real examples of this later.

16
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Alright, so we’ve just covered all the basic tools you have available as a mixer. Every DAW will
have at least very basic versions of all of these. And that’s all you need. Don’t fall into the gear
lust trap.
More gear, or more expensive gear, will not make you better. If you can’t use the built-in
compressor effectively, a $2,000 outboard compressor isn’t gonna do much for your mixes. It’s
all about how and why you use the tools, not about the tools themselves.
I’m not much for mixing by numbers and theory, but you need to get a grasp on these basics.
Otherwise, you’ll feel confused and overwhelmed when you open up a plugin and start tweaking.
By understanding the tools, they become transparent in your workflow - meaning they don’t hold
you up or complicate things, they allow you to quickly and effectively create the sound you hear
in your head. You shouldn’t struggle against them, rather, they should supercharge your feel,
intuition, and speed in mixing.

17
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 3: Workflow
Ok, now we’re clear on our vision. We understand our tools. Let’s dig in to how we approach a
mix from start to finish.
Your Plan of Attack

It’s important that you start with a general idea of how you’re going to approach the mix. What
are you going to do first? How will you organize the tracks? When do you know the mix is done?
If you don’t have a plan of how you’re going to tackle the mix, you’ll end up unfocused and take
a lot longer to mix than you should.
Here’s how I approach my mix:
1. Organize tracks
2. Set up routing
3. Rough balance
4. EQ / Compression / Processing tracks and tweaking
5. Automation
6. Special FX
7. Finalize
It’s not so important what your workflow is, but just that you have one. If you have a formula, a
set process that you use every single time you sit down to mix, you’ll not only mix faster but
better. Having a predictable and repeatable workflow allows you to minimize the un-creative side
of your brain so that you can focus on the creative side. That’s why I have organization and
routing at the very start of my workflow. I want to get rid of the tedious technical and non-musical
tasks up front so that the rest of my process is free of these distractions.
Let’s break down each of these stages so that you know exactly what I mean.

18
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
1. Organize Tracks
The first thing I do is is put all of the tracks in order on the screen. I prefer to have drums at the
top, then bass, guitars, miscellaneous instruments (synths etc), vocals, then aux returns and
master faders. I color the tracks according to their instrument group to make them easier to find
(for example, all drum tracks are blue, all guitar tracks are orange, etc). Since I use the same
organization in every single song I mix, I always know where to find what I’m looking for. In a big
session, it can be hard to locate where sounds are coming from quickly. A predictable track order
makes this easy, and it makes you faster at moving around the session.
During this stage, I’ll also try to pair the session down to the least amount of tracks possible. If I
can combine 3 guitar tracks onto 1, I’ll do it. Sometimes that even means bouncing down layers
into one track. For example, if there’s 4 tracks of vocal doubles, I’ll just do a quick balance and
bounce it down to one stereo track.
Reducing track count in this way, again, helps you move faster through the session and the mix.
It eliminates repetition and just gives me a sense of calm, order and control over the material.
2. Set Up Routing
Next, I set up all the aux inputs, master faders, inputs and outputs for the tracks. That means I’ll
set up my drum aux and route all my drums there. Same for bass, guitars, and vocals. All these
aux tracks then go through my main mix buss.
I also import my mix FX template at this stage. This brings in 8 or 10 aux input tracks, pre-loaded
with my go-to effects plugins and settings, and with the inputs already set and named. That
means that when I start mixing and i want to add reverb or delay to a track, I just create a send
and I’m good to go. Everything is already there, ready and waiting for me.
Some tracks included in my mix FX template include a small plate reverb, snare reverb, vocal
short delay, vocal long delay, harmonizer, etc. It’s like having one-click access to all your favorite
effects, rather than setting up the same tracks and sends and plugins every time.
3. Rough Balance
Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, I can start to get into the music. I’ll start by listening
to the rough mix if there is one, so I can get a feel for the song and the artist’s vision. Then I’ll
start bringing up each track one by one and get a quick balance and panning of the instruments.

19
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
I’ll listen to the song at least a few times through in this stage, doing some more balancing as I
go.
This is the stage where I get familiar with the song and the tracks provided. I try to discern what
type of sound they were trying to achieve. I make note of special parts of the song and unique
sounds or tones that I want to emphasize. Most importantly, I try to connect with the emotion
or energy that the song is trying to produce.
The goal of this stage is to get an idea in my head of what I want this song to sound like. Then I
can start to get fired up about making it happen.
4. EQ / Compression / Tweaking
The rough balance phase naturally flows into this in-depth mixing phase. This is where I spend
most of my time in a mix. I start pulling out my tools, using EQ’s, compressors, and anything else
required to get the job done.
Usually I’ll start by fixing any glaring problems, like a way-too-dynamic vocal or an excessively
muddy guitar, then jump into processing each track one by one.
In most cases I go in the order the tracks were organized in - drums first, then bass, guitars, and
vocals. However, it’s important to note that I try to use ‘solo’ as little as possible. Since every
move you make affects the entire mix, and because no one except you will ever hear a track in
solo, it’s important to mix with all the tracks live. Solo is useful for zeroing in on issues and fixing
them, but if you mix everything in solo, you’re going to have problems when you try to put it all
together. Mixing everything in solo tends to make you mix every single track to be as big and
shiny as it possibly can, and when everything is big, nothing stands out.
So while I do proceed in order when mixing, I also jump around and make small adjustments to
other tracks as I go. I’ll get my drum mix solid, but then once I mess with the bass, I might have
to jump back and tweak my drums again. This process just continues on in this way until I’m
feeling really good about the mix.
As I’m tweaking each instrument, I start to add in effects as well. Reverbs, delays and other
standard effects are applied at this point.

20
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
5. Automation
Once I’ve processed all the tracks individually and feel like I’ve done almost all the tweaking
required, it’s time to automate.
Automation is when you program in various changes to the tracks, mainly volume, throughout
the length of the song.
An easy example is ‘riding the fader’ of the vocal - changing the level of the vocal on a line-by-
line basis so that the lyrics are always audible on top of the music. Modern DAWS allow you to
do this with painstaking detail, but I prefer to use an actual physical fader to record these moves.
Automation is one of the most important weapons of pro mixers. It’s how we keep the listener
engaged throughout a song and keep pulling them forward through the mix. It’s how we create
energy and excitement, manipulating the overall feel of the song.
Automation example - ‘riding the fader’ on a vocal track
To give you a better idea of what I mean, here are some common automation moves I make:
 Emphasizing drum hits. Turning up the kick on the first hit of a chorus or breakdown.
Turning up the cymbals on a big crash. Making sure all the tom fills are perfectly audible.
 Riding the bass so that the low end is constant throughout the song
 Automating reverbs and delays, like turning up the snare reverb during a heavy open
section and turning it down during busy sections.
 When a new lead guitar enters, catch the listener’s attention. Turn it up for the first few
notes and then gradually back it down to it’s regular level. It’s like allowing a track to say
“Hey! I’m here!” before settling into it’s proper place.

21
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
You can get really creative with automation, and our DAWs give us insane power in this area. For
example, you can automate any of your plugins to change throughout the song. You could
automate your kick drum EQ so that there’s less low-end during a super-fast double kick section.
You could boost the low end on your bass for the choruses or breakdowns to make them bigger.
You could make your hi-hat get brighter and brighter with each chorus so that there’s a feeling
of building energy and excitement as the song progress. The possibilities are almost limitless. I
do a scary amount of automation in my mixes, and I love it.
Do not skip out on this step. This is your chance to shine as a mixer and make a big impression
on the listener - and artist. These moves are mostly transparent to them. They don’t recognize
that you’ve automated things or that tracks are evolving through the mix. But they will feel the
difference, and that’s what counts.
6. Special FX
Once I’ve finished my automation, I take some time to listen for opportunities to add special
effects to emphasize certain moments in the song.
Usually this means simple things like adding bass drops, a reverse cymbal or a reverse snare swell.
Occasionally I’ll get more unique ideas and spend some time having fun, trying to create some
crazy sound I’m hearing in my head. It doesn’t always work out, but it’s worth a shot.
I don’t spend too much time on this part of the mix, and I make sure to follow my gut. If I listen
to the song and don’t get any ideas or gut feelings about adding an effect, I move on. You should
never add something to the mix just for the sake of cool effects. You should only add special
effects when you really feel it.
This is another key differentiator between pro and amateur mixers. A pro knows when to add to
a track and when to leave it alone. You can’t get your ego involved or try to impress anyone with
weird effects. It always, always, always has to serve the song!
7. Finalize
All the heavy lifting is done at this point. The final step is to sit back, listen, and make any last
tweaks before printing the final mix.
I try to detach myself from the controls and listen like a fan would. I dim the lights, turn my
computer monitor off, turn it up a bit and sit back to listen.

