We all hear lots of trap on a daily basis, and most of it seems to just mold together into some weird undesirable torrent of aggressive poorly mixed bass and simple melodies with no layering (or wayyyy tooo much layering). Now i can talk all day about composing, melodies, drums, sounds, all that shyt, but for now imma tackle mixing.
I think most decent trap producers realize this pretty quickly, but pretty much all of your instruments besides ur drums shouldnt have much if anything going on under 150-200hz. It depends a lot on the song as in some sparse tracks this might not even matter, but if your going for a heavily layered orchestral or synth anthem your gonna need to know this. I usually just group all my instruments together and HP filter above 200 (or 150 if 200 sucks out too much of the "warmth" or depth of my song). This is a pretty lazy way to do things, i mean it will get you by but if you want your shyt to be perfect you can HP or eq out the lower frequencies of each sound individually, which will really allow you to control the balance between the warmth of your instruments and your subbass.
Another easy one is a high shelf on the instruments (or the master channel even). Paired with good reverb (this works especially well with side reverb as it widens the sound of the track), your track will sound a lot cleaner and just professional in general. Be careful here, when your project is compressed into mp3 if your highs are too sharp its gonna sound pretty bad. And that leads me to my next point
You should have a LP/low cut eq on your master track, at around 16k. This will cut out the extremely sharp frequencies that really become apparent when you compress your track.
You should have a group reverb on all your instruments. I also would advise not using build in reverbs from synth vsts, with the higher quality ones like gladiator it sounds great but with something like nexus or even sylenth the reverb isnt that good. Personally i find that a good reverb is one of the most essential parts of mixing. Another thing is knowing how to actually use reverb is essential, you can google what all the controls do. Thats really true for all effects, for a long time i produced halfway knowing how to use effects, but when i sat down and really looked at everything and logically figured out what it does (along with research), my mixing game probably tripled in quality.
Now for what i call "gutting" the track. This is probably one of the first mixing tricks i figured out. What you want to do is make a notch dip in your eq, at around 500hz. Thats a very elementary approach to this though. Really it depends entirely on the track. On some i dont do this at all because it needs that low-mid depth, other times i eq down a lot of the 300-700 area. It really just makes your song sound cleaner and more professional, and it also does wonders for keeping your track from being too loud. Trust me, just mess around with your eq in that area and youll see what i mean.
Now heres the big one, something that EVERY trap producer needs to know. You alwaayyyyssssss completely eq out everything under 20hz. This is inaudible sound that still affects the volume of your song and can cause distortion, but it serves no use. Then between 20 and 30hz you can cut off some more depending on the song, for really bassy distorted songs you probably dont want anything under 28hz, but for more of a bouncy mike will type beat you probably could cut off at about 25hz. Honestly i figured out the 20-30hz frequency trick recently, it does wonders for your subbass.
More subbass stuff, when it comes to mixing subbass if you want to get more of a certain aspect of the subbass, its useful to learn which frequencies make which characteristics. Around 30hz(into 20hz) is the true subbass, the part that everyone wants to stand out. Then theres 60-80hz, which is the other half of the true subbass as i put it. Its more of the part of the subbass that has melodic qualities as opposed to pure rumble, yet it still rumbles. 90hz is a really harmonic frequency like 60, and it is responsible for the punchyness of your kick/bass. Above that is really just space to add/take away color from your bass. You could put a LP filter at 150hz and barely hear a difference in your subbas from un-eq'ed, and still barely hear much of a difference until around 120hz. Use really notched eq's to single out parts of the subbass and boost them or lower them.
Lastly, im gonna throw in something that helps a lot of the time. FIltering your subbass/kick can lead to great results in some tracks. Try cutting off everything above 200hz on your kick for a really dark, sparse, agressive beat. That gives it pure punch with none of that other stuff. Honestly if you want your kick to be punchy ever EQ everything above 300-200hz out. Then if you want your kick and subbass to not clash, you can simply eq out parts of the subbass you dont need, and parts of the kick you dont need. under 90hz the kick is mostly subbass. You dont want this if you already have subbass, so eq all that out. Now your free to compress the shyt outta your kick and you dont have to worry about your kick and subbass fighting. You also can LP the subbass down to 90 which will lead to a cleaner and more dominant subbass.
If you learn how to employ all of these techniques, theres not gonna be much stopping you from having quality trap mixes. These all come together to eliminate the clashing of instruments and drums that ruin so many tracks. What i left out is mixing each sound individually, but i left that out because with everything ive said you should figure what to do about that. If your snare and kick arent being friends, cut out unnecessary clashing frequencies from the sounds.
