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S2E26 – Does Volume Balancing Wreck Your Song

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Should you volume balance your songs?

You’ve made the beat, and you love how it sounds nice and full, but you’ve seen tutorials tell you that you should now bring each instrument to the mixer, and try to re-mix the song.

But.. think clearly for a second.. if you like the balance, should you try to “re-balance” your volumes and hope for that same balance?

Getting the same balance is VERY HARD..

Adjust Instruments Where Needed..

With virtual instruments, like a ROMpler, we beatmakers ALREADY HAVE HIGH-QUALITY SOUNDS.

The thing you must understand as a beatmaker is a lot of information is jumbled together with the recording world to us beatmakers, who just use MIDI and one-shot drum samples.

When a recording engineer would record a musician, their recording levels would not ALWAYS be the same for each different instrument. This is where VOLUME BALANCING is important to bring up a BALANCE in the song.

But for us beatmakers, if we play our melodies, we can quickly lower volume by one or two dB, and that’s technically OUR volume balancing.. make sense?

What about EQ and Compression?

Well, the same idea applies.

When you record an instrument or singer, the microphone is susceptible to many negative things like..

  • The Room Sound (if it’s not acoustically treated).
  • Distortion if Recorded TOO LOUD
  • Inconsistency in Loudness (the singer or musician said some loud or quiet words)..

As a beatmaker, all of these are easily remedied through MIDI.

The room sound.. we can control this through adding/removing REVERB or DELAY!

Distortion.. we can easily just turn down our Virtual Instrument!

And inconsistency.. we can just adjust VELOCITY on an individual MIDI Note (learn more in my SAFE SPOTS Book).

So when we are applying Equalization and Compression, the same concept doesn’t fully apply for a recording to a virtual instrument melody.

Yes, we want things to be clear, but we may not be EQing to FIX a bad recording.. we may just be EQing to MAKE an instrument sound better or more clear.

How to Best Get Started Using MIDI?

I suggest taking my How to Use a MIDI Keyboard as a Beatmaker course, or learning from my what to look for in a MIDI Keyboard article.

Additionally, you can see my recommended MIDI Keyboards for FL Studio!

As always, reach out any time by contacting me directly.

Beatmaking FL Studio Mixing Volume Volume Balancing

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S2E26 – Does Volume Balancing Wreck Your Song

