Songwriter Forum > Recording

Mixing VST instruments.

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Ramshackles:
Me and Boydie have been chatting a bit about mixing tracks done with VSTi's, so I thought I would share some very general thoughts here. I'm by no means an expert and generally dont use VST stuff much in my own work, so much of my experience is through mixing other peoples stuff. Please feel free to add to it with things that you have found work well!
Here we go:

- Use a different MIDI track for each individual part. I.E snare, kick, cymbal, hat all on different tracks. Each violin part on different tracks. This is going to be very useful when it comes to mixing and my next point:

- Do not start mixing with midi tracks still in your DAW! When you have settled on the VST sound and all the midi arrangement and you are ready to mix, you want to treat the VST track like any other audio track and you want to be able to use plugins, hardware etc on it. So, solo each individual midi/VST track and export it to a wav (or aiff on the mac) file. Start a new mix session with all the final wav files for the song and arrange them in some logical order.

- Understand the difference between the raw VST sounds and what you are trying to achieve.
What I mean is, in general VST instruments (from the major companies) are recorded in pristine studios on amazing equipment. East-West, Vienna, Native Instruments, Toontrack, FXpansion all use high high end studios. Their instruments are made to sound GREAT on their own and fill up the stereo field, so that when you make a quick midi part or listen to a demo of that instrument, you go WOW :).

But what most people are trying to do is to make that instrument work along with a host of other stuff, much of which is often recorded in not-so-pristine rooms with not-quite-amazing equipment.
There is a mismatch there that needs to be addressed.

Two things I do straight away are:
- Do not use the default panning of e.g. the drums. If you have put each drum on a seperate midi track, and then exported that to a MONO wav file, you can set up your own panning to fit the music much better. Some situations call for wide panned drums, at other times you want them more or less central.

- Do not use reverb that came with the VST. Export all your midi tracks dry if possible. Simple reason for this is that you are going to have to use different reverbs on your other tracks, so you will achieve better cohesion if you use that reverb on you VST tracks, rather than whatever comes with it.
There are exceptions to this rule - you might want to use the spring reverb that comes with an organ VST for example, as many real-life organs have a spring reverb built in :)

You may need to 'dirty' the VST tracks up a little bit (remember what I said about them being recorded in a very pristine environment...)
Most plugins that emulate hardware have some simulated noise/distortion which can work a treat at adding some realism to your VST tracks and tightening them up a bit. Compressors, distortion and tape simulation machines work a treat. Alternatively, if you have an actual hardware compressor or reel-to-reel, run it through that.

A bit of distortion or dirt in a mix can help 'gel' things together regardless of how well they were recorded anyways. Drums and bass often respond well to some subtle distortion. Tape emulators or saturation plugins work well here if you don't have the real thing.

The Chemist Tree:
Another thing which may be good to use is to "borrow" grooves from your favourite drummers.

For example with BFD2, if you are recording your drums using a midi keyboard, it can be hard to get the "feel" of a real drummer and very easy to quantize any form of groove out of it.

To compensate, try cutting a loop or two from a commercial CD track that you like (with a similar feel of course), import it into your DAW and, if it allows it, create hit-points in the imported audio file and then extract the groove.

You can use this groove to quantise your midi drum track. To avoid it all sounding the same, try using different quantize strengths at different parts of your midi track.

Ramshackles:

--- Quote from: The Chemist Tree on September 10, 2012, 04:16:42 PM ---Another thing which may be good to use is to "borrow" grooves from your favourite drummers.

For example with BFD2, if you are recording your drums using a midi keyboard, it can be hard to get the "feel" of a real drummer and very easy to quantize any form of groove out of it.

To compensate, try cutting a loop or two from a commercial CD track that you like (with a similar feel of course), import it into your DAW and, if it allows it, create hit-points in the imported audio file and then extract the groove.

You can use this groove to quantise your midi drum track. To avoid it all sounding the same, try using different quantize strengths at different parts of your midi track.

--- End quote ---

Thats definitely a good step to take before starting the mixing process. There are plenty of 'beat-detectors' out there that will try and match a recording of drums to midi notes. Drumagog is one I think, and there is Steven Slate drums. A quick google search will also reveal plenty of library recordings of simple drums beats that you could use...

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