22
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Since you’ve been focusing on individual tracks in so much detail, this is an important time to get
perspective on the mix. How does it feel all together? Does it all flow and remain exciting
throughout the song? Most importantly, does it make you feel something, tap your foot or bob
your head? Those are the things you’re looking for here.
I’ll make mental or paper notes if I hear an issue or get an idea to tweak something. Don’t
interrupt the playback, and if you have to, restart the song from the beginning. The whole point
of this step is to hear the song as a whole and not in tiny chunks.
Listen at different volumes, on different speakers, and even sit in different spots of the room.
Make any minor changes you feel necessary, and listen again until you feel satisfied.
A common practice for mix engineers is to check their mix in the car. We all spend so much time
in our cars listening to music that we know instinctively how it should sound there. I always
bounce my mix and check it in the car, then make any final tweaks accordingly before I send it
off to the band.
In this phase, you’ll probably end up making a number of small tweaks to the mix. But try not to
second guess yourself and start over with anything.
After a few passes and some final tweaks, you’re ready to print your mix and send it to the artist.

23
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
PART 2:
TRACK BY TRACK TIPS &
EXAMPLES FOR HEAVY
MUSIC
I spent the first part of this book trying to set you up with a foundation, a starting point from
which to mix. These ideas and principles will help you approach any mix in any genre of music.
But this book is about mixing hardcore & metal, and here’s where I’ll deliver on that title. The
2nd part of this book is about how to apply the tools, with specific tips and examples for heavy
music.

24
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 4: Drums
There are essentially two different ways drums are approached in heavy music. You can either
go raw and real, or polished and larger-than-life. Neither is better than the other, it just depends
what the artist or producer is going for. As a mixer, in the rough balance stage you should be able
to discern which way they want to go (if they haven’t told you already).
Regardless of the style you’re going for, a lot of the goals are still the same. You want the drums
to hit hard. They need to be punchy, loud and intense. In more mellow rock and pop music, the
drums contribute to the rhythm and feel for a song, but in metal, we also want to hear the detail
of the drums and we want them to cut through the mix, not just sit as a foundation underneath.
For me, the ideal drum mix for heavy music consists of well-recorded live drums, augmented by
samples. Programmed drums are becoming more and more common in the genre, which is ok,
but I’m willing to bet that live drums will never go away. I guess I’m a little bit old school, because
when I was coming up, there weren’t any drum sequencers on the market that were good enough
for rock or metal.
I’ll go through the parts of a live kit, and then touch on samples.
Kick
Depending on the drum and mic used, a live kick track will likely either sound dull and muddy or
thin and plastic-y.
If you’re hearing a lot of bleed between kick hits, start by setting up a gate. A simple gate plugin
with a drum preset will be a good starting point. Make sure the attack is as fast as possible, so
that the transient is allowed through. The release time can be slow, a couple hundred
milliseconds even up to 1s will do. Use a faster release time if the bleed is really bad or the track
has a nasty ring.
Next, start to shape the kick sound with EQ. I start by applying filters - a HPF around 50Hz will
tame the extreme low end and free up headroom, and a LPF around 12kHz will help with any hiss
or noise in the high end.
If your kick is muddy, make a wide cut around 200-300Hz. If it sounds plastic-y or ‘beachbally’ (©
me, 2015), cut around 700 to 900Hz. Often, you need to make very extreme cuts in a kick drum

25
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
to get the modern sound we’re after. I’ll commonly use an SSL Channel plugin to cut -15db in one
of these spots. You may need to cut in both areas, but usually one more than the other.
Add some attack and edge by boosting 2.5kHz for more smack, or around 4kHz for a bit more
edge. For ‘click’ and brightness, boost at 8kHz and don’t be shy. Depending on how much bleed
is in the track, I’ll boost as much 8kHz as I can get away with. Sometimes that means cranking the
knob all the way to +15db. Again, it all depends on the source, but boost it as much as you can to
get it cutting through the mix.
For low end, I usually boost with a bell curve at 60Hz. You may need to boost and sweep the EQ
around a bit between 60-80 to find the ideal spot, but I like the way 60Hz sounds on most kick
tracks. Again, don’t be shy, but don’t overdue it either. Depending on what the kick sounds like
to begin with, i’ll add anywhere from 4-9db of low end here. If you boosted a lot in the highs,
you’ll have to boost more in the low to balance it out.
For drums, I usually have the compressor following after EQ in the chain. On the kick, use a slow
attack and fast release to add punch. Having the compressor after the EQ will also help tame any
extreme boosts you made. I’ll usually do 4-6db of gain reduction on the kick.
From there, use your taste to polish off the kick. I like to use a saturation plugin called Massey
Tapehead to thicken up the kick and round off any spikiness in the top end due to my big EQ
boosts. Sometimes another EQ will be required after to clean up any extra mud with small,
narrow cuts.
Snare
Start by gating the snare similarly to how you gated the kick. Fastest attack possible and a
medium to slow release. Make sure you don’t get rid of the ring of the snare, as it will add
character to the drums.
You may need to make some narrow cuts with EQ to clean up a honkey midrange around 500 or
700Hz. Don’t make your cuts too extreme on the snare, or you’ll find it hard to hear in the mix
later on. Sometimes the ring or midrange that bothers you when isolated will help define it in the
mix (yet another reason to avoid mixing in solo).
The key spots to boost on snare are 2-2.5kHz for smack that helps cut through guitars. 3.5-4.5kHz
will give some more bite and edge, and the nice bright attack is around 8kHz. Like the kick, I’ll
usually have a substantial boost at 8kHz.

26
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
The low end punch of a snare resides around 200Hz. Give it a healthy boost to add weight and
punch. You can also use a HPF around 150Hz to clean up any unnecessary low end coming
through the mix.
Again, follow the EQ with compression using a slow attack and fast release. You want to do
enough gain reduction that the smack and front-end attack of the snare is emphasized, but you
can’t go too far or you’ll lose the body of the snare or make it sound squashed and unnatural.
The sweet spot is usually between 3-6db.
Some subtle distortion or saturation can do wonders on a snare to help it cut through the mix.
Just make sure your saturation isn’t mellowing out the attack too much. This is why distortion or
clipping can be better, because it cuts down the peaks in an aggressive way that translates to our
ears as energy and intensity.
Use the bottom snare mic for extra brightness. You can gate it much harder, with a very short
release time so that all you hear is the hit itself. Boost up at 10kHz or above to get some sizzle,
and boost at 200Hz again for some extra low end beef. Sometimes a fast attack on the
compressor can help to fatten the bottom snare sound, but if you just need a little bit more bright
crack, use a slow attack like the top snare. If you’re struggling to get the snare top bright enough,
the bottom mic can do wonders for you.
Toms
Processing the toms looks very similar to the kick. You’ll likely need to make a big, wide cut in the
midrange, sometimes in the muddy 300Hz area or up around 800Hz. The low end will be in the
mid-100’s for a rack tom and below 100Hz for the floor tom. Attack can be found around 4.5kHz
and, like most drums, at 8kHz. Make sure to gate the toms to eliminate ring between hits, but
maintain a natural decay. Compress toms the same way you would kick or snare, but experiment
with slightly faster attack if you’re lacking some fatness in the tom.
NINJA TIP:
Toms can be tricky to gate accurately. You’ll often find that bleed from the snare will trigger your
tom gate to misfire. To get around this, you can use a side-chain input with your gate. A side-
chain means the gate will react based on a separate signal being fed into it, rather that the raw
track it’s inserted on. For our purposes here, my favorite gate is the one included with Pro Tools,
because it has a side-chain EQ built in. That means I can EQ the signal feeding into the gate
without affecting the actual tom sound itself. I engage the side-chain, and use the filter controls

