Production - quick fixes??

[Dave Elyzium]

Can anyone suggest any "quick fixes" for quality of production?? Any secrets that are guarenteed to make a mix sound better?? Compression, EQ, reverb, effects etc....

Personally, I would say stick a light hall reverb over the whole mix with all the bottom end EQ'd out...sink it down in the mix until you cant notice it then bring it back up slightly...you dopnt want it to "effect" the mix really, but you can tell that the reverbed version is better than the dry version, if you see what I mean...

What about you guys??

[epidemic001]

cant complain with a nice abit of reverb really.

Abit of slow phasing on a synth riff or choir sound gives it an extra dynamic if its continous through the track.

errr..............

[MARKEG]

just getting your eq right at the mastering stage helps me no end.

[alpha_unit]

dont labels master ur tunes though?

[Basil Rush]

Waves C4? Compression over the lot. Change the reverb you are using, if you have a room setting try a plate or vice versa.

If it sounds all in the mids then try opening out the track with some mid cut eq in places ... and a bit of top boost on some cymbals.

Or stick on your favouite track in the style and then listen to yours and do what you think is best after that .. usually obvious :)

[Sly One]

Reverb across the entire mix will soften all the edges and bind parts together. This is fine if it's the sound you're going for, but a lot of trance (and the sound I prefer, at least) tends to be cleaner and more punchy.

It's definitely a valid trick, and one to try in most cases, but I've not used it yet. Generally what you're going for with a quick and dirty bit of trance mastering is to get it *loud* (that is, played at the same volume as the unmastered track, it sounds much louder, even if both are fully normalised) and *banging*.

For this you can't beat a bit of harsh limiting (say 5dB), and a fast release. The limiting will make it loud, and the fast release will give you some nasty fat gain pumping that'll make engineers cringe and dancefloors go mental... :roll:

If your EQ balance is wrong at the mixdown stage, what can be done at the mastering stage is very, very limited. The best possible advice is to get it right while you still have the parts available for separate processing. Don't trust to some mysterious guy with lots of boxes and lights - most of the time they just bang it through some compression and limiting and hit record.

Taking your parts to a professional for *them* to mixdown... now that *can* be a good idea.

Ooh, just thought... most people end up with a very centralised, mono image in their mix. You can alleviate that using reverbs, stereo delays on parts and a bit of creative panning (be careful - most clubs have mono soundsystems - you can end up with parts disappearing because they're chaining the left channel when you put your lead on the right hand side!) but if you have to do something about it at the mastering stage, there are stereo enhancer plugins available that just widen the stereo image. THey're not a cure all, but they can help.