Mixing like the Pros

I've been bouncing around the site listening to you'ze guy's music. The mixes sound good. How do you guys mix? I'm asking because I'm in the process of mixing down my album. My tracks are primarily 808 kick, snare, high hat, sample and keys. What do you guys do to each to get the sound you want? I use the vs1880 to record, all of m tracks are dumped in it. I tried to get the hotest signal possible, but as far a eq effects I have no real Idea... I'm just experimenting.


Thanks

Leroy

My mixing...hmmmm....

Kicks right down the middle, uncompressed. I like heavy kicks so I leave em louder than most pop-hop records you hear on tv or the radio.

Snares tillted slightly to the left, dry, with a snap/clap panned to the right with a wee bit of plated reverb running to a bus on the snap clap.

HiHats down the middle, usually turned down so the listener "doesnt notice them," I usually have some percussive elements floating perfectly in the mix for good measure, never overbearing but noticeable.

Same goes for 808 sub basses.

I usually have all my samples bussed to one aux track for group compression and if needed a little bit of delay or reverb, so they all "match".

I'll have one main sample running down the middle and the two bridge samples panned to oppositte sides just slightly.

Varies from track to track but I did some tracking today just wrote what I did. Some ideas there. Peace.

Hey

Thanks DOVESKI, I'm just a rookie to this thing. I have been making beats for about 3 years but have never got this far. I've been working this thing part-time since I'm in school. What type of music are you in to?

Leroy

welcome leroy,
me too i've been at it for three years too,what type of music do you produce.

i make hip hop and tring to make some house and breakbeats.

doveski how long you been producing , what do you use to record on.

Hey I checked out one of your tracks ede It sounded pretty damn good... like a house beat or something like that. I can't remember the name of it, cause it was earlier today.

My flava is dirty south... I not all that crunk with it yet, but I'm workin on it. This is my first Indee cd or any for that fact.

Sup yall, im basically a rookie to this too, especially the MPC thing, but I've been fortunate enough to have some relatives and close friends who have been doing it for a minute, so I caught some mixing tricks along the way...

For instance if your bussing a channel, say the channel that tracks the open hat, to an aux channel (a channel for subgroups or effects), if you pan the original channel hard left, and pan the aux channel running the delay or reverb hard right, youll get this crazy swooshing sound in the mix going from left to right, but on the right is dry and the left its wet. Then you can automate the subchannel so its muted on every other bar, etc...Neptunes, Dre, etc., they all incorpate little quirky things like this in their mixes, thats the professional sheen.

I do my sequencing on the MPC and then slave it to ProTools, record track by track, dry as possible through Midi Machine Control, and then get busy on the submix, thats when the fun starts, turning a rock into a diamond.

You don't know how happy I am that I found this site. Been making beats for the last couple of years (when I find the time), but none of my close friends use an mpc 2000, so every little bit I know about the MPC 2000 I learned on my own. It's pretty funny to see how I figured out some techniques, and like-minded people figured the same stuff out. Nice to see some solid knowledge being shared here because there is a lot of techniques I haven't thought of yet...