Tyson Boorman: Getting Industry Standard Mixes for Your Music - Music Production Podcast #386

Tyson Boorman is a mixing and mastering engineer for Nightowl Music Group. He is the author of The Objective Mix - Mix Like a Pro Without Pro Gear or Premium Plug-ins. Tyson teaches music production on his YouTube channel, Objective Mixing, and he also runs a podcast called Prolific Super Producer, where, in the very near future, I'll be a guest.

Tyson and I spoke about his production philosophy of "skills over gear." We talked about the practical insights and messages from his book The Objective Mix. And Tyson gave a great explanation of how and why to use compressors in different mixing situations.

Tyson is giving listeners of this podcast his "The 5 Secrets to Industry Standard Mixes" and "The Compression Styles Every Bedroom Producer Needs to Know" guides for free! Go to https://www.objectivemixing.com/funk to download them.

This episode is sponsored by Baby Audio, makers of incredible music software. Use the code MPP15 to save 15%! https://babyaud.io 

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

  • Focus on the why behind your music production decisions.

  • Skills are more important than gear when starting out.

  • Understanding compression is crucial for effective mixing.

  • Creative limitations can lead to unique and interesting sounds.

  • Volume is the most powerful tool in mixing.

  • Intentionality in mixing decisions leads to better results.

  • Compression can be used to enhance dynamics, not just reduce them.

  • Learn your tools deeply to maximize their potential.

  • Avoid over-compressing; subtle moves are often more effective.

  • Using EQ to create space in your mix before resorting to sidechain compression.

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Thank you for listening. 

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.216)

Tyson, welcome to the show. Great to have you.

Tyson (00:03.428)

Thanks, Brian, it's really great to be here.

Brian Funk (00:05.974)

Yeah, I love the idea, the philosophy behind your new book, The Objective Mix. It's nice to have somebody coming in and saying, like, hey, like, yeah, like, gear's great, but you don't need all the best stuff. There's more important fundamental things we need to understand first. And I know so many people get caught up with, am I using the right thing? I don't even know if I can get started until I get these monitors or this room treated or this, you know, $800 compressor plug-in.

Tyson (00:35.652)

Yeah, I know. mean, think we've all been there just like trying to get started in music, especially like as a bedroom producer, which is where I come from as well. It's just you look at the top of the pros, whatever, that are doing this for a living. You're like, well, they have all this gear. Like, I obviously need that to be able to get this quality and everything like that. I actually will have a question for you. So if I had to take you all the way back to the beginning of your music journey.

and you could either take your skills that you have now or the gear that you have now. Which one would you take back with you?

Brian Funk (01:09.494)

that'd the skills. Yeah. I'd love to have that. Yeah. Why would I say skills? Yeah. Cause I wouldn't know how to use the gear anyway. What good would it be? You know?

Tyson (01:11.875)

So why would you answer that though?

Tyson (01:22.274)

Exactly. Yeah. And that's like the philosophy that I like to like teach students of mine and just publicly anybody who's come into any of my content is just focus on like the why the goal that you actually have with it. And then the gear is just a means to an end. Right. It's just all hammers. It's just different sizes of hammer based on the goal that you have for that particular track or whatever you have in front of you. So.

Brian Funk (01:25.696)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:48.312)

That's a great way to put it because it makes it very clear, right? You sometimes think like, would I rather learn new things or just buy this thing? Right? And it can be really tempting to just think you're going to get like the easy fix, but putting it back in that context, it's like, yeah, of course, the knowledge, that's the important thing.

Tyson (02:09.691)

Yeah, I mean, so often we just get like sidetracked of we want to...

you know, get this quality right. And we can't with the gear that we have or skills that we have right now. And then we basically want to like, try to figure out what's wrong. Like how do I get to the goal that I want to? And a lot of us are inherently like a little bit egotistical, right? Myself included. I don't want to like blame myself and my skills for like not being able to achieve something. And so it's very easy to look externally of like, I don't have that tape emulation saturator that, you know, they're using in the YouTube video. So I definitely need to get that.

before I'm able to get the quality that I'm hearing, you know, coming from that YouTube producer or whatever.

Brian Funk (02:50.852)

So true. And even if you just have the most basic DAW or even your phone, you've got tools that are so far ahead of what they had in the past that many great classic timeless records were made with. it's, you know, this day and age, especially like that's really just not the issue for anybody having the stuff, the things.

Tyson (03:12.988)

Yeah. Yeah, really. Yeah, there's one thing too that actually, sorry, there's a little change in direction here, but.

