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To make a song in Garageband iOS. 1) Choose an Apple Loop by clicking on the Loops icon on the top-right of the workspace. 2) Drag a drum sample like “60s Shuffle Drumset” into the workspace. 3) Drag and drop similarly titled Loops like “Against Time Piano” and “Against Time Staccato Strings”. While it’s fairly simple to create a. It's at the bottom of the window. Select an audio type. In most cases, you'll want to click the green Software Instrument option, as doing so will allow you to add and edit sounds from your Mac's GarageBand library as well as use your Mac's keyboard as a piano.
In this tutorial today, I’m going to show you how to make a quick hip-hop beat in Garageband. Will it be the most sophisticated beat in the world? No, it will not, because, I’m not the greatest producer, and all I can do is show you how I do things. Hopefully, you can learn something from me.
Assuming you’re an absolute beginner, this tutorial should save you a fair amount of time in terms of avoiding common mistakes, like not turning off the Auto-Normalize function in Garageband’s preferences (my tutorial on that). I’ll give you a brief summary of how to make a beat, and then we’ll explore a more in-depth way, so how would you go about making a beat in Garageband?
To make a beat in Garageband, choose a melodic Apple Loop by clicking on the Loops icon that looks like a hose on the right-hand side of Garageband. Then, use the command, ⌥ + ⌘ + U, to bring up a Drummer Track and use one of the Hip-Hop drummers, Dez, Anton, or Maurice.
This is undoubtedly the simplest way of quickly creating a beat in Garageband, however, I’m going to show you the real way of going about it – the way that it’s actually unique. This is my way of making a hip-hop beat using my own individual style. It may not be your style of music, but maybe it’ll help you understand how people go about making songs. Before we begin, I’ll give a brief explanation of what I consider to be hip-hop as well as some of its parameters.
by the way, I have a list of all the best products for music production on my recommended products page, including the best deals, coupon codes, and bundles, that way you don’t miss out (you’d be surprised what kind of deals are always going on).
Features Of Hip-Hop
Hip-hop, like metal, rock, and many other genres, has a ton of sub-genres and dynamic differences between each other.
Therefore, in my opinion, there’s no point in saying that it has to sound a certain way – because it doesn’t.
In the past, there were many beats that had kind of a major/happy sound and there are many minor sounding beats of varying stylistic characters such as jazz, soul, funk, country, and even rock.
Moreover, hip-hop utilizes a ton of soul and funk samples from the 1960s and 1970s like James Brown, Funkadelic, Parlament, and so on and so forth.
Perhaps my favorite example is Kanye West’s song, “Touch The Sky,” created by Lupe Fiasco, which uses Curtis Mayfield’s legendary soul tune, “Move On Up.” You can do the same thing with Garageband’s sampler too as I’ve shown before in my article and in the short video down below:
The great part of hip-hop, like rock music, is that it’s versatile, so as long as you have a melody and a rhythm section, a rapper can probably spit bars over it. To get good at it, follow some of the tips in my songwriting article.
Before continuing, make sure you’ve downloaded all of the available sounds. To do that, just go into Garageband’s Preferences, and go to “Sound Library,” and then choose the option, “Download All Available Sounds.”
Without further ado…
How To Make A Hip-Hop Song In Garageband
The first thing that you want to do is open up Garageband.
1) Open up Garageband.
2) Select the hip-hop template.
The first thing that shows up is the Trap Door template, and the drummer’s name apparently is Dez. Personally, I hate the sound of the Trap Door pre-sets, so I avoid it at all costs.
It can be doctored to sound good, in my opinion, by decreasing the complexity of the fills and also choosing the “Simple” setting by dragging the little yellow ball to the left, or changing the actual kit of the pre-set. Another amazing tool to have for making beats is Initial Audio’s 808 Studio II (from Plugin Boutique), which is obviously a bass synth/808 tool.
Around half of the instruments that Garageband gives you sound good, with the “Steinway Grand Piano,” Deep Sub Bass,” “808 Bass,” “Vox Box Lead,” and the “String Ensemble” being the most important and useful, although, there are many others for hip-hop as I’ve pointed out before.
If you’re using iOS Garageband on the iPhone I recommend the most from Amazon, there are even more sounds to choose from, but either way, the “Arctic Noise Lead” is definitely a popular choice.
3) Go ahead and choose the “Flute” option under “Vintage Mellotron,” the “Jazz Organ,” the “Scream Lead” from the synthesizer section, as well as the “String Movements” from the Soundscapes option.
