This question came up in our Facebook community:
"Saturation. What is it? I have an idea of what it is from my king gizzard addiction, but i have no idea what it really is or how to use it."
Well, let's discuss!
(We also answer a couple of follow-up questions around the topic, covering mastering/mix bus saturation, parallel saturation and a couple more.)
Mixing yourself is hard enough, right? So should you even try to learn mastering? Is it worth it? Can home studio mastering lead to great results at all?
...even if we don't have very trained ears and even if we're not very experienced or familiar with the genre:
We immediately notice when something is way too loud or way too quiet.
And we subconsciously notice when the song doesn't feel right, maybe because it's hard to make out the bass line, or the drum groove is just not hitting hard enough, or there's this weird, buried thing in the background that's distracting us, while something else is jumping out too much.
So there is one skill that we have to learn and constantly improve as engineers and mixers if we want our music to translate well and deliver all the emotion and energy with minimal distraction:
Balancing. Simply finding the right levels for every track in every part of the song and every mic on a every source that we record.
Technically it's super simple, but it's also incredibly difficult to get right. If you get it right, however, assuming that your source tones are good, you're 80% there. Without touching an EQ, compressor or effect.
Let's discuss!
The Self-Recording Band Community is awesome and our members ask great questions! We love that and want this platform to be as helpful as possible, so we try to answer them all. Sometimes on the podcast, sometimes directly in the Facebook group, sometimes via email and sometimes here on the blog. Let's do a little Q&A series over a couple of days. Today's question is about saturating the mix bus and using saturation in mastering.
The Self-Recording Band Community is awesome and our members ask great questions! We love that and want this platform to be as helpful as possible, so we try to answer them all. Sometimes on the podcast, sometimes directly in the Facebook group, sometimes via email and sometimes here on the blog. Let's do a little Q&A series over a couple of days. Today's question is about how much saturation is actually too much?
The Self-Recording Band Community is awesome and our members ask great questions! We love that and want this platform to be as helpful as possible, so we try to answer them all. Sometimes on the podcast, sometimes directly in the Facebook group, sometimes via email and sometimes here on the blog. Let's do a little Q&A series over a couple of days. The first question is about using parallel distortion or saturation.
Jacob has worked with some of the biggest names in metal and alternative music. He's produced and or mixed records for bands like Volbeat, Amaranthe, The Black Dahlia Murder, Heaven Shall Burn, Evergrey, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Primal Fear and many many more.
We're getting to pick Jacob's brain and talk about
among many other things.
Enjoy!
If it fits the song, I love the sound of a great room. Especially on drums. I usually don't like reverb on most things, though, unless it's an intentional effect. Here's why.
I said that I like guitar amps on bass. The thing is... some bass amps are actually incredible on guitar! 🙂 There's one that I particularly love.
Using guitar amps on bass can give you the clarity, grit and attack to make your bass cut through the mix and at the same time blend really well. with your guitars. Here's how I use them in my mixes.