I was listening to your interview with Ian like two episodes ago, just this morning. And so you're, yeah, you're diving into some like of the frames that people have around like songwriting and production and just like, kind of like the philosophy behind it. And so I really loved that discussion and I felt like it really leaned into this whole like conversation around mixing as well.

Brian Funk (03:27.758)

Yeah, Ian Temple, yeah.

Tyson (03:46.331)

like including with the gear because people, I think when we first start mixing and we first start music production, we have these frames, but they're really kind of broken. And what I mean by frames is just like how you're viewing something. And so if you tell, you know, one person, a producer or like, you know, for you example, Brian, I want you to go produce me a song. You know what exactly what that all entails. So you know how to go, you know how to write the song, you know how to do the composition, the sampling, if you need to do that, you know, sound design.

whatever you need to do to make that song happen, mixing mastering, you know how to do that. But yet for a beginner, if I tell you to go make a song, they're thinking like, I need to write some lyrics and maybe come up with a beat for it and then I'm good to go. And they don't really realize all the steps that are entailed to it. And so one thing that I think is really helpful for all musicians, and I really loved that interview specifically because you were talking about this whole framing of music production and the steps entailed.

and by basically like chunking down into these very specialized skills back up to like the macro view. And so it's a very difficult like...

thing that we run into all music production is when we're at the macro view of like, okay, does this song overall have like a good sonic balance or, know, are all the frequencies represented in this mix? And then we also have to chunk down into like, you know, how does this one kick drum sound and make sure it's punchy enough, make sure that has like the right, dynamic processing and all of that stuff. But we still have to like jump back and forth between this, like really high level and it's a really detailed level at the same time. So I'm not sure if you had any thoughts on that.

Brian Funk (05:27.389)

Yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing, like trying to see the big picture, but then you got to get really minute and you lose sight of it as soon as you do that. And that's why we spend, you know, hours trying to compress kick drums and things like that, that are really small details in the big picture of it. mean, like really like 80 % of it is just big picture stuff. What are like the chords? What are the, kind of style of music is it?

And then all that narrowing down is where we can get caught up and spend instead of the 20 % of time on it. We spend so much more. I think when I first started with like a four track and then ultimately like some digital hardware recorders, before there was YouTube to get tutorials from and learn about what I didn't know. Like I just didn't know. I didn't know what a compressor was until one of my friends was at audio school and said, hey,

You need a compressor for that. And I'm like, okay. Suddenly I just, now I need this thing. I thought it was just plug in your microphone and then, you know, do your best, go for it. but we do have all this like knowledge and all this, information out there that we can seek. And you don't really know what stage you're getting it for, I guess, you know, you, you, might be in the early stages and hear about like.

Tyson (06:28.111)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (06:51.633)

dynamic EQ and multi-band distortion and it's like, you're not there yet. Let's learn just basic EQing first and what even is distortion before we get into like all these like minute details.

Tyson (07:07.014)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's very easy to get sucked into those details though and just like completely lose sight of the bigger picture, which is like, it happened to me a lot when I was first like starting to learn how to mix. Like from my very first project.

in 2011 I recorded an entire album for my band and then know mixed and mastered it myself. I didn't know what compression was either so there's not a lick of a compressor in the entire album so you know obviously it doesn't sound quite as good as it could have but even beyond that

Brian Funk (07:34.173)

Thanks.

Tyson (07:40.267)

When I was like diving into when I kind of got to that like intermediate mixing level, there was a lot of things that I had learned, right? So I had all these different details of like, okay, this is how, you know, compressors kind of sort of works. Like, this is how much, you can get X number of gain reduction on a vocal or something like that. Right. And I just take these like little tiny details from YouTube or anywhere else that I had heard them and then try to like fit them into a mix. And I would just do all the techniques that I'd ever learned

for that instrument, for example. And so I ended up with mixes that were just completely over-mixed, over-saturated.

way too loud, but they didn't have any dynamics, right? Because I've just squashed everything in the mix. And I just reached this point, like, well, was like two years ago, I was producing music that was better than what I'm producing today. Like these mixes are terrible. And so then that would, that's what kind of started me on this journey of like, okay, obviously what I'm doing isn't working and all these like tips and tricks just don't make sense. And so that's when I kind of discovered this whole like the

the framing thing that I was talking about earlier is like, okay, well, if I frame of

this step of the mix is for this purpose and this is my goal from this step of the mix, then I can only focus on that. I don't have to worry about all these tips and tricks. Like those are tools to be used, right? Those are my hammers and screwdrivers and whatever else I have in my mix, but I don't have to utilize all of them. I can just pick and choose the ones that I need to accomplish the goal that I have for this step of the mix. And that's kind of where this entire like idea of the objective mix was born because I realized like there isn't actually an objective, like 80 %