Also, choose the “Beat Machine” drum-kit under the Electronic Drum Kit section.
4) First Melody (Chord Progression) – (Jazz Organ)
For this particular track, “Spaceship Underwater,” the very first thing is that I made the chord progression with the “Jazz Organ,” which is just a C Minor with an added 9th and an Eb Major with an added 9th.
You can give the final track a listen here:
Cmin9 = C, Eb, G, D
Ebadd9 = Eb, G, Bb, F
Both of these chords belong to the Key of G Minor.
Here are all of the chords of G Minor (relative minor of Bb Major):
i – G Minor – G-B-D
iiº – A Diminished – A-C-Eb
III+ – Bb Major – Bb-D-F
iv – C Minor – C-Eb-G
v – D Minor – D-F-A
VI – Eb Major – Eb-G-Bb
VII – F Major – F-A-C
In case you haven’t seen the scale degrees before and how they look, know that the lower-case roman numerals., “i,” mean Minor, and the upper-case numerals, “V,” mean Major.
***To learn more about theory, go over to Music Theory’s website, or pick up Mark Sarnecki’s book on theoryfrom Amazon as well as the answer book which is equally as important.
The “+” means augmented and the “º” means diminished.
If these words are scary don’t worry about it. Just pay attention to the letters of the chord, “GBD.”
Check out the diagram I created of the “Musical Typing” below if you’re totally unfamiliar of where the notes of the Piano lie, but if I were you, I would eventually get a copy of PianoForAll from their site because it’ll help a lot as well.
When I build beats, I pretty much always start with the melody and then I build the drums, bass, and everything else afterward.
5) Second Melody – (Screamlead Synth)
Because I know that I’m in the Key of G Minor, there are certain notes available to me that will sound “correct.” They are the following:
G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F.
The relative Major of G Minor is actually Bb Major, which means they are the same notes, just played in a different order and having a different root note or tonal center.
Here is the Bb Major scale:
Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A
asically, after I built the chord progression, I loaded up an instrument that sounded cool and started playing around with it on my MIDI Keyboard.
I usually start with an Ehru, Piano, or another instrument with a sound I love. The reasoning for this, as an artist, is for the inspiration.
In this case, I chose the Screamlead instrument, which you’ll find in the Lead subcategory within the Synthesizer section.
Here’s an image of how the second most important melody of the song looks in the MIDI work-space:
Tip: Always use instruments, plug-ins, arpeggiators, and other tools that inspire you to play.
That’s what being a musician is all about, frankly. It’s the same thing with playing the guitar or another instrument. You have to buy a piece of equipment that actually inspires you to play.
After I built the second melody using the “
At first, as I said before, it was the Pipu, but I couldn’t use that because I already made a track using it recently and I didn’t want to get too repetitive.
I turned it into a Screamlead, and then adjusted the settings of it.
In the image below, you can see all of the different settings for it, including, Glide, Sub, Shape, Depth, Harmonic, Overdrive, Delay, as well as a bit of Reverb.
The part I changed the most was the “Glide” option as well as the “Shape.” That’s what gave it the sound that is completely different from the stock version of it.
Another big change I made was with the “Harmonic” option. I turned that bad boy all the way down.
5) Third Filler Melody – (Delicate Bells)
For the third melody, I simply used it as a filler, a way of filling out the rest of the track and adding a little bit of “Body” or character to the sound.
I used Delicate Bells, and I copy and pasted the track from the Screamlead and dropped it into the Delicate Bells track.
It was a one-two process, and I turned it down fairly significant so as not to take too much attention away from the rest of the more important instruments.
I also EQ’d it a little bit as well. For this section, I implemented a Low-Pass (a concept I’ve explained before), so in other words, I eliminated all of the highest frequencies. This EQ setting looks like this:
6) Fourth Melody (Flute)
Perhaps the most important melody of this song was the flute, rather than the initial chord progression and melody.
The flute is the part that repeats through the entirety of the song, and I loved the way it sounds. I think it was a nice touch, however, the flute you get through Native Instruments’ Komplete 13 from their website is way better than what comes with Garageband.
The funny part about the flute melody here is the fact it’s simply three notes but played at two different octaves. It’s easily the LEAST sophisticated part of the entire track.
It goes to show that sophistication is not necessary at all, in fact, this plays into improvisation as a musician as well. It’s easy to get caught up in all of these incredibly convoluted details, but frankly, there’s simply no need.