27
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
to eliminate anything above 1kHz. That means the gate will only react to sounds below that
frequency. Since the main frequency response of a tom is down in the mids and low-mids, this will
help the gate ignore rogue snare bleed, which is in the higher frequencies, and only open up when
it sees some big low-mids. Voila, perfectly gated toms!
Cymbals/Overheads
Some people try to get a full, overall live kit sound from the overhead mics. Maybe it’s just me,
but this is rarely how I approach overheads. For one thing, most bands, even successful ones, are
not investing in recording drums in a nice big professional room anymore. That means the
‘ambience’ in overheads is rarely anything special. I prefer to treat the overheads as cymbal mics,
not kit mics. I’ll fill in the ambience with the room mics later.
So right up front, my goal is to try and isolate the cymbals as much as possible in the overhead
tracks. This means making some aggressive cuts to the low-end and mids. For fast and technical
metal, I’ll HPF all the way up to 600Hz. Sometimes that’ll be backed off down to 250-400Hz if the
kit sound happens to be nice, or the vibe is more raw. But I’ll almost always do a decent sized dip
around 600-700Hz. When you cut out the low end and midrange like this, you end up with mostly
cymbals in your overhead track, with a little bit of the high-end of the snare and toms as well,
which is not a bad thing.
Depending on the recording, the overheads might require a boost for brightness using a shelf at
12kHz. However, I tend not to boost much on the overheads. I find it can make them sound
phasey and lose their detail. If the recording engineer has done a decent job capturing decent
cymbals, you shouldn’t have to boost too much.
After EQ, I’ll compress overheads with an 1176-style compressor. Usually that’s a fairly fast attack
and fast-medium release. I want to add a little touch of front-end attack to the cymbal hits, but
also bring up some of their resonance. Generally this compression is fairly light, averaging just a
couple dB of gain reduction.
Treating your cymbals this way allows you to have more control over the cymbal level without
affecting the close-miked drums as much. You’ll be able to maintain the tone and punch you
worked hard for in the kick, snare and toms.

28
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
NINJA TIP:
Sometimes even with big cuts in the overheads, you have too much kit sound and not enough
cymbal. Turning the overhead track up can then start to compromise the punch and tone of your
close miked drums. Rather than boosting the high-end of the overhead track a ton, I use a different
approach. Duplicate the overhead track, and on this one, HPF it all the way up to 5kHz. Now you’re
truly left with only the brightness of the cymbals. Compress that a little bit to emphasize it even
more, and then blend it in with your normal overhead track. Now you’ll be able to add more
cymbal and maintain a natural sound without affecting your individual drums. Boom!
Hi-Hat
Hi-hat is treated much the same as overheads. Cut out the low end and midrange to isolate the
high hats. Automate the volume down when the drummer isn’t playing the hats. I rarely compress
the hi-hats, and pan them to where they seem to fit naturally with the overheads.
Room
To this point, you’ve worked hard to isolate each drum and maximize their impact and energy.
However, you might end up with a kit that sounds nice and clear but lacks glue and sounds a bit
unnaturally separated. This is where the room track kicks in, and it’s important.
The room sound can vary so much that it’s hard to give specific EQ points, but a lot of the main
frequencies to look at are the same as you worked with in the kick and snare. This time, though,
make sure not to cut very much - if at all - because you want the room track to fill in the gaps for
the close mics. Usually my EQ moves on a room track are pretty subtle. I might boost around
1kHz to get it more audible in the mix and emphasize the character. A high end boost around
5kHz helps to add energy, though I usually LPF the room around 10kHz to eliminate noisy, messy
high end.
The room track can add a lot of warmth and size to the low end. Try boosting below 100Hz, but
be careful not to compromise the tight punch of the kick.
Drum room mics benefit a lot from heavy compression. Using a high ratio, fast attack and medium
release, we can use compression to really emphasize the room sound and ambience. Heavy
compression on the room track can actually make the room sound bigger because of the way
lower-level ambience is brought up in level. It also just has a way of making the drums sound

29
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
twice as intense and energetic. Don’t be afraid to really smash it and get the gain-reduction
needle flying.
The more sparse the drum part, the more you’ll be able to compress the room. If you’re working
with quick technical drums, less compression might be required on the room tracks so that you
don't blur the drum detail too much.
Try out some saturation or distortion on the room tracks as well. Again, the room track plays a
major role in gluing the kit together and adding character.
Once you’ve processed the room track, bring the fader down and then gradually increase the
level until it feels good in the mix. For most hardcore and metal mixes, you don’t want the room
to be super dominant, but you should really miss it when it’s muted. Experiment with automating
the room level depending on the vibe of certain sections of the song. More room track in the mix
generally makes the drums sit back a little bit and blur or soften the attack, so try to set the level
where it fills in the gaps and adds vibe without reducing the punch of your close mics too much.
IMPORTANT: PHASE
I should take a quick sidetrack and talk about phase. You’ve probably heard people talk about
phase and how important it is when mixing drums. Truthfully it should be figured out in the
recording stage, but it’s not uncommon to have some out-of-phase drums at mix time.
Personally, I try not to get too far down the phase rabbit-hole. I don't nudge tracks to align them
and i don't use any fancy phase plugins. I just do what the old-school guys do - hit the phase flip
button and see if it’s better or worse.
It helps to listen in mono when checking phase. With all of your drums up, starting with kick, hit
the phase-invert button on any plugin in the chain (or use a straight-up phase invert plugin). Does
the kick suddenly gain low end? Does it sound more solid and full? If so, it was out of phase before
and now it’s more in-phase. If flipping the phase makes it sound thinner or unnatural in some
way that means it’s more out of phase.
Do the same for each close mic, checking to see that the phase position is correct. It’s good to do
this very early in the drum mixing process so that you’re not starting handicapped.
Sometimes when flipping the phase, it’s unclear which is better. If it sounds the same, just leave
it how it was. Other times you might get a better midrange when the phase is flipped, but a better
low-end when it’s not flipped. In this case, use your intuition to make the call on which setting
best serves the mix. Don’t be obsessed with phase, just check it and move on. We’re not mad
scientists here, we’re mixing metal.

30
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Drum Samples
No use beating around the bush. Even if you have a stellar drum recording and do a killer job
mixing it, you’ll probably still need drum samples in this genre. There are definitely exceptions,
and if you feel the live drums sound special enough without samples, then by all means - don’t
use them! But to a certain extent, hardcore and metal fans have come to expect a drum sound
that is at least a little larger than real life, and you want to compete with what’s out there.
My favorite plugin for triggering drum samples is Slate Digital’s Trigger. It allows you to blend
multiple samples inside the plugin, and it’s the most accurate tool I’ve tried. Different drum
samples are available all over the internet to download for free or purchase.
Here’s how to blend a sample in with your live drums. Duplicate the live track and insert Trigger
(or another trigger plugin). Start auditioning different samples, blending them with the live track.
Make sure that the sample is adding to the sound and not canceling it out, which can happen if
the phase relationship between them is just too different.
When I’m choosing drum samples, my goal is always to end up with a blend that is greater than
the sum of the parts. What I mean is, neither the live kick or the sample sound good enough on
their own, but together the result is killer. The ideal drum sample will augment what’s already
there in your live tracks and/or fill in what it’s missing. You may not have been able to get enough
high-end click out of your live kick, but you can find a kick sample with plenty to spare. Likewise
if your kick was lacking low end.
I have a simple approach with drum samples. I mainly use hard hitting samples only and I don’t
fuss too much with getting the dynamics and delicacies to match the live tracks. I want the natural
vibe to come from the live drums, and the samples are there to beef it up and make it hit harder.
I have a bit of a grudge against super complex drum sample packs where the mixer is left to
balance all the mics and choose from a million velocity layers. I got so sick of using the sample
packs I’d purchase that I decided to make my own. They’re simple, heavy, and do exactly what I
need them to do in the mix without a bunch of bells and whistles. I’ve got many of them for sale
at HardcoreMixing.com if you feel the same way I do about overly complex drum sample libraries.
The big advantage with drum samples is that there is no bleed. You can EQ and process them till
the cows come home. Don't be afraid to manipulate a sample as much as you want to get the
sound you’re after. In fact, if you do, your mix will sound more unique than the next guy who’s
using the same drum samples.
I always print my drum samples to an audio track before I continue mixing. That means I bus the
output of my trigger track to a new audio track, and record the sample into an audio file.

