By
ryssen
Wed May 24, 2006 8:16 am
Of course one can tweak the sample to perfection before you sample it into the MPC. The problem is, as one always will run into if mixing seriously, is that the sample might sound pristine as a solo sound but behave really strange in a full mix.
The kick you´ve spent hours to fine tune with eq and compression before sampling it might sound like shit in relation to the other drums you pick for the track, or it might interfere with the bass sample, or that dusty piano line you´ve picked for the song sounds really off with that polished kick working beneath it.
I myself treat samples the same way I treat the sounds if I´m recording a band or artist, what I put down on tape / harddrive I keep as clean an unprocessed as possible. That way more alternatives are left when it comes to the mixing stage, a place where mostly a lot of compromises have to be done if one is not really skkilled in the craft. The guitars can´t be as full and overwhelming as they are soloed when they have to share space with vocals and piano in a mix, a cello can´t be as deep when thay shall play side by side with a bass. Things has to be cut out, moved to the back, panned etc to make shure everything is there in the end without it being a mess.
To keep it together one must usually have the total arrangement / intrumentation to relate to, deciding on crucial mixing paths before even starting on the track, knowing what will be on it, can be a trap.
One work every sound on it´s own to be as hardhitting and sparkling as you hope the track to be, just to discover that when you ty to bring them all together it´s a thick puddle of nothing you come up with.
I sample clean, put another kick on top of the first if it is needed, layer and detune to thicken things up, work with both filters (HPF and LPF) as a first subtractive eq. Molding everything within the sampler to get it as close as possible to how I want it, then I do the final touch ups of eq, compression and effects on and / or routed from the mixer. That way I can change my instrumentation or throw in something new and still have the possibility to make it fit with the others as all parameters are available. Only problem is that it locks my mixer to work on one project at a time, that is good sometimes, but mostly bad.
My advice is to sample unprocessed, make it sound as good as you can within the box, then record it track by track in Pro Tools as you seem to have, do the final mix there. Make sure not to think "I´ll fix it in the mix" if yor kick and bass mud up, work with the sounds within the MPC, layer, filter, change until it sounds ok.
You got to have a solid sound to work on while mixing, an eq and a tight comressor is not able to fix everything.
While mixing think "What do this mix need less of?" instead of the other way around. If the kick is covered by the bass, don´t cranck the kick up and add eq boost, try to find the freq in the bass that´s masking it and cut them in the eq before you start adding.