Tyson (09:18.988)

of what every mix has that sounds...

industry standard or professional or whatever term you want to use there and so by creating these frames though then I was able to utilize all of those tips and tricks that I had learned from YouTube Effectively inside of those frames and actually get to that industry standard mix Which I was then finally able to like turn that into a career like do freelance mixing mastering work and all like going down that whole journey Which was super fun. I mean still is I still I still do it. So yeah

Brian Funk (09:51.078)

Yeah, you like just think, we got all these things, but we must have to use them, right? And then you use the wrong tool and it's like, you you got like a drill set and you're trying to remove a specific drill, you know, maybe like a Phillips head drill, but then you get like one of those like star heads, you know, the fives and you put that in there and you strip the screw and you've like ruined it. Now you can't get it out at all.

Tyson (10:10.419)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (10:16.223)

There was a mix in particular that always comes to my mind where I was like, I'm going to really start, you know, take this seriously. And I spent like weeks on it and all the things I'd learned. like you, I put everything to it. And I did this mix. I was like, yeah, I think it sounds pretty good. And then I compared it to the rough mix I made like a month ago. That was just kind of turning up the levels just so can hear it like in the car. And it sounded so much better than the thing I'd been working on for the last few weeks.

And I was just like, what happened? I learned all this stuff and I did it all and it sounds worse. Just blew my mind. But it was a wake up call and that like, yeah, like not every situation calls for every single technique and tool.

Tyson (11:02.474)

Yeah. So what was your conclusion from that experience? Like, where did you go from there of like, okay, now how do I fix this? I'm just curious what your first inclination was.

Brian Funk (11:13.22)

Well, it was to just start over. I deleted all the plugins. Every track had dozens of plugins. There'd be five different EQs at different points on one track. I just got rid of it all and started from scratch. It was also the time, too, when I realized, because I'd been on the internet,

the dark alleys, finding all the torrent sites and I had like all the plugins illegally downloaded at the time, but I didn't know how to use any of them. So I decided, look, I'm going to just use the basic stuff. I'll learn that. And if I need something else, I'll go and I'll actually buy it. So like I'll learn it. I'll care about it. And that was a big, that was a big turning point because it forced me to like learn the DAW.

Tyson (11:39.842)

You

Brian Funk (12:07.223)

and how these things work and when they're necessary. And also to realize like I don't need all that other stuff most of the time.

Tyson (12:16.12)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think so much of our attention gets driven. Just like we're bombarded daily with all the marketing. If you go on YouTube for five minutes and you look up any music production tutorial ever, then you're going to be bombarded with waves, advertisements, slight digital advertisements. Anybody who's ever made a plugin ever is going to be advertising to you on YouTube. And so it's so easy to just let that take our attention away from what truly matters. And I think that you hit on a really important point.

is you should always...

focus on the tools you have in front of you and learning those really deeply. Because the minute we get a new plugin, we have to relearn how it works. And we have to relearn all the nuances of that plugin. And so if we are constantly switching between different brands, different plugins, different manufacturers, we lose that ability of knowing one thing really, one tool really deeply. And so oftentimes if you have 10, say bus compressors or something,

and you're compressing your mix buss and you're not sure which one to reach for and you reach for each of them 10 % of the time you're only getting like this deep into how well that plugin could work for you versus you know you could get 10 times the results if you just use that one plugin 99 % of the time except for the one time it doesn't work for whatever reason

Brian Funk (13:39.439)

Yeah, it's so true. Cause you just, you're actually, you think you're making a step forward when you get something new, like, all right, progressing, you know, I got this new thing, but you kind of make it a step backwards. Cause like you said, you have to learn it. There's that learning thing that happens in my early days, like before eBay even, you know, if I bought something from like the guitar center or whatever store it was, like I learned it even if like,

It wasn't the best one or there were other options. I couldn't really go return it. You couldn't really do all the stuff you can do today. You can't just download something new. So there was a lot of like, even like kind of garbagey gear, but I did get good with it because I understood it. And nowadays it's more often the case where you kind of like dip your feet in the water and just kind of get an idea of what it does. And then you're onto the next thing.

Tyson (14:38.458)

Yeah, I would push back though saying that, is that really garbage gear?

Brian Funk (14:38.533)

and not really mastering anything.

Tyson (14:46.104)

because... okay, that's fair. If the intonation's completely off on your guitar, you can't really use it. that effectively...