31
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
There are two reasons for this. First, sometimes the trigger plugin will be slightly off on a few hits,
which means the samples end up slightly out of phase with the live track and some hits are
reduced in power. After printing the track, in Pro Tools I zoom in and tab through it to make sure
all the transients are lined up.
Second, it’s a safety measure for the future. Not only does it ensure that your mix is the exact
same every time you open it up, it ensures that your mix will be there regardless of whether
software gets updated and breaks your plugin, or your hard drive gets messed up and you lose
the sample files. It just feels safer to lock down the sample into an audio track.
Oh, I’ll throw in a third reason: I like to commit. I don't want to get 90% through my mix and be
tempted to go back and try a different sample. I choose it, commit, print it and keep moving. The
best mixers are confident and decisive, and they mix fast.
Drum Buss
If you followed the advice in Part 1, your drums should all be routed to an aux track, which is your
drum buss. This is where you can process & treat the drums as a whole.
Start with a compressor (I like the SSL Buss Comp) doing only a few dB of gain reduction with a
4:1 ratio, slow attack and fast-medium release. You’ll be able to get a little extra punch from the
drums, and it will also help glue the kit and control the dynamics.
It’s sometimes necessary to EQ on the drum buss as well. You may need to add in some low end
that was reduced by the compressor, or maybe halfway through your mix process the drums start
to sound a bit too dark. Rather than adjusting all the individual drum tracks, just do a nice smooth
boost on the drum buss. Keep in mind, however, that if you’re making big EQ moves on the drum
buss - over a few dB up or down - there’s probably a problem that’s better addressed at the
individual tracks level.
Saturation can also be nice on the drum buss. Just be careful it doesn’t make them too dark or
round. I usually stick to subtle moves only on my drum buss.
Parallel Compression
I almost always have a 2nd aux input for drums that I use for parallel compression. Parallel
compression means duplicating a track, compressing it heavily for a certain effect, and then

32
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
blending that in with the original sound. This technique gives you the benefits of heavy
compression while maintaining the natural sound of the instrument.
Parallel compression on drums is an old trick that pros have been using for decades. Here’s what
to do:
Duplicate your drum buss aux return. On this one, use heavy, pumping compression. High ratio,
fast attack and fast release with gobs of gain reduction will get your drums slamming. Get the
needling flying and don't be shy. The goal is to end up with an insanely slammy, punchy drum
sound. Some compressors will add some distortion with this heavy handed use, or you can add a
little bit yourself for extra oomph.
Your parallel track should sound unnaturally, ridiculously intense. When you’ve achieved that
vibe, kill the track and go back to your normal drum buss. Now slowly raise the parallel track until
you get a good balance of the two. You should be able to maintain the natural sound of the kit,
with the parallel track tucked in just loud enough to add some killer energy and punch without
sounding obvious. It shouldn’t draw attention to itself, but rather be something that is missed if
you mute it.
NINA TIP:
Small automation moves with the parallel track throughout a song can help keep things exciting.
Turn up the parallel track for sections that need more punch, and turn it down when the drums
need to lay back a little!
Reverb
The main uses for reverb with your drums would be a short room verb and a longer snare verb.
If your room track is good enough, you won’t need to use an artificial room reverb. However, if
you didn’t get provided a room track or you can’t squeeze any ambience from it, it helps to use
a short room verb plugin on the drums as a whole. Don’t make it obvious, just tuck it in enough
to fill the gaps. It helps to use an EQ after the reverb plugin to shape the sound and make it a
little closer to an actual room track.
Use sends on the individual drums to feed the room reverb track. That way, you can create a
custom mix feeding the verb so that your balance is ideal. Usually I’ll have to send a lot less kick
to the room verb to keep from making my low end muddy, and i’ll also take a lot of the cymbals
out so that I don't blur the high end detail either.

33
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
The other reverb you’ll almost always have on drums is a snare verb. The common choice is a
long plate. Tailor the reverb tail length to suit the tempo of the song so that the reverb dies just
as the next snare hits.
I like to choose reverbs that add some weight to the snare, and it also helps lengthen the snare
sound which makes it easier to hear in the mix. I start by setting the snare plate level where it’s
subtle but important, and then I ride the fader throughout the mix. In big heavy breakdowns with
lots of space between hits, you can crank the snare verb for a big explosive sound. Then when a
fast section hits, you’ll want to bring it down to avoid a build up of verb that clouds your mix and
draws attention to itself.
Again, use an EQ to shape the plate reverb return if necessary. You may need to make it brighter
or darker, or to cut out some of the low end. This is a little bit of a pro mixer secret that a lot of
beginners don’t even think of. Follow up your effects with EQ and any other tools necessary to
shape them how you want. There are no rules!
You can also send your toms to the snare reverb if you find them lacking in size or sustain.
Drum Automation - Quick Tips & Ideas to get you started

 Boost your kick on important hits at the start of new sections. Bring it down on fast double
kick or automate the low-end EQ to avoid too much sub build up.
 Ride your snare fader to emphasize dynamics on fills, especially when you’re using
samples heavily.
 Turn up drum fills to grab the listener’s attention and announce a change in the song
 Turn up your overheads for crashes at the beginning of sections or big heavy hits.
 Automate your toms to make sure all the fills are audible

34
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 5: Bass
I like to tackle bass after I get a solid drum mix happening. In my experience, you will almost
always be given a bass D.I. track to work with, along with an amp track, Sansamp or distortion
track, or any combination of things. The D.I. track gives us maximum flexibility in the mix, but if
the artist/producer supplies a killer amp or pedal tone, that’s even better!
The two key things to focus on when mixing bass are the low end (obviously) and the high-mids.
The sub-100Hz range will provide the weight and power for your mix, while the energy, presence
and ‘growl’ of the bass lives around 1kHz.
For almost every style of heavy music, bass distortion is a must. If you weren’t provided with a
gritty track or the one you’ve got is sub-par, there are many decent plugin options to do it
yourself. My favorite is the SansAmp PSA-1 included with Pro Tools, and sometimes I’ll run it
through my actual Sansamp pedal. There’s something about the Sansamp tone that just suits
hardcore and metal perfectly.
In most mixes, I’ll end up with two bass tracks to work with - a cleaner track and a more heavily
distorted track. If you only have a D.I to work with, simply duplicate the track and process one
more heavily with distortion. You may want to experiment with filtering the distorted track so
that it’s only giving you what you need. I’ll often set a HPF around 200Hz and a LPF around 4kHz
on a distorted bass track, so that it only contributes to the midrange while the cleaner bass track
holds down the low end. Use the faders to blend these two together to your liking, so that you
have a nice balance of clarity and grit.
Buss these two (or more) tracks together to an aux input to process it as one sound. Start with
an EQ, and use a HPF to limit the amount of sub rumble in the track. I use my friend Google to
look up a chart showing frequencies of musical notes, and set my HPF according to whatever is
the lowest note played in the song. For example, a low C is around 65Hz. So if the band is tuned
to drop-C, I set my HPF just below 65Hz, since I know anything below that is just rumble that isn’t
necessary. That will free up some extra space for the kick in your mix.
Next, you can boost the low end, also according to the frequency of the low notes in the song.
Don’t get too obsessed over it, but in the drop-C example, I would make a wide boost around 65
or 70Hz that covers all of the low octave.
Finding the right amount of low-end to add can be difficult, and it takes time to learn your room
and your speakers. This is where reference mixes are most useful. Don’t try to copy someone
else’s mix, but listen for the amount of low end you can feel. Since you ‘feel’ the lowest

