Basic mixing/interface layout tips

Hi!

New to this forum, and i ended up here because i thought it would be a good idea to start learning mixing your own music and so forth.

I made a ~15 sec mini song to practice mixing, and i will upload my first mixing so you can hear how “skilled” i am :laughing:

Anyways, i will explain what equipment i use, how i set it up, and also how i set up my cubase project to work with.

Guitar = Kemper profiling amp, 2 mono guitar tracks panned to right/2 mono guitar tracks panned to left/1 solo guitar panned center. Got nothing on channel settings on all of them. For some reason tho, all the panned left/right tracks, they all sound centered when i listen to then one at a time.
Bass = 1 big mono track panned centered. Nothing on the channel settings. Keep in mind that i recorded the bass with a guitar, will change to my real bass.
Synth = Omnisphere, midi.
Drums = Superior drummer 2.0 with a simple preset, nothing manually mixed in the mixer or anything.

That’s my basic setup inside cubase. Then i started recording on all of them, and i did the following on the master:

CurveEQ = Copied spectrum from my favourite song “Livin on a prayer” and tried to correct the frequencies as best as i could
Compressor = Pop bd compression preset
Maximizer = Remastered preset
StereoEnhancer = Mastering - Larger then life preset

The help im looking for is:

  1. Is this the right way to go?
  2. What am i doing wrong?
  3. What basic mixing effects should i use on:

GUITARS = Compressor, studio eq, gate, limiter, maximizer…??
DRUMS = I think it should be enough to see if i can just copy someones preset from the web that i can download, and it should be enough? As long as i like the sound of it… Or do i have to do manually settings aswell?
SYNTH = Really needed…? :mrgreen:
BASS = Feels like it should be the same as guitar, kinda…

  1. When using effects, should you put it on each track manually or on the master?
  2. What basic effects is a must? Compressor, studio eq, gate, limiter, maximizer, etcetc…
  3. How do you exactly know how to cut frequencies and what instruments really need it? Becides guitar, since that’s the one that’s eating the mix…
    :blush:

My song and mixing result: SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

Pictures:

Workbench - Cubase basic setup
Workbench - Master inserts
Workbench - CurveEQ spectrum frequencies
Workbench - Guitar inserts

PS. Not interested in acoustic guitars or vocals :slight_smile:

Seems like you’ve got the process down, but for some reason I can’t listen to the result because Soundcloud returns an error:

Sorry! We can’t find that sound.
Did you try to access a private sound, but were not logged in?
Maybe the sound has been removed.

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