Brian Funk (14:46.109)

Some of it definitely was, you know, but...

Brian Funk (14:53.351)

Yeah. I mean, I had like some like really lousy multi-effect guitar pedals, but I did learn how to use it. you know, they weren't great pieces of gear, you know, but, to just like kind of know what your gear can do inside and out is. I just, I'm much less often there than I used to be when I didn't have money to buy anything or I didn't have any other means or any other idea that there were other.

Tyson (15:04.944)

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Brian Funk (15:21.052)

versions or styles of things out there.

Tyson (15:24.102)

Yeah, yeah, it definitely limits your scope when you walk into Guitar Center and there's only three options on the wall. So you just pick whichever one feels right at the time. Yeah, one example though, I actually wanted to bring up based on like, you know,

Brian Funk (15:29.607)

Yeah.

Tyson (15:39.0)

We all think the gear is holding us back or at some time. I still some days I'm like, I really wish I had this one piece of gear, really make this mix come together or whatever. But in reality, I know I'm just deceiving myself. there's Metallica is their very first studio album that they recorded and they recorded on tiny Marshall amps. That's all they had to record on. And yet that became the Metallica signature sound down the line. And so that's how they continue

to record their guitars for at least the album after that i'm not sure after that but

It's like the idea though of this gear being not as good can actually result in more unique sounds that nobody else is actually using. So for example, I bought a tape player. It's like, you know, $15, like something I picked up at the thrift store. And I was just playing around with it because I was like recording some vocals. And then I was just like playing around sending, you know, to the crappy little cassette that was inside of there and then back to my DAW. And I was ending up with these like really weird like

sounds and like this awful saturation that was like being added by this really cheap cassette player. But yet I could really come with some really cool sounds using it, even though it's a junk piece of gear comparatively to a $3,000 reel to reel tape player that's actually made for music. So I think that we need to take a step back sometimes, just accept the gear that we have and figure out how can we be creative with this and think outside of the box.

Brian Funk (17:03.818)

Alright.

Brian Funk (17:12.553)

And that's kind of the key word right there is how can we be creative? Because you're limited now, right? That's where creativity is born is through the limitations and overcoming the challenges and obstacles. And yeah, like I wouldn't maybe want to record every track of every song through a tape machine like that, but

I've done the same thing. I've sampled things to there and built instruments out of them through VHS machines or even those like micro cassettes that, know, the little things people used to like record their ideas on. And they have just like a world about them. There's something interesting and place that in your mix of like more modern things. it's, hey, there's something going on there that catches my ear.

Tyson (17:42.182)

yeah.

Brian Funk (18:02.2)

Yeah, bad gear is sort of, it's like a very subjective thing, I guess. It might be bad in this situation, but next time it might be really cool.

Tyson (18:16.586)

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. I think it's also like, you have to keep in mind like what your goal is for that step of the process too. So, you know, if you're recording some vocals, you know, using the example that I had, like recording vocals, sending it to this cassette player and back, right. I, the goal was to be creative and the goal was to have like kind of a unique vocal tone that I've never used before in any other song. And so like that works really well versus if you have like a goal in a mix of

you know, EQing my vocal to be a little bit brighter like that.

technique is not going to work. And so it's all like using the right tool in the right situation, but always keeping in mind like what your goal is, because I find a lot of people are just processing things inside of their mixes or even in the music production front, just like they always compress their vocal like this, just because they always have. And there's no really reason why they should, or maybe somebody told them they should do that and that's why they do it. And so there's no like actual goal behind the move, which I find

Brian Funk (18:49.932)

Hmm. Hmm.

Tyson (19:19.442)

holds a lot of people back from like actually being able to get the quality that they want is because they're just doing something that they were told rather than actually understanding why they're achieving something and what the end goal of that move actually is.

Brian Funk (19:33.583)

That was me to a T. I mean, if I'm being honest, once in a while it still is. there's, I mean, that's what I did so much in the beginning. I had like a, it was, I still have it behind me. It's the, the Alesis 3630 compressor. It's like real, it's like a hundred dollar dual channel compressor from the nineties. And I put it on everything like.

Tyson (19:53.515)

Mm, yeah.

Brian Funk (20:01.837)

I just thought it was supposed to be on everything. You just have to. And I didn't even really understand what it was doing. I I thought it made my songs louder. I thought it made the sounds louder. I didn't understand it's actually turning down the volume. Like look what a compressor really does. but yeah, a lot of things suffered for that. I like how you take a concept like we're talking about