35
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
frequencies, and they don’t have much of a tone, it’s easier to use references as a guide without
falling down the rabbit hole of chasing someone else’s tone (not recommended)!
Moving on to the midrange, try boosting around 1-1.5kHz. This is where you’ll get a lot of attitude
and aggression in the bass, and how you can help it be heard in the mix. Don’t be afraid to boost
it as much as you need to, being sure to listen in the context of all the other instruments. If you
want even more grind and pick attack, boost again around 2.5kHz.
Compression, and usually lots of it, is the name of the game for bass. We compress bass heavily
because we want a constant, powerful low end through the song, and we want all of the bass
notes to be equally loud.
1176-style compressors are popular for bass, but like always, there are no rules. Try out some
different plugins and their bass presets. Usually, I’ll use a fast or medium attack, and a fast to
medium release time. Slower attacks will emphasize the pick sound a little more, while faster
attacks will smooth over inconsistent playing. Adjust according to the track you’ve been given.
If the bass track is pretty inconsistent dynamically, I’ll put a compressor first to even it off by a
few dB, followed by my EQ, followed by another compressor with a heavier hand.
Saturation works nicely on bass, adding extra harmonics to thicken it up. Often, I’ll put a limiter
(Waves L1 is my favorite) last in the chain to shave off any stray peaks and really cement its spot
in the mix.
Getting your final bass level in a mix can also be challenging. We all have different tendencies,
but personally, I often find myself mixing the bass too quietly and have to revise it after checking
in the car. This could be due to my room or speakers, or just the way I hear music. If you’re like
me, try to push the bass up just a little beyond what seems comfortable. It is massively important
in determining the size and power of your mix.
I’ve also learned to try and avoid making cuts in the low mids of the bass, because that’s the area
that gives the bass power on smaller speakers that can’t produce the lowest sub frequencies. If
you mute the bass and don’t miss it that much, it’s too quiet. If you’ve mixed it properly, the mix
should totally fall apart when the bass is muted. Read that last sentence again and remember it!
With a heavily compressed bass track, you won’t need to do too much automation in the mix in
terms of dynamic control. Instead, use automation to manipulate the feel throughout the song.
Even a 0.5 db boost on the bass during a breakdown or chorus can make a big difference. If you
have separate clean and dirty bass tracks, you can change the balance of them as well, adding
more grit in heavy sections and backing it off when the bass needs to be cleaner. And don’t forget
to turn up those little licks to avoid the otherwise guaranteed complaints from the bass player.

36
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 6: Guitars
When it comes to guitar tone, I need to make one disclaimer up front: It is essential that you start
mixing with a good tone.
To me, dialing in guitar tone is part of the recording stage, not the mixing stage. These days, I’ll
often get sent both amp and DI tracks for guitars. I will stick with the amp tracks 99% of the time,
unless the tone is completely unusable or if the artist specifically asked for reamping as a separate
service.
If you are reamping, whether with a real amp or a plugin, I recommend doing it quickly and
committing the final tone to an audio track. Constantly going back and tweaking your guitar tone
throughout the mix is a quick way to derail the whole process. Like I said before, the best mixers
know how to make quick decisions and commit.
When it comes to the mix process, then, my philosophy on heavy guitars is to keep it simple. The
#1 enemy of big guitars in the mix is using too much EQ. If you’re both tracking and mixing your
projects, and you consistently find yourself making EQ moves over 3-4dB in the mix, then you
probably need to work harder at capturing a good tone.
Doing too much EQ on heavy distorted guitars causes them to start sounding thin and phasey. I
can’t tell you exactly why, but that doesn’t matter. It just happens, and I say that confidently after
thousands of hours mixing guitars and hundreds of songs. I’ve also heard the same thing from
other high profile mixers.
I know you’re waiting for the specifics on processing guitars, but let me make my point one other
way. When it comes to guitar tone in the mix, you have an extremely wide leash. You do not need
to conform the guitar sound to match any other record, and when you try to do so, the result will
be mediocre.
Just think about a few of your favorite records. Do any of the guitar tones sound the same? Or
even similar? I’m guessing not. If you don’t know what I mean, just open up iTunes and play a
random selection of songs. I’m willing to bet that the variance in guitar tone is massive.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but guitar tone is one of the least important factors in defining the
quality of a mix. Drums and vocals have much more of an impact on the energy and connection
with the listener. That’s true across all genres.

37
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
So rather than obsess over the EQ on your guitars, try your best to simply let it be what it is. It’s
much better to have an odd guitar tone that is big and full, than to force a cookie-cutter frequency
curve that makes the guitars sound thin and harsh.
Having this mindset with guitars will give you the freedom to roll with the tones in front of you
and maximize what’s there. The result is a more powerful and unique mix - and that’s what you
want!
With that in mind, there are definitely some subtle but powerful things you can do with EQ on
your guitars. I’ll start with describing my approach with the main rhythm guitars and then touch
on lead guitars.
Start by filtering out some low end. Find where to set your filter by gradually moving it up until it
starts to sound a little too thin, and then back it off a bit to get enough low-end back. Depending
on the tone and tuning, I usually end up with the HPF between 90-110Hz. Not only does this clean
up the guitar sound, it allows the bass guitar to own the low end.
Use a LPF to eliminate harsh high-end, setting it the same way you did for the HPF. When you
feel that you’re losing too much brightness and energy, back off the HPF a bit.
I find digital amps (AxeFX, plugins, Kemper) to be worse offenders when it comes to excess high
and low-end. These filter moves can be subtle on real amp recordings but dramatic
improvements on digital tones.
Next, listen for harshness in the high mids. Distorted guitars will have a high “shhh” or “sssss”
sound that can be over pronounced and annoying. Find these frequencies by making a big boost
with a narrow Q and sweeping it between 2 and 7kHz. There will probably be a spot where the
noise is particularly bad, and this is when you’ve found the problem frequencies. Dip the eq there
by 1-2dB, keeping the bandwidth fairly narrow. I’ll usually find two high-mid frequencies to cut
in this way, one in the 3.5-4.5kHz range and one higher up around 6kHz. Again, only notch out 1-
2db here with a narrow band. Too much cutting and you’ll lose the edge and bite of the tone.
The result should be subtle but noticeable, especially when it’s done on multiple layers (i.e. left
and right guitars).
When you A/B the results of your filtering and notches, you shouldn’t hear a massive change in
your guitar tone, but rather a decrease in nastiness. These simple moves make a big difference
in the clarity and perceived quality of your guitar sound.
Often this is all I need to do in terms of main rhythm guitar EQ, especially if I recorded it in the
first place. But some extra EQ is sometimes necessary beyond this.

38
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Try your best not to make any further cuts on the tone. You’ll probably be tempted to cut some
low-mid, but I’ll show you a better way to deal with that in just a moment. You’ll want to keep as
much power in the guitar as possible and maintain a smooth midrange response.
Occasionally, if the tone is very bass-heavy, I’ll use a low shelf around 100Hz to further reduce
the low end.
The other areas to focus on are in the high-mids. You may want to make a small, wide boost
around 1-1.5kHz if your guitars seem too far back in the mix. Save the 2.5-3k range for lead
guitars.
If they sound too dark or dull, try using a high shelf at 5-7kHz. Be sure to use low Q’s (wide) when
boosting guitars for the smoothest result, and don’t do more than a couple dB. Usually any boosts
on the guitars in my mixes are around 1dB, but they make enough of a difference without messing
up the tone.
Ok, now let’s go back to the low-mids that I mentioned. In heavy music, it’s common to get a
build up in the 200-300Hz range when the guitar is chugging or playing low-tuned, heavy riffs.
Cutting this with EQ will thin out the tone for the entire song. A better approach is to use multi-
band compression to tame the low-mids.
Multi-band compression is also sometimes called Dynamic EQ. It’s basically a compressor that
only compresses certain frequencies. In this case, we’ll use it to turn down the low-mids when
necessary, without touching the rest of the sound.
My go-to tool for this is the Waves C4/C6. The default frequency ranges and compressor settings
work perfectly. I load it up and disable all of the bands except the low-mid band, since I don’t
want to touch any other part of the sound. This range is from about 160-350Hz. Next, I simply
loop a heavy or chugging section and adjust the threshold to get the desired amount of reduction
in the low-mids, usually just a few dB. The result I’m aiming for is that the low end of the guitars
sounds consistent when moving between chugging and regular playing, with no big low-end
buildups.
Using this tool is a super-effective way to control the low end of your guitars. It fixes buildup
problems but preserves the full tone for other sections of the song where it is not needed.
Moving on now to regular compression for guitars. If you are still new to mixing, I recommend
trying to mix your main guitars without any compression. Since distorted guitars have almost no
dynamic range in the first place, it’s not really needed for level control and you can do more
damage than good if you don’t have a good grasp on the compressor you’re using. But once you
get a little more advanced, it’s a nice tool for heavy guitars.

