Mixing Urban Pop
Australian mix master Michael Costa shows you the tricks of the trade when mixing urban pop music. Michael starts with a raw mix of "Doin' Ma Thang" by upcoming super artist Tessa Cattanach, and goes through it all ending with a professional, sweet sounding radio mix that gets your head nodding.
Videos
• Preparing to Mix (17:57) - Michael talks about mixing in general, his gear, how to setup and use a template for mixing, routing, using different monitors and more.
• Setting Levels & Faders (18:27) - Michael runs through the song and shows you how to get a rough mix going while focusing on keeping your gain structure healthy and safe.
• Drums & Bass (15:53) - Michaels starts to mix the drums, perc, FX and bass elements first in this song. Watch him hone these instruments in using EQ, compression, reverb, delay and get the mix going.
• Synthetic Elements (21:41) - Michael now focuses on the numerous synth parts of the song and blends them into an interesting 3D soundscape using advanced EQ'ing and routing to various effects.
• Vocal Elements Pt. 1 (23:29) - Michael breaks down all the vocal tracks and figures out the role that each plays in the song. Michael then starts to carve and shape them using his various DAW tools.
• Vocal Elements Pt. 2 (26:23) - Michael now turns to the rap vocal tracks and gets them seated in the mix properly while continuing to work on the main vocal parts and harmonies.
• Track Tweaks 1 (18:50) - Michael now starts to jump around the mix fine tuning different things. Tuning vocals, adding special effects such as distortion, grouping vocals for better mixing control and much more are shown.
• Track Tweaks 2 (15:48) - Michael focuses on more needed refinements in the song such as vocal level placement, EQ and compression. The bass sound is also revisited and further massaged into shape.
• Final Changes (32:57) - After a long 'ear break' Michael made many changes to the mix off camera. In this video he reveals all of them and exactly what he did to arrive at the final mix.