I think most decent trap producers realize this pretty quickly, but pretty much all of your instruments besides ur drums shouldnt have much if anything going on under 150-200hz. It depends a lot on the song as in some sparse tracks this might not even matter, but if your going for a heavily layered orchestral or synth anthem your gonna need to know this. I usually just group all my instruments together and HP filter above 200 (or 150 if 200 sucks out too much of the "warmth" or depth of my song). This is a pretty lazy way to do things, i mean it will get you by but if you want your shyt to be perfect you can HP or eq out the lower frequencies of each sound individually, which will really allow you to control the balance between the warmth of your instruments and your subbass.
Another easy one is a high shelf on the instruments (or the master channel even). Paired with good reverb (this works especially well with side reverb as it widens the sound of the track), your track will sound a lot cleaner and just professional in general. Be careful here, when your project is compressed into mp3 if your highs are too sharp its gonna sound pretty bad. And that leads me to my next point
You should have a LP/low cut eq on your master track, at around 16k. This will cut out the extremely sharp frequencies that really become apparent when you compress your track.
You should have a group reverb on all your instruments. I also would advise not using build in reverbs from synth vsts, with the higher quality ones like gladiator it sounds great but with something like nexus or even sylenth the reverb isnt that good. Personally i find that a good reverb is one of the most essential parts of mixing. Another thing is knowing how to actually use reverb is essential, you can google what all the controls do. Thats really true for all effects, for a long time i produced halfway knowing how to use effects, but when i sat down and really looked at everything and logically figured out what it does (along with research), my mixing game probably tripled in quality.
Now for what i call "gutting" the track. This is probably one of the first mixing tricks i figured out. What you want to do is make a notch dip in your eq, at around 500hz. Thats a very elementary approach to this though. Really it depends entirely on the track. On some i dont do this at all because it needs that low-mid depth, other times i eq down a lot of the 300-700 area. It really just makes your song sound cleaner and more professional, and it also does wonders for keeping your track from being too loud. Trust me, just mess around with your eq in that area and youll see what i mean.
Now heres the big one, something that EVERY trap producer needs to know. You alwaayyyyssssss completely eq out everything under 20hz. This is inaudible sound that still affects the volume of your song and can cause distortion, but it serves no use. Then between 20 and 30hz you can cut off some more depending on the song, for really bassy distorted songs you probably dont want anything under 28hz, but for more of a bouncy mike will type beat you probably could cut off at about 25hz. Honestly i figured out the 20-30hz frequency trick recently, it does wonders for your subbass.
More subbass stuff, when it comes to mixing subbass if you want to get more of a certain aspect of the subbass, its useful to learn which frequencies make which characteristics. Around 30hz(into 20hz) is the true subbass, the part that everyone wants to stand out. Then theres 60-80hz, which is the other half of the true subbass as i put it. Its more of the part of the subbass that has melodic qualities as opposed to pure rumble, yet it still rumbles. 90hz is a really harmonic frequency like 60, and it is responsible for the punchyness of your kick/bass. Above that is really just space to add/take away color from your bass. You could put a LP filter at 150hz and barely hear a difference in your subbas from un-eq'ed, and still barely hear much of a difference until around 120hz. Use really notched eq's to single out parts of the subbass and boost them or lower them.
Lastly, im gonna throw in something that helps a lot of the time. FIltering your subbass/kick can lead to great results in some tracks. Try cutting off everything above 200hz on your kick for a really dark, sparse, agressive beat. That gives it pure punch with none of that other stuff. Honestly if you want your kick to be punchy ever EQ everything above 300-200hz out. Then if you want your kick and subbass to not clash, you can simply eq out parts of the subbass you dont need, and parts of the kick you dont need. under 90hz the kick is mostly subbass. You dont want this if you already have subbass, so eq all that out. Now your free to compress the shyt outta your kick and you dont have to worry about your kick and subbass fighting. You also can LP the subbass down to 90 which will lead to a cleaner and more dominant subbass.
If you learn how to employ all of these techniques, theres not gonna be much stopping you from having quality trap mixes. These all come together to eliminate the clashing of instruments and drums that ruin so many tracks. What i left out is mixing each sound individually, but i left that out because with everything ive said you should figure what to do about that. If your snare and kick arent being friends, cut out unnecessary clashing frequencies from the sounds.