39
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
My favorite compressor for heavy guitars.
Instead of level control for guitars, think of it as a vibe increaser. The reason to compress a heavy
guitar track is to give it a subtle color or enhance/soften the attack. My favorite compressor for
heavy guitars is the Waves CLA-3A (based on the old LA-3A hardware units). I find the sweet spot
is around -5db gain reduction. It adds a subtle color to the tone, smoothing it over a little, and
also a bit of extra oomph to the attack. This is something that is hard to hear as a new mixer, but
the more you practice, the more useful this type of compression will be.
The only other thing I’ll use on my main guitars is a saturation plugin. It’s not always necessary,
but useful when I want to fatten the guitars up just a little more. What i’m looking for here is to
beef up the midrange between 300-1kHz where I would rarely, if ever, boost with EQ.
To hammer my point home even more, this is another subtle move. Nothing major. I’ve mixed
popular records with only a high and low-pass filter on the main guitars, no other EQ or
compression. It’s better to re-amp the guitars than to over process them in the mix.
Lead Guitars and Layers

The same principles apply for layered guitars and leads, but you can get away with a heavier hand
than on your main L-R guitars.
If you have a lot of guitar layers happening, filters are your best friend. On a lead guitar track,
HPF all the way up to 200Hz and filter the high-end more aggressively if you need to. Since
distorted guitars are so full-range, you need limit different layers to smaller and more specific
frequencies in order to create separation and not swallow up the whole mix.

40
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Sometimes a lead or octave guitar layer can be filtered to an extremely narrow range that might
sound silly in solo, but fits perfectly in the context of the whole mix.
For lead guitars and solos, you can boost a little more in the high-midrange. 2.5kHz is where the
bite and aggression is, and it’s a nice place to emphasize lead guitars. You might also want to
make them brighter than your rhythm guitars, again by using a high shelf at 5 or 7kHz.
Tying in with my other lesson about keeping it simple, the number 1 way to make the lead guitar
stand out is to simply use a different guitar or amp. Then it will automatically have its own voice
and compete less with the other guitars. Many producers overlook this though, stacking the same
guitar tone on top of itself over and over, and that’s where the moves I mentioned above come
in handy.
When it comes to FX, keep your main guitars dry. Lead guitars can benefit from some subtle
harmonization to widen them in the mix. I usually pan leads and solos dead center, but use a
harmonizer plugin to add just a touch of left and right energy.
I also avoid reverbs on lead guitars, unless it’s for dramatic effect. Delays work much better. A
ping-pong delay set to an 1/8th note on one side and 1/4 note on the other is amazing for creating
that big lush lead sound. A simple 1/4 note delay up the middle can do the job as well.
Like I said with drums, use filters and EQ to shape your delay return. I’ll almost always filter the
high-end from the delay return, sometimes so much that it sounds lo-fi. This keeps your delay
from taking up too much space in the mix or adding noise, and it also just tends to sound really
good. Oh, and remember what I said about mimicking the way our brains perceive sounds - less
high end will make the delay echoes seem further away, which makes your guitars sound bigger.
Since guitars are so full-range, loud and constant, automation is important in creating movement
and making space for things. As you can probably guess by now, use it to turn guitars up during
heavy sections or choruses and down during more mellow sections. You’ll also need to dip the
main guitars a touch when other layers or leads appear and bring them back up afterwards. This
helps to combat the problem of having it sound like something drops out or is missing after a
lead or layer part ends.

41
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 7: Vocals
Vocals are straight-up overlooked in hardcore and metal. Not by the fans, but by mixers and
producers, and sometimes even the artist themselves. I think it’s safe to say most hardcore /
metal bands write their music first and then try to fit vocals overtop, compared to a pop song
where the lyrics and melody are step #1.
You absolutely cannot overlook the vocals. It is the most personal point of connection for the
listener. I will go as far as to say that even if your drums SLAM, your bass is HUGE, and your guitars
are perfect, the quality of your vocal sound will be the make-or-break factor.
As music listeners we all want to connect with the song. We do this through the music itself, but
the easiest and most impactful channel to connect with the listener is through the vocals. The
most potent combination in music is when the notes, arrangement and mix of the instruments
enhances the context of the vocal and lyrics - like how a sad chord progression makes a lyric
sound even sadder.
Therefore, take the vocal seriously even if you’re only working with scream tracks.
Screams
When mixing screams, intensity is the most important thing. You need to make it sound like the
vocalist is giving it their all, screaming as hard and loud as humanly possible. That may or may
not be the case, but you can use the tools at your disposal to emphasize greatly the energy that
exists in the vocal track.
A HPF around 100Hz will clean up ‘pops’ and rumble in the low end, and since the screamer will
often record vocals right up against the mic, there can be some excess low and low-mids. I’ll use
a low shelf to cut again around 150Hz by 2-5db.
Next, I’ll look for spot between 1-2.5kHz to boost in order to help the vocal cut through the guitars
in the mix. Make sure you’re not doing any vocal EQ in solo, because you’ll end up boosting too
little midrange and your vocal won’t cut through. Obviously, the point is to make the vocal
audible over all the other instruments, so it makes no sense to mix it in solo. Don’t do it.

42
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
For brightness, I always boost screams at 8kHz. It adds a lot of intensity, and using a shelf, also
adds the brightness and ‘air’ you need. This boost combined with the 1-2.5kHz boost will get your
vocal cutting through the mix and the lyrics more intelligible.
I tend to avoid all cutting with EQ in the vocals. The rare exception would be if it was recorded in
a bad room, causing some frequency to ring or build up. But in general, cutting on the vocal will
remove the natural character of the voice. I’ve always found it better to boost to get more of
what I need from the vocal.
Next, the real name of the game for vocals: compression. You’re going to need gobs of it.
I’ll do 8-12db of gain reduction on the way in during recording, then another 6-10db on the SSL
Channel plugin (my favorite), and then a further 8-20db of compression with the Waves 1176
plugin. All this compression adds up to a vocal that is dripping with character, aggression, and
stays loud on top of the mix.
I try not to obsess too much over the fine details of compression when mixing vocals. Instead, I
just try a few different compressors with their basic presets to see which one is suiting that
particular song or vocalist. For screams, though, the chain above is usually what I end up using.
The first compressor is usually a faster attack than the second. It will also be a higher ratio. This
will level off the vocal and provide a lot of the dynamic control. Then I follow with another
compressor, generally with a lower ratio but doing more gain reduction and with a slower attack.
If you remember from previous chapters, the slower attack will emphasize the start of the sound,
in this case the start of the words. Dial in a healthy amount of compression and then move the
attack knob until the consonants (t-, c-, ch, b-, etc) are really jumping out of the speakers. Use as
much gain reduction as necessary to maximize this energy without making the vocal sound too
unnaturally pumpy. Try not to look at the meter, just use your ears. This is, in my opinion, the
most important part of the chain. This is how you make the vocalist sound 10x more aggressive
than they actually were.
The heavy compression will also add some subtle distortion, further enhancing the vibe of your
vocal track. Certain compressors (like the ones modelled after vintage hardware or consoles) will
add more of this character than others.
With all that compression and likely a large boost to the high end, you’ll probably need to de-ess
(though that’s not always the case). A de-esser is basically just a compressor that is designed to
only work on certain frequencies, kind of like the gate side-chain or multi band compressor we
touched on in drums and guitars.