A good question to ask yourself is: does this make the music sound good? Does this contribute to the entirety of the song?
Moving on to arguably the most important part of a hip-hop song: the drums and the Boutique 808 pattern.
I think, perhaps, a crucial detail to add here is the fact that the drums and boutiques are actually the most important part for music producers but not for the listener.
Listeners don’t care about EQing the snare as you do, they just want to hear a great melody and beat.
7) Drums (Kick, Snare and Hi-Hats)
Obviously, music producers have different ways of going about this. Many actually “draw” their music, by adding individual notes and so on and so forth in the “Piano Roll.”
To begin drawing in the Piano Roll, double-click (right-click) in the workspace and select the option, “Create Empty MIDI Region.” This will make a file in which you can start dropping notes (more on the piano roll in my guide).
Truth be told, I don’t do this.
I find this kind of thing to be, actually, annoying and not that fun.
I played guitar for my entire life before I started using a DAW, so I’m all about playing from the heart and improvising on the spot.
What I do, is I open up the Musical Typing (Garageband’s keyboard – Command + K), and I just start jamming on the Kick and Snare, trying to come up with a pattern that I’ve never used before but also sounds very good.
Usually, the Kick and Snare is loaded at the C3 level on Garageband’s Musical Typing, so I just hammer on the “C” and “D” note, or as it says on the actual laptop Keyboard, the letters “A” and “S.”
If you’re using a MIDI-Keyboard, it’ll likely be the very first C and D on the left-side of the Keyboard.
After I’ve built a cool sounding Kick and Snare pattern, I usually begin adding the other details.
8) Shaker
I’ve been actually using the Shaker function quite a bit lately. I feel like it’s a nice touch to the sound.
And for the most part, I either add the hi-hats on every single beat, or I add it about half-a-beat after the Snare Drum. I think it sounds cool.
I use the shaker – and this is a great thing to keep in mind for producing all kinds of drum-centric music – to keep the beat at a more consistent pace.
Many producers use the Kick, Snare, or the Hi-Hat as a way to keep time.
For me, using the Shaker is good for that, because it’s not too intrusive or obstructing. In other words, it doesn’t take too much attention away from other sounds, instruments, and melodies.
A snare or kick can be quite aggressive.
9) Bass
This is arguably the most important part of hip-hop production, and frankly, I’m not the greatest at it, so you may want to check out another person’s tutorial to figure out how to make great Boutique 808s and bass-lines.
As I explained in this article about Boutique 808s, there are many different ways of drawing/playing bass-lines, as well as EQ-tactics and methods for making it sound good.
Make sure to check out the article at the above link to see what I’m talking about.
For the sake of this tutorial, however, I’ll outline what I did for “Spaceship Under Water.”
The first thing that I do when I build a bass-line is I usually think about the chord progression and melody, that way I can draw a bassline that is actually on-key.
Many producers struggle with building a bass-line that’s on-key due to the limitations of the human ear. It’s pretty hard to hear the lowest frequencies, so a good way of getting around it is the following:
Tip: Try making a bass-line with the Bass turned up 1 or 2 octaves, that way you can find out if the bass is truly in the proper key signature.
Another thing that you can do is treat the bass as if it’s a melody of its own, and create maybe a piano melody, but then change the software instrument track into the Deep Sub Bass synth or the Boutique 808s.
Moving on…
I typically outline the notes of the chord in order to create the bassline. For example, I know that in this track there are two primary chords that lie as the song’s foundation: Cmin9 and Ebadd9.
These two chords, as I mentioned above, belong to the key of G Minor, where these are the following notes of the scale, G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, and F.
Cmin9 = C, Eb, G, D
Ebadd9 = Eb, G, Bb, F
If I’m going to make a bassline, I would focus on the C note and the Eb note, just as a starter to see how that sounds. C and Eb are the root notes of the aforementioned chords.
After that, I’d play around with the G Minor scale, whose notes I listed above, and I’d see if I could make something out of that. However, usually I crave a little more out of the bassline, and most other people do as well.
Most people would argue that the main purpose of the bassline, whether it’s Boutique 808 or a bass guitar, is to hold the rhythm down of the song, so to speak.
It’s a way of solidifying the groove and flow of the track. It’s like strengthening its backbone.
Without bass, the song wouldn’t have the same “fullness” about it. It would sound likely more empty and hollow. Those lower frequencies really complete and warm-up the song.