  1. Season two, episode 26, does volume balancing wreck your
  2. song? This is gonna be a really interesting article for you guys because typically
  3. when you're taught to how to mix your music, the first thing you do is you take all
  4. your instruments or all your your one-shot drum samples, you put them to the mixer,
  5. and the first thing you do is you try to readjust all the volumes, essentially
  6. remaking the beat. Alright, so I just want to give you guys a different perspective
  7. on this because what can happen when you do volume balancing, which I'll explain
  8. further in this episode, is you can actually skew the balance that you originally
  9. had, and then you gotta go back again and try to fix it.
  10. Alright, so before we get into this episode, definitely check out my free book I
  11. have for you guys. Just go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  12. There is so many valuable tips that I teach you guys.
  13. You know, I know when you're first starting up, you guys always ask the question,
  14. you know, should you have more than one daw gearlust, right?
  15. Always acquiring so many tools, and reading this book will prevent all that stuff
  16. for you. It will give you a clear frame of mind so that you could just enjoy your
  17. beat making. That's the number one thing I tell you guys is you gotta have fun as
  18. you're making your beats. If you're not having fun, you're gonna get burnt out.
  19. Alright. Okay, so let's get into this episode about does volume balancing wreck
  20. your song. So when I make a beat, and let's say the beat is now
  21. complete, and so let's just walk through that process a little bit.
  22. So when you start a beat, you guys can check out one of the other episodes.
  23. But I tell you that you can either start with your drum loop first or with your
  24. melodies first. Alright, those are those are the only two ways you can start a drum
  25. start a beat with your drum loop first or with your melodies first.
  26. There's no right or wrong. Each way will typically give you a different sound
  27. because you kind of approach the beat a little different, and that's with your
  28. virtual instruments or with your drum loops using one shot drum samples.
  29. And typically, for me, when I'm making a beat, how I know that a beat is complete,
  30. typically I'm happy with the chorus, right?
  31. So when the verse is playing, once it comes into the chorus, if it sounds nice and
  32. big, nice and full. Now, once the beat is created, you guys got to remember
  33. that we are using super high quality sounds, and when we talk about EQ
  34. and compression and mixing, so when we had to record instruments for these bands
  35. back in the day, the processing that was required was a lot more than what we
  36. beatmakers have to do to our virtual instruments.
  37. When it comes to mixing, we get very, very carried away, and typically we can even
  38. be ruining the song. All right.
  39. So when we are mixing as beat makers, when we're using these very high quality
  40. plugins, right? things again like flex, Nexus, silent one,
  41. serum, harm, pigments, whatever you want to use, these are generators, right?
  42. Like they are they are mathematical romplers are a little bit different.
  43. Typically, I believe they are recorded.
  44. So, for example, imagine you have a piano, they actually record each individual
  45. note, and then it allows you to play, you know, that nice piano.
  46. But typically, like a synthesizer, it's math, and so it is it's high quality, it's
  47. like the most high quality you can get.
  48. and And so so, what I'm trying to say is we as beat makers, we already have super
  49. high quality audio in our beats.
  50. So when we are applying EQ and compression. or whatever effect, we are just
  51. enhancing things gently We don't need to be as aggressive as what they were when
  52. they were trying to process maybe if they recorded a real drum set or a real guitar,
  53. the drums that we're using, they hit so hard already, and so we can be processing
  54. just to help that further, and so it's really important that you have that mindset
  55. so that you're not overdoing it, and that's what I'm trying to talk about in this
  56. episode is volume balancing. Okay.
  57. So, volume balancing is when you put all your different instruments and one-shot
  58. drum samples, you put them to each individual mixer insert, and then what you'll see
  59. in tutorials is you're gonna drop all your faders, and essentially now you're gonna
  60. remix the song. But when you made the beat, you essentially set the
  61. framework of the track, like the energy, the excitement.
  62. For example, like when like the chorus comes in, everything is pretty much how you
  63. made it, and if you go to do volume balancing, you can actually wreck the original
  64. balance of your song. All right, I just want you to think about that.
  65. You've already made the beat, it sounds exactly how you want, and that's just what I
  66. want you guys to be aware of. All right, you can go ahead, you can try to adjust all
  67. your levels again if you really really want to, but what you will discover is
  68. typically you're just redoing what you already did when you made the beat.
  69. Now, it's fine if something's a little too loud and you just want to turn it down.
  70. That's one thing, but you know, when these tutorials show you volume
  71. balancing, you know, like I said, if you've made the beat and you like the way the
  72. beat sounds, now you bring it to the mixer, now you try to readjust the levels, it's
  73. gonna be really, really hard to get your mix back to the way it originally was when
  74. you made the beat. And I can only speak from experience when it comes to this,
  75. you know, just the amount of time that you're spending readjusting all those faders,
  76. and is it better than what it originally was?
  77. Maybe, but when I made the beat, I liked it the way it was.
  78. I bring it to the mixer. Now am I kind of wrecking what I had?
  79. When we are recording, a recording is susceptible to the room sound.
  80. The recording is susceptible to me saying something too loud, right?
  81. Or too quiet. But when we have high quality virtual
  82. instruments, we can adjust that through velocity on each individual note.
  83. See, we as beat makers, when we use MIDI, we have it so good.
  84. You literally just click in your notes or play your notes with a MIDI keyboard.
  85. If one or two notes is too loud, you can simply adjust velocity, which is
  86. essentially the reason why they would use compression back in the day is to even out
  87. some loud notes to some quiet notes, but we could just do that with velocity.
  88. All right. And it's so this is why it's really important to understand your basic
  89. tools. I'm not saying that you can't bring all your instruments into the mixer.
  90. I'm not saying that you can't readjust all your volumes if you if you want, right?
  91. Yes, you can bring them down. Yes, you can readjust all your vault, you know, all
  92. your faders. So on a mixer insert, the slider is what they typically call like a
  93. fader, but whatever. But what I want to tell you is when you go to readjust all
  94. those volumes, you can be skewing the original balance of the track.
  95. And this is just what I have discovered.
  96. And typically, some some of my most full, some of my most enjoyable tracks for me
  97. have been the ones where I just did very, very gentle adjustments in terms of
  98. volume and stuff like that. Alright, so hope that just gives you a little bit of a
  99. perspective that we as beat makers use extremely high quality sounds.
  100. So when we are using EQ and compression and these mixing tools, we're not using them
  101. in the same way that the analog world, which is again recording
  102. essentially, when people would record, we're not using those effects, those mixing
  103. effects in the same way. It doesn't
  104. mean that you're you're you know, so so for example, if you've made your beat and
  105. it's super super loud, technically, you can go on the master track
  106. and you can open up a plugin and you can just turn down the volume, all right.
  107. That's kind of like the digital world that we're in, and there's nothing technically
  108. wrong with that, but people like to follow best practices, which is sending
  109. everything to the mixer, turning down all the volumes on your faders.
  110. But the fact is that you have to know what's going on for you to get good results.
  111. And if you've made the beat, if you like the balance, and if you're gonna try to now
  112. rebalance it, you risk not having that same balance that you had before
  113. because I'm telling you, it's really really hard to get a good balance.
  114. And when you've made that beat, you've adjusted it, everything kind of sounds good.
  115. Now you just listen for. what maybe needs a little bit more clarity, what is a
  116. little bit too loud You can turn down individual instruments and fine tune it.
  117. And that's it. Alright, so I hope you guys like this episode.
  118. You guys can find me on it'sgratuitous.com.
  119. Use the search bar. There is so many articles on there.
  120. I have just finished doing some mastering tutorials.
  121. I talked about that in the last episode, but now the videos are pretty much done.
  122. I have one on what is mastering, and then one is how to actually master a song for
  123. beginners using FL Studio Stock plugins.
  124. And then I am releasing one about a mastering chain, and I have one more to just
  125. release the articles written, but the video has to be done.
  126. It's about the different tools for mastering.
  127. So check the episode resources by visiting it'sgratuitous.com forward slash
  128. podcast. That is where you will see all my episodes.
  129. And if you scroll down, you can actually click into an episode, and that is where
  130. you will find the resources. All right.
  131. So again, don't forget about my free book I have for you guys.
  132. It's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  133. You can download that by again visiting the episode resources or simply just
  134. visiting the link it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  135. That will allow you to stay updated with the website when I release new podcasts,
  136. new tutorials, as well as new courses and books, and all the other FL Studio
  137. education that's on the website there.
  138. I will talk to you guys in the next
  139. episode.
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