43
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Pull out any de-esser plugin and load up a basic preset. Since I boost a lot at 8k, I usually set my
de-esser around there, but you’ll need to sweep the frequency around to find the harshest part
of the vocal. Now just set the threshold until you’re getting the necessary amount of reduction
on the S’s and T’s. There are no guidelines here, it’s strictly a case-by-case basis and you should
again use your ears and not the meter.
Simple De-esser plugin
Make sure you don’t take out too much, though. These consonants need to have a bit of edge to
cut through and allow the listener discern the lyrics. This is another area where reference mixes
can help. Pull up a couple tracks you like and make sure you’re in the same ballpark in terms of
sibilance.
Lastly, I like to use a limiter at the end of my vocal chain. This limiter will be set to only take off
the peaks and spikes in the vocal level, sometimes hitting up to -6db but usually only doing
occasional 1-3db reductions. This limiter is necessary for me because the heavy compression
causes big spikes on the consonants - which we want. But they can sometimes be too much, and
the limiter handles those spikes without compromising the intensity achieved by the
compressors. Since the limiter works so fast and transparently, the consonants still sound just as
hard without spiking the meters. Using the limiter in this way will also help to cement the vocal
in its place, similar to the way I use it on bass.
NINJA TIP:
If you feel that the scream is weak or lacking energy, distortion can help a lot when used in
parallel. Duplicate the scream track and put on a distortion pedal plugin. You may need to filter
out the low and high end to clean it up a bit, and compress this track as well to get maximum

44
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
intensity. Blend the distorted vocal in with the main, just enough that you get the energy boost
without the vocal actually sounding like it’s going through a guitar pedal.
Singing
A lot of the principles I wrote above apply the same to melodic vocals, but they can be a bit
trickier sometimes. You may need to use slightly less EQ or work harder to find the right
frequencies, but start with all the same EQ tips I pointed out for screams.
The exception may be in the high end, depending on the vocalist and mic chain used. Occasionally
a singer will be too harsh in the 8k range, so you’ll need to go up higher to 12 or 14k to get your
brightness and air.
You should approach compression in a similar fashion, though you may need to do more level
control before your ‘attitude’ compressor due to the more dynamic nature of singing vs.
screaming. The same attack and release settings still apply. Level the vocal off and then slam it
with a slower attack to bring out the consonants. Then de-ess and limit.
I always process the screaming and singing on different tracks, but I’m careful to check that the
overall vibe between the two is consistent. You don’t want to have the screaming brighter than
the singing or vice verse, especially if it’s all the same vocalist. In fact, if it is the same vocalist,
you can often copy settings from scream to sing and just make some small tweaks to suit each
one separately.
Vocal Layers
Depending on the vibe that the artist/producer wanted, you’ll probably get some vocal layers.
You can generally process doubles and harmonies very similarly to the lead vocal, but without
the focus on getting hard consonants. You’ll still need to use heavy compression, but it will be
more for level control than vibe, and so more limiting might be helpful.
Use a bit less low-end on layers, and avoid boosting in the 1-2.5k range so that it’s reserved for
the lead vocal. You will often need to de-ess the layers more than the lead, to make sure that all
the s’s aren’t adding up too much.
In my opinion and experience, the best use for vocal layers is when they are spread out left and
right. You can emphasize important screams and make the vocal sound huge with a scream

45
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
layered center, left and right. The same approach works great for singing to make choruses and
harmonies fuller. Don’t be shy, pan them all the way out.
Vocal FX
In the second chapter, I eluded to how effects like reverb and delay need to be used wisely and
sparingly for maximum effectiveness. This goes for vocals too. You may be surprised to hear that
I almost never use reverb on my vocals, unless for a specific special effect.
There tend to be trends that ebb and flow surrounding the wetness of vocals in the mix (i.e. 80’s
songs are dripping in reverb), and right now we’re in a long era of dry vocals. Listen to top 40
radio and you’ll hear what I mean. The same goes for heavy music.
I think this again goes back to our desire to connect emotionally with the music. Tons of effects
make it harder to hear the lyrics, make the vocal sit too far back in the mix, and doesn’t sound
like a real person singing to us. Hence why drier vocals have seemingly proven to be the preferred
and most effective approach.
It is essential, though, to use some sort of ambience tool to get your vocal glued with the mix.
My favorite way to do this is with a very short stereo delay, and I accomplish this with the stock
delay plugin in Pro Tools.
The delay is fed a mono signal (the vocal) and outputs a stereo signal. On the left, I set the delay
time to 180ms and on the right, 220ms. The difference in delay time between left and right means
that the delay will sound wider. I don’t use any feedback or other fancy tools on this delay, aside
from a slight LPF to tame S’s and set the delay back a little.
I add just enough of this short delay to a scream or sing track so that it’s not easily noticeable in
the mix, but sorely missed if muted (have I said that before?). The short delay and no feedback
(feedback = repeats) create the illusion of the singer being very close to you in a small room.
Let me explain, because it’s kind of fun. In real life, if you were in a small room with a singer right
in front of you, you’d hear their direct voice and then be hit very quickly again with the reflections
off the walls. So quickly that you wouldn’t really discern it as an echo or reverb. It would simply
sound natural. That’s how this technique works in a mix. It simulates the way our brain would
hear a singer right in front of us in an intimate environment. This concludes sound physics 101
by Jordan Valeriote.

46
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Aside from my go-to short delay, a scream track will usually only have a couple other sends. One
for a quarter-note delay to use for a spacey vibe if needed in the song, and another for a big
reverb that I’ll automate up at the end of certain lines. This gives you the huge vocal effect in the
spots where it counts, not clouding up the rest of the vocal sound. Lastly, I’ll have a send called
‘Throw Delay’ which feeds a long echo delay that I’ll use for dramatic echo throws (like OH - oh,
oh, oh. We’ve all done it).
Melodic vocals can often benefit from a little more wetness. Again I reach for delay over reverb.
Quarter note delays with a bit of feedback are an excellent way of making the vocal sound lush
and blend with the mix. Experiment with varying the left and right side of the delay if you want
to create a wider vocal sound.
If you can’t tell already, I love delays. They give me all of the benefits of reverb without messing
up my mix. I admit to using reverbs in some cases on vocals though, typically for layers that I want
to sound further back or for others genres with a lot of space in the mix. In general, the more
dense an arrangement is, the less reverb you should use.
Automation is an absolute must for vocals. You’ll want to ‘ride the fader’ (or just edit the line on
the screen with your mouse) so that each and every word is perfectly audible. This is another one
of those things that separates the pros from the amateurs. The pros know that the vocal needs
to be perfectly consistent throughout the song. An amateur will set-and-forget, whereas a pro
will go as far as to split the vocal onto multiple tracks, all with different EQ settings, to ensure
that the vocal tone is optimal throughout the song.
I’ll say that that level of detail is probably not necessary for 95% of the music we heavy mixers
work on, but it’s a good lesson. Do what it takes to make the vocal shine. EQ automation might
be a necessary and powerful way to do this on troublesome tracks.

47
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 8: Mix Buss

I like to keep my mix buss, AKA master fader, very simple. Usually it has only two plugins inserted:
Waves SSL Buss Comp and the Slate Digital FG-X.
Using a compressor on your master fader will help add a little extra glue and character to the
overall mix. Since the compressor is being triggered by various mix elements but acts on the
entire mix, it has a way of making the mix feel like it’s moving and breathing together.
With the SSL Comp on my mix buss, I tend to like the sound of only 2-4dB gain reduction, at a 4:1
ratio, with 10ms attack and release set to ‘auto’ (many compressors designed for mix buss will
feature an ‘auto’ option).
You can and should experiment with presets on different master buss compressors to find a flavor
you like. The SSL buss compressor is highly regarded and widely used across all genres, especially
rock and heavy music.
There is one secret, though, when it comes to mix buss compression, and it’s this: insert the
compressor early on in the mix. Usually once I get my rough balance done and start digging into
my drums, I’ll turn on the mix buss comp and have it work very subtly (~1db GR).
By putting the compressor on early in the mix, you automatically mix “through” it and maximize
its benefits, since all of your mix decisions will be subtly influenced by the compressor and the
character it’s adding.
In contrast, if you finish your entire mix and then throw a compressor on everything, it could
really mess things up and make you spend extra time tweaking the balance you worked so hard
for.
The Slate FG-X is essentially a mix buss compressor and loudness plugin. I only use the loudness
section, which uses a variety of secret sauce including limiting and clipping to raise the overall
level of the mix. Let me tell you why this is important.
An unmastered mix will be much quieter than a mastered record. For a long time now, mastering
engineers have used heavy limiting and clipping to make tracks louder and louder - presumably
to make the song stand out more on the radio.
Our brains have a somewhat unfortunate habit of thinking louder = better, at least on first
impressions. Have you ever had the experience where you put on a record and it sounds fantastic
- big, loud, full of energy, but by the time you get to track 5 or 6, you start to feel fatigued and