In this case, I was struggling to come up with a bass-line that fulfilled that role, so I ended up just outlining the notes of the chords and keeping it very simple.
Sometimes, simplicity is where it’s at.
The final thing to note is the fact I copy and pasted the notes of the Kick Drum into the Deep Sub Bass track, that way I had a reference point for when the Kick and Snare hits.
As I wrote about in my 808s article, if you want your bassline to hit hard, which is arguably the most coveted aspect of hip-hop production, then it’s essential that you line your kick drum with the Boutique 808s or Deep Sub Bass Synthesizer.
You can check out the image below of the Deep Sub Bass to see how I did that:
11) Volume Control
One last final thing to note before we get into the next section: I did a volume fade at the beginning of the song for the flute section.
In my automation tutorial, I explained that In order to do that, you hit the ‘A’ button on the track for “Automation.”
You’ll notice right away that the yellow automation lines will pop up.
By clicking on the line, you’ll drop automation points and then you can drag the line around according to how you want to adjust the volume.
Check out the picture below to see what I did for that particular track.
Moving on to the Exporting, Mixing, and then Mastering stage…
How To Do A Beat Drop On Garageband
12) Export As AIFF
Now that the song is pretty much completed, we can move on to the easiest stage: the “exporting stage.”
For this part, make sure that absolutely none of your tracks are clipping (going into the red), otherwise, it’ll sound terrible later on.
As a general rule, you want your volume tracks to be going into the yellow only during the loudest parts of the song. It’s cool if the tracks ride in the green the entire time.
Also, turn down the Master Volume to +0.0. I haven’t heard anyone say this matters at all, but for me, it absolutely does.
Make sure the Master Volume is at zero, otherwise, your track won’t mix and master properly.
Make sure there are no plug-ins running on your master track as well.
To do that, go down into the Smart Controls and click on the button that says. “Master,” among the other two options, “Track,” and “Compare.”
You’ll see the list of the plug-ins, and make sure they’re all turned off.
It’s ok if you have plug-ins running on the individual tracks, but you don’t want any on the master channel, from what I’ve been told anyway.
At this stage, your track is nearly ready for export. Listen to the whole thing and make sure all of the instruments sound good, and exactly as you want them to.
Keep in mind, when you go to master the track, some of the other sounds may sound accentuated. For that reason, I typically turn down the sound of the hi-hats, shakers, and other high-frequency instruments.
Explained in another way, If you plan on using compression and an EQ boost, some of the higher frequency instruments, such as the hi-hat or cymbals, tend to make that hissing sound.
For that reason, consider turning the volume down on the individual tracks.
a) Click on the option, “Share,” in Garageband’s Toolbar at the top
b) and then click the option, “Export to Disk,” from there,
c) hit the AIFF check-box,
d) name your track
e) and then export it on to your desktop that way you can simply drag and drop it into the DAW.
From this stage, we can actually drag and drop the AIFF file right back into the DAW among all of the other software instrument tracks.
f) Hit the “Solo” button on the track that looks like a pair of headphones to isolate the song.
The reason for this is that we’ll check and see that our track isn’t clipping it all, and we give it a general test to see what it’s going to sound like after we add a compressor, channel EQ, and so on and so forth.
Now that we can see there’s nothing wrong with the track and it isn’t too loud, we’ll move on to the mixing stage.
g) Start a new project.
11) Mixing.
I’m by no means an expert mixing engineer, so just keep that in mind, but for this stage, I actually don’t do a lot to it. I showed more of the process in my guide on mixing beats. In his book on Amazon, Bobby Owsinski and some of the engineers explain that there doesn’t always need to be a lot done to a mix.
I usually add a Channel EQ, a compressor or Multipressor, and then maybe a Limiter as well just in case.
a) Channel EQ
As you can see by the image below, I cut the lowest and highest frequencies, dropped the 205hz frequency by -3.5 dB, and then gave the song a bit of a boost by 3dB or so starting from the range of 500hz to 10,000 kHz.
I also gave it a small boost to around 35hz.
b) Multipressor
For the multipressor, I just used the “Final Hip Hop Compressor” pre-set which dropped the gain by around -3.6dB.
I really like the way the multipressor sounds. I find it gives the track quite a bit of punchiness.
*In the YouTube version of this song, I used a compressor instead of a multipressor, but on my SoundCloud, I used the multipressor version.
c) Limiter
As I wrote in my article about limiting, the limiter acts as a compressor with an extremely high ratio, or in other words, it’s a “brick wall” in which no frequencies can pass through.
