Madhatter
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Melbourne, Australia

Apologies if this has been asked before, or recently, but do you seasoned professionals have any particular tips and tricks for mixing chiptune specifically? I know mixing can be fairly open to interpretation, but what are the main staples to make your music sound full bodied and tight? Limiter, EQ, Compressor, etc?

Also maybe things you always like to do to your tracks that others don't, etc? As you can tell, I'm pretty noob at mixing, so try not to flame me too hard, but i'd really like to get better and contribute to this community at some point in the future (probably under a different name though).

Thanks for your time :)

Victory Road
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Gosford, Australia

make sure your recordings are really good before you do anything else.
generally i just scoop mids a little and slightly compress. most of your "mixing" should be done at the tracking stage though, imo.

oh and if you're using a gameboy try to find that one thread about noise cancellation. a very sharp notch at 9.25Khz removes the high pitched whine in the background noise.

Spaceman
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Im also interested in mixing as well. If your using a gameboy is all the mixing done in lsdj or after you record it? and if so how would you go about mixing it after its recorded.

herr_prof
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Ive found that if the song is really good it barely needs any mixing.

Madhatter
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Melbourne, Australia
Victory Road wrote:

make sure your recordings are really good before you do anything else.
generally i just scoop mids a little and slightly compress. most of your "mixing" should be done at the tracking stage though, imo.

oh and if you're using a gameboy try to find that one thread about noise cancellation. a very sharp notch at 9.25Khz removes the high pitched whine in the background noise.

Thanks a lot for that. I'll definitely try that 9.25khz trick too.
Yeah, the levels are all fine on the dmg, what i'm trying to achieve is a full bodied sound where all four channels are nicely placed in the soundstage. I think this might just come down to more practice and experimentation.

basspuddle
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washington

Something fun to try: record your song(s) onto a cassette tape, and then digitally. I've been told that chip compresses nicely on tape.

Xuriik
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Puerto Rico

Is there any benefit to recording all channels separately if I'm not adding echo/reverb/phasing/ducking afterwards?

Victory Road
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Gosford, Australia

probably not, but you never know when you might change your mind

Last edited by Victory Road (Sep 24, 2012 6:00 am)

PolarBirds
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My Igloo

As I have come to understand, mixing is only really about balancing the volume of your different instruments so they sit well with eachother in the mix. I usually consider panning being a part of mixing as well but that's about it, correct me if I'm wrong! Mixing is not to be confused with "mastering". Compression and EQ are what I do with a track when I'm basically done with the whole composition and mixing. In other words, the mastering. This is atleast my impression of what mixing and mastering are about. Again, correct me if I'm wrong!?

Sorry for slightly going off topic but it seems like this needs to be clarified before we continue!

So my advice is to really make so every instrument is balanced volume-wise to eachother before doing anything else with the track. A way of checking that visually is by looking at the "master-volume parameter" and make sure that it's not going into the "red zone". That's atleast possible to see in any modern DAW and I guess it's a function in many tracker's as well?!

After this you can consider compression, EQ and limiting if it's even necessary!

Cheers!

Victory Road
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Gosford, Australia

mastering is making an entire album sound really good and relatively consistent. compression/eq is a part of that, but it's also an important part of the mixing process.

chunter
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Brunswick, GA USA

Compression and eq can be part of mixing too, but the observation that it is about making the instruments play nice with each other is correct. Having more channels to mix is not "better" or "worse," it's a different level of power. I know it can be confusing, but like many things in art there odd plenty to talk about but no right or wrong answers (and plenty of opinions. wink )