Feedback Friday for Beginners

[Christopher FeeneyParticipant]

I love the Feedback Fridays. But I am a beginner. But I've done enough so far to realize a few essentials.
The song has to be good. The arrangement must serve the song. You need to track the audio well.

Then... mixing is more about a lot of small tweaks than big ones.

The current Feedback Friday is overwhelming for me because there are so many tracks and so many advanced techniques. So what would a beginners be? I don't know. A simple song that has drums, two guitars, bass, piano, and simple vocals but limit the applications? Just EQ, Delay, Reverb, etc. I don't know really. I'm stuck between raw beginner and advanced intermediate. Not sure how to get to next level. I am getting better, but I feel I'm not quite focused in the sweet spot where I need to learn.

As I type, what would be cool is like test that help practice basics? "This week we have a drum track and I want you to get the snare to snap and kick to boom." "This week we have drums and bass and want you to use EQ and compression to sit the bass in the mix."

I'm not sure I am making sense.

[Stephen KorstParticipant]

Christopher,

These are my thoughts exactly. I've just gotten "average" in my mixing abilities, after about a year and a half of lots of trial and error. I've gotten to the point of having the multi-track files downloaded, imported, organized, gain staged, then...boom...it's time for another Feedback Friday of a new song. Seems there are some PLAP Academy members who are really, really efficient at this stuff, turning out a mix or sometimes mixes of the song of the month, before I've had time to even start on one.

As you said, working on a 8 or 16 or 24 track song, versus one that has over 60 to 70 tracks, those of us with more to learn with less could benefit huge in this Academy.

[Rich ZeiParticipant]

Guys, I understand your frustration and I am KINDA there as well as I get my chops back. I'm one of the many "45 year olds getting back into music" Warren has talked about lately.

What I was doing was just pulling down on of the multi-track and ONLY importing what I was going to work on (Drums, or GTR etc.) until I got it right to my ears then added the next instrument and mixed those 2 together rince/repeat and not worried about the Feedback Friday. I think I mixed Bullet 1000x in different ways and tones and DAWs even until I was satisfied with the result(well, for now... 😉 ). Then I moved to a different song.

FWIW That method really worked for me, and don't be afraid to post it up and get pointers from the Academy.

Rich

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