Using the limiter, we’ll boost the overall volume of the track by +3.0dB, and then we’ll set the output level at -0.2dB.
The gain is best increased by just 1, 2, or 3 dB because then we’re not pushing it too hard.
Regarding the Output Level knob, technically, the point past 0dB is the point of distortion according to what I’ve read.
If we have it set at -0.2dB, then we don’t have to worry about the song exceeding that point and thus, creating distortion.
Because of the way the limiter works, a lot of people like to use it as a volume-increaser at the end of the mixing process.
However, it’s much better thought of as a tool that we can use to ensure no undesirable sounds are heard in the mix.
12) Final Step
Ensure the volume of the track is consistent with other music you’ve created.
If you have an album on your phone and you hook it into a Bluetooth speaker at someone’s house, you want the tracks to be the same volume as each other.
That way, you won’t have to continuously come back and turn the volume up.
For this point, I would try and match the volume of, not other artists on YouTube or SoundCloud, but your favorite artists and their professionally mixed and mastered hit singles.
If you’re going to try and make a song, you might as well get used to trying to match the amplitude (volume) of their music.
I usually choose the volume to be around +1.6dB on the Master Volume channel. In between +1.6 and +2.0 dB, depending on whether I’ve used a compressor a multipressor.
13) Export
Now, if you want to export your music, thankfully, Garageband comes with a convenient “Share” function on the top toolbar that allows you to easily export music to either SoundCloud, iTunes, or YouTube.
Before doing this, however, make sure you do this one last thing if you haven’t already.
a) Go into the Garageband Preferences.
b) Click on Advanced.
c) See where it says, “Auto Normalize – Export Projects At Full Volume?”
Make sure this box is unchecked, otherwise, Garageband will export your music at a level that is far too quiet, and the competition will just outshine you like crazy.
Moving on…
With that said, try to avoid making your tracks too loud.
I’m not an expert on this topic, so take notice of this warning, but some people say that making your tracks super loud is a part of what’s called the “Loudness War.”
It’s up to you whether or not you want to engage in this. If you’re curious to read more about it, I recommend this article here.
Some people might argue that an artist/audio engineer has to do whatever they can to get noticed, and that includes exporting music at too high of a volume.
Others will hate you for making your music so loud.
It’s up to you as to whether you want to annoy other producers and audio engineers. I guess you have to ask yourself though, “am I making music for myself, other people, or other producers?”
Anyway, I hope this tutorial was helpful to you. As I said before, I’m not a Billboard-topping artist, so I can’t tell you how to make the illest beat you’ve ever heard. I can only show you how I make them.
Enjoy.
Do me a solid and share this on social media.
Mixing beats in Garageband is simple.
There are just a few things that need to be done to make a beat sound great, including setting up the automation; adding dynamics processors; setting the VU meters to the appropriate volume, panning, adding effects, and then putting it through the mastering phase, including an additional compressor, channel EQ, and limiter on the master channel.
by the way, I have a list of all the best products for music production on my recommended products page, including the best deals, coupon codes, and bundles, that way you don’t miss out (you’d be surprised what kind of deals are always going on).
In terms of numbers, I would say that it took me around 80 beats until I finally figured out how to get everything to sound at least as good as the competition.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to mix a beat in Garageband, using a few different tactics. First things first, I’m going to offer a summarized step-by-step check-list that gives you an idea of what to do.
From there, we’ll explore each part of the process in detail.
To mix a beat in Garageband:
1) Drop all VU meters to -15dB
2) Adjust each VU meter so it sounds good without clipping or passing +0dB
3) Use Compressor, EQ, and effects presets
4) Add Automation and Panning
5) Export the Track as a .aif file.
6) Drag it into a new project for mastering
1) Drop the VU meters of each individual track down to -15dB
Other than using a much better 808 plugin like Initial Audio’s 808 Synth from Plugin Boutique, this is one of the most important things that I wished I would’ve known about earlier because it would’ve saved me a lot of time and energy. The sub-title is self-explanatory.
What you have to do is drag and drop each software instrument track down to about -15dB.
The idea behind this is you’re setting up the music in such a way where you now have plenty of room to decide where instruments fit into the mix, without clipping or distortion.
Moreover, this is going to give you plenty of space to allocate each instrument in the mix.
Another way this will help you is in the mastering phase.