48
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
slightly agitated by the sound? This is what happens when a record has been mastered too loudly.
Our ears and brains get tired with such a lack of dynamic range, and the subtle distortion caused
by the limiting and clipping starts to take its toll.
Regardless of all the downsides of the ‘loudness wars,’ it’s just a fact of life today that records
need to be loud enough to compete. In hardcore and metal, we’ve become especially
accustomed to this, and aggressive loudness in the master is usually even preferred, as it adds a
lot of extra energy and aggression to the mix. That makes sense for heavy music and we can use
it to our advantage. But it needs to be done skillfully, and I always leave it up to a go-to mastering
pro who has a long list of credits in hardcore and metal. These guys have the proper room, gear,
and experience to maximize loudness without doing too much damage to your mix.
That said, you still need to send your mix to the band for approval, and they’re going to compare
it to their favorite records. For that reason, you need to at least get the level of your mix up in
the ballpark of a finished record. This is where the Slate FG-X kicks in.
Simply using the ‘loudness’ knob and the slider set towards ‘hard’, I turn it up until the RMS
(=average level) reads somewhere around -12db. A modern metal record is usually a couple dB
louder, though I’ve heard records all the way up to -8dB RMS. I think the sweet spot is around -
10 or -9db, but I leave that up to my mastering engineer.
The FG-X does a good job of maintaining the balance and punch of the mix when increasing
loudness. If you don’t have this plugin, there are a few other options like iZotope Ozone, which
has a good ‘clipping’ mode in its limiter that is great for metal.
Why clipping? It’s a secret weapon of mastering engineers to get loudness, because it just chops
off peaks without effecting the balance of the mix. In most cases, those peaks will be entirely
made up of drum transients that are extremely fast. Since these transients happen so quickly,
our ear doesn’t start to notice the distortion until it gets pushed to an extreme level. We also
have an advantage because that bit of distortion on the drum peaks actually makes the drums
sound more aggressive, and it doesn’t affect their punch and attack the way a standard limiter
would.
Before I got these fancy mastering plugins, I had a pretty ghetto approach for making my mixes
loud for the band. I simply used a trim plugin in Pro Tools to turn up the master output and
clipped it on purpose. No special tools, just straight up digital clipping. It would chop off my drums
but not touch anything else, and you can get the mix pretty damn loud this way without much
noticeable degradation.
Once the band has approved your mix and you’re ready to send it off to mastering, I recommend
bypassing your ‘fake mastering’ chain and letting your mastering engineer take care of it.

49
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
In my case, these days I put the FG-X on near the last 10 or 20% of the mix and actually mix
through it, and I don’t take it off before mastering. Why? Because I’ve used it for years, and I
have a good grasp of what it’s doing to my mix. Add to that the fact that I’ve used the same
mastering engineer for over 5 years as well, so I know almost exactly what it’s going to sound like
when it comes back. After working together for so long, I know how much room I should leave
him, and I feel confident in him and in myself to roll this way.
The Slate Digital FG-X plugin
My advice again is to tread lightly here. Get a feel for what a true professional mastering engineer
does to your mixes, and as you gradually get better and more confident with your mixes, you can
experiment with taking some of the loudness factor into your own hands.
Don’t Use Your Mix Buss as a Bandaid

I want to finish this chapter by urging you to avoid bandaids on your mix buss, like heavy use of
EQ or multi-band compression. I call them bandaids because many amateur mixes will use these
plugins, with a preset, on their master fader to achieve a quick and easy ‘wow’ factor. But if you’re
adding a ton of EQ or have a multi band compression pumping on your mix buss, chances are
something isn’t right in your mix. Treating the master fader this way gives you way less control
over individual elements in your mix. Take the time and effort to learn how to mix without these
bandaids - they never sound as good as a carefully crafted mix.
A little bit of EQ or multi band compression can be OK on the mix buss, though. For example, if
I’m 98% finished a mix and then realize it’s just a little too dark overall, a simple high shelf EQ
boost of only 0.5-1dB could be the perfect touch. Likewise, I’ll occasionally need to add a subtle
low end boost on the master fader if I find the overall mix just needs a tiny bit more oomph.

50
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
If the entire mix is lacking something in a subtle way, the mix buss is the perfect place to do it.
Just make sure you’re making a creative judgement call and not lazily avoiding fixing a problem
with a specific instrument in the mix.
NINJA TIP:
Alright, this one is pretty simple, but it’s something not many mixers every think about: you can
automate your master fader! Think about it… a great way to add excitement and contrast in the
mix is to simply turn it up or down depending on the section. This is not something I do regularly,
but every once in a while it’s perfect to make that chorus pop just a bit more with a 0.5dB
increase. Like using EQ on your master fader, automating the volume here is just a final, subtle
touch when necessary, and shouldn’t be used as a shortcut or bandaid to properly automating
your mix!

51
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Chapter 9: Your Journey

I this book I’ve written down everything that I find most important when it comes to mixing. I
want you to start with the right mindset, get a basic grasp of the essential tools, and then have a
solid starting point and ideas to try out for specific instruments.
I want to close, however, by offering my biggest tip for mixing. I already touched on it in the first
chapter. Ready? Here it is:
Mix from your gut. Your musical ear and intuition is the foundation of your mixing, and all the
tools and techniques I mentioned above just help you bring your creative vision to life.
So if it’s not about the tools and techniques, why do I spend so much
time and energy helping people understand them?
Because you need to master them and use them to bring your vision to life. A lot of musicians
and mixers have incredibly unique talent, feel and creativity, but it’s limited by a lack of practical
skill and knowledge.
Keep learning, practicing, and working hard at your craft. Never get complacent with your skill or
knowledge, as there’s always more you can learn from someone ahead of you. Just make sure
that you never lose sight of your purpose as a mixer and the unique feel and energy that only you
can bring. It is the foundation that all of the technical skill and knowledge is built on.
I hope that in this book, I’ve helped you break through a layer of confusion and difficulty in your
mixing journey. You’re one step closer towards bringing your talent and vision to your own songs,
to the artists you want to serve, and to the world at large.

52
Jordan Valeriote
Mixing Heavy Music
Where to Go From Here:

Make sure you’re signed up to the Hardcore Music Studio mailing list. We send out regular
content including articles, tutorial videos and more.
Join here and get a free mix training video:
http://hardcoremusicstudio.com/mixing-cheatsheet
Join one of our premium mixing courses to take your learning to the next level. Get in depth,
behind-the-scenes access to real major label mixes and learn the techniques and secrets of the
pros.
Go here:
http://hardcoremusicstudio.com/courses/
Jump into our online community on Facebook. Search for ‘Hardcore Music Studio Forum’ or
simply use this URL:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hardcoremusicstudio/
Subscribe to the #ASKJV Podcast on iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/askjv-hardcoremusicstudio.com/id1088880009
I look forward to serving you more on your journey as a mixer.

53
Jordan Valeriote

MixingHeavyMusic PDF

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

MixingHeavyMusic PDF

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Mixing Heavy Music

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Chapter 1: Mixing Basics

What is your purpose as a mixer?

So, getting back to my question: What is your purpose as a mixer?

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Your purpose is to enhance the recording of a song in order to

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Chapter 2: The Tools

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

An EQ plugin or hardware unit will have some or all of these features:

An example of high-pass and low-pass filters

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

A compressor with Attack, Release, and Ratio controls

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Your Plan of Attack

Here’s how I approach my mix:

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Automation example - ‘riding the fader’ on a vocal track

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Drum Automation - Quick Tips & Ideas to get you started

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

My favorite compressor for heavy guitars.

Lead Guitars and Layers

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Simple De-esser plugin

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Mixing Advice Tailored to Rock, Hardcore and Metal

Chapter 8: Mix Buss