When I first started mixing beats in Garageband, I would have parts of the track exceeding +0.0dB and I’d wonder why it sounded bad. You always want to make sure that your tracks aren’t exceeding this level, because +0.0dB is the point of distortion.
It’s the digital floor of the DAW, in other words, it’s the ceiling you shouldn’t pass.
If you don’t adjust your VU meters in this way, and you don’t keep them as low as possible, you’ll find that when you re-insert the track back into the workspace, some of the tracks will cause clipping, particularly at the loudest part.
Some of the biggest offending instruments are typically parts of the drum-kit, for instance, the kick, snare, clap, or the cymbals, like the ride, crash, or hi-hat.
It’s important to pay attention to how your automation is adjusted as well because if you increase the sound of the music at certain points of the track, you’ll find that some of these offending instruments will exceed the acceptable threshold.
2) Drag the VU meters of each track to the desired level, without causing clipping, and definitely without exceeding +0.0dB.
At this stage, it’s really up to the producer to decide where each VU meter needs to be set at in dB. I can’t do it for you. Just adjust the volume of each track so it sounds good to your ears.
For the most part, I just want each instrument to sound good with the other, without overpowering anything.
The loudest instruments, obviously, should be adjusted so they’re at the lowest end of the VU meter, for example, -15dB, while the others can go up to around -5dB if need be.
Remember, you want each instrument to sound clear and distinguished, without being overbearing or annoying.
Also, the VU meters should never be going into the red on any part of the track. During the loudest part, they can hover in the yellow.
3) Set up your dynamics processors on each track, including the Compressor, Channel EQ, and the Noise Gate
For this part, the three most important plug-ins you can set up on the instrument tracks are the Compressor, Channel EQ, the Noise Gate, and perhaps, a Limiter.
Obviously, there are other processors you could add to the instrument tracks, however, these are the necessary ones that make all the difference in terms of how your music will sound in the final product.
How you set-up these plug-ins really depends on the instrument itself, as well as the purpose of it. For instance, if you’ve recorded some guitar parts for the beat, it would definitely be a wise decision to add a compressor on to it, depending on whether or not it’s distorted.
As a general rule, you want the order of the plug-ins to be Noise-Gate > Compressor > EQ > Effect > Limiter.
Compressor
I typically use Garageband’s pre-sets as a start-off point in terms of how I adjust the parameters of the plug-in. For example, if you’re using a compressor for an acoustic guitar, the Acoustic Guitar pre-set is going to make a world of difference.
It’s not uncommon for me to increase the gain, jacking up the ratio just a little bit, and also the threshold. For the most part, I’ll change these three settings of compressor the most, with the gain being the primary culprit.
As I explained in my article on compression, increasing the gain of the compressor is going to be what makes the output signal much louder. The ratio is adjusting the strength of the compression, and the threshold adjusts how much of the signal is actually adjusted by the plug-in.
Another great trick for the use of the compressor is parallel compression (my guide as well).
In case you don’t want to click the link, parallel compression, in this context, just means your copying the desired instrument into a new software instrument track, with the one having compression on it and the other one going without it.
Channel EQ
The same principle for the compressor applies to the Channel EQ plug-in as well. What instrument you’re making changes to is ultimately going to be the primary factor of how you adjust the EQ, and what frequencies you’re increasing or attenuating.
When it comes to EQ, however, I find that attenuating (decreasing) the mid-range frequencies, especially at 200Hz, is almost always a must, due to the fact most instruments have at least part of its frequency range in this area.
Moreover, you may need to adjust the sub-bass EQ and high-range EQ. Like I just mentioned, what instrument you’re changing, for the most part, is going to determine how you go about this.
When it comes to the guitar, I almost always attenuate some of the mid-frequencies by a little bit, set up a high-pass so the lower frequencies are eliminated, and then I boost the high frequencies from 1000kHz to 10,000 kHz, with the sparkle increased at 10,000kHz (my guide on EQing guitars).
Use the pre-sets as your guiding light in the darkness. The pre-sets are meant to give you an idea of how parameters are adjusted for particular functions, and they’re honestly quite good.
For instance, the vocal pre-sets often go along with the industry standards of what some of the more authoritative sources will tell you to do.
Like the vocals. When it comes to the vocals, you’ll want to scoop the lower frequencies and attenuate the mid-range by a little bit, but boost the highs. This is for a male vocalist with a lower voice.
The low frequencies of a woman’s voice, on the other hand, don’t need to be attenuated so much due to the higher pitch of the female singing voice. The fundamental difference in EQ between the male and female singer is the attenuation of lower frequencies.
For the male, you scoop them out like I talked about in my other tutorial.
For the woman, you leave them as they are, or attenuate them even less, depending on how high her voice is.
Some additional tips for the EQ are to eliminate some of the “sss” sounds of the instrument tracks, for instance, a common culprit is the higher frequencies of the hi-hat or another cymbal.
Commonly, I’ll decrease some of the higher range frequencies of the instruments that exist primarily in the aforementioned ranges, between 5000kHz and 10,000 kHz.
Like I said above, use the Channel EQ pre-sets to guide you in your decision. One of the great things about Garageband and Logic Pro X is the pre-sets. They have a pre-set for nearly every single instrument. They aren’t to be followed 100%, but they’re an excellent place to start.
Noise Gate
The Noise Gate is a lot simpler for a number of reasons, mostly due to the lack of sophistication, although, it depends on what type of noise gate you’re actually using.
If you’re using the Bob Perry Noise Gate plug-in, there are more sophisticated parameters. Assuming you’re using the regular noise-gate plug-in, however, you can only adjust by dB and that’s it.
What I commonly do is adjust the Noise Gate so it eliminates as much extraneous noise as possible, without decreasing the amount of sustain of the instrument, and without making it sound choppy. Experiment with what you think sounds best.
I find the range between -65dB and -40dB to be the most appropriate.
4) Add the desired and necessary effects, such as distortion, delay, reverb, ambiance, flangers, phasers, etc.
I would say that the most commonly applied effects plug-ins, at least in my world, are the reverb, ambiance, distortion, and the delay. In some cases, I may find it necessary to throw in a flanger or a phaser in there.
The reverb and ambiance plug-ins are going to make the music actually sound good, for the most part. They make all the sounds and instruments mesh together. They add a “juicy” quality to the music, that actually gives it that feeling.
The distortion is another effect that I use on many different instruments and for different reasons. For instance, I may add just a tiny bit of drive/distortion to the kick, snare, the boutique 808, or even a bit more crunch on the guitar, depending on what kind of guitar it is.
For the most part, however, I add distortion to the aforementioned instruments the most, the kick, snare, and the boutique 808.
For this, I would recommend the FuzzPlus3 plug-in, which is great for adding a subtle amount of drive to whatever instrument calls for it. It’s great for the boutique 808, among other instruments, because it has specific parameters that allow for solid customization.
Delay is another effect I commonly use. I almost always use delay, for instance, on the vocal track as well as the piano and guitars.
The delay, when used sparingly, can “thicken up” the sound, so to speak, bringing it forward in the mix, and giving it more of a professional sound.
The delay is also instrumental in the Haas trick which I’ve talked about before. Delay can be used as more than just a thickening agent. It can also be used as a straight-up effect.
5) Add Automation to the tracks that need it, whether it’s just volume automation or Channel EQ automation
Automation, a topic I’ve explored at length, is great for adjusting the dynamic range of a track.
Through the use of volume automation, you can increase or decrease the intensity of particular parts of the track, depending on what your goals are with the music.
For instance, you may want to slightly increase the master channel volume by 1-2dB right before a chorus to build intensity. Conversely, you could do the exact opposite as well, say for example, if you wanted a particular instrument to be a bit softer in a specific section of the song.
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Bringing up the automation function in Garageband is as simple as just hitting ‘A’ on your keyboard.
Another important point to mention is that the automation controls will act responsively to the number of plug-ins you have set-up in the Smart Controls.
In other words, if you have 7-8 different plug-ins running on an individual track, you’ll notice that you now have the option to automate those plug-ins through the automation function.
You can see what I’m talking about in the image below:
With all that said, I also think it’s worth mentioning that automation can be time-consuming, especially if you’re not careful.
For instance, you have to pay careful attention to by how much you’re increasing or decreasing the volume because you don’t want to cause clipping or distortion.
In some cases, you may not even notice that you’ve increased the volume up to the point of distortion until after you’ve inserted the track into a new project file for DAW-mastering purposes.
If you do find yourself in this situation, you’ll have to go back to the original mix and re-adjust all of the parameters and settings you made. Tread carefully with automation and be mindful of what you’re doing.
6) Pan each instrument track to where it needs to be.
While I would like to say that panning is one of the most important parts of mixing (in fact, I did say it in my panning guide), you can’t really say that because everything works together cohesively, and you need one aspect of the process to work together with the other.
When one thing is missing, it’s not going to sound right, regardless of what it is.
Panning is just the process of directing the sound of the instrument to the appropriate place. In other words, you’re adjusting the sound’s location in the mix.
You can see what my panning technique looks like below:
For the sake of convenience, I’ll briefly offer a guideline in this article to save you time.
Another important thing to mention is that, in the following guide, you want to make sure that two instruments aren’t in exactly the same position. For example, if you want the clap and the hi-hat to the left, you want the clap to be slightly more left than the hi-hat or vice versa.
Moreover, a good practice is creating room in the mix for the rapper. So, when panning the melodic instruments of the song, have them panned to the right and left a little bit, that way there is room for the artist to sing or rap.
Kick – In the middle or near-middle
Snare – Slightly to the right or the left
Hi-Hats – Panned to either left or right
Cymbals – Panned to the left or right, but not in the same position as the hi-hat.
Claps – Also panned to the left or right.
Boutique 808s or Bass – Panned to Center
Melodic Instruments – Panned slightly to the left, and slightly to the right.
7) Export the Track as a .aif file, and then drag and drop it into a new project file.
At this stage, you’re done everything.
You’ve set up the effects, dynamics processors; you’ve panned the instruments to the right place in the mix, you’ve made sure all of the VU meters are where they should be; you’ve ensured nothing is clipping, and you’ve also made sure that no plug-ins are running on the master channel.
What you do now is export the track as a .aif file, send it to your desktop, and then open a new project file and re-insert the track into a new project (use my guide for reference if you’re having difficulty).
8) Add a Channel EQ, a Compressor, and a Limiter to the Master Channel of the track, and increase the Master Volume to +2.5dB.
What you can do now is add the finishing touches to the track, including the Channel EQ, Compressor, Limiter, as well as the Master Volume (Fab Filter has the best mastering plugins on Plugin Boutique).
I would add the plug-ins in the following order, Noise Gate > Compressor > Channel EQ > Limiter, from top to bottom.
For the EQ, you just want to eliminate any undesirable sounds in the mix or increase the number of highs in it. For instance, you may find that the sub-bass frequencies need attenuation just by a little bit, in addition to a bit of the mid-range.
Moreover, you could drop the high-frequencies in the 10,000kHz range by just a little bit to eliminate the “ess” sound that some of the other instruments might be causing.
For the channel EQ, I might use settings like what’s shown in the image below:
For the compressor, I would say that the Platinum Analog Tape is arguably one of the best to use. It’s a personal favorite of mine.
For the Limiter, you could just increase the gain of the track by +2.0dB and then adjust the output level to -0.1dB. This is going to set a ceiling for the song and also increase the gain of it by a little bit.
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At this point, now everything is finished, and you can go ahead and increase the master channel volume by the desired amount. For this stage, try and think of a volume that you think is consistent with some of your favorite music, and then always keep this volume in mind.
For instance, I typically increase the volume by +2.0dB – +2.5dB. This is a good range that will be competitive with the other music out there, however, another great thing to do is to use a metering plugin like Reference 2 from Plugin Boutique. This will take the mystery out of the process and you’ll know exactly how loud something is without guessing.
You may find yourself wanting to increase the volume as much as possible, but it’s best to be careful. The human ear always thinks that louder is better when it comes to music.
But if you increase the volume of the track by too much, you’ll end up with a song that’s too loud to the point where streaming platforms will decrease the volume anyway.
Some people also call this the “loudness war,” because many engineers nowadays want their music as loud as possible, that way it seems like more of a banger than the other music out there.
Other Important Tactics
- Mix in Mono
Mixing in Mono is going to centralize all of the sounds into one channel. It’s useful because it will show you how your music will sound in a mono-stereo system, which, to many engineers, is a crucial part of the process (my guide).
Once you switch the track back to Stereo, by turning the ‘Convert to Mono’ option off in the Gain plug-in, you’ll notice how much better it sounds. As a general rule, it’s a great practice to mix in mono.
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- Mix with Low Volume
As I explained in my 24 tips to mixing tutorial, mixing in low-volume is a great practice, in my opinion, not only because you won’t do as much damage to your hearing, but also because of the way the human ear is structured and how it responds to sound.
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Conclusion
I hope this was helpful to you. Do me a favor and share this on your social media. That would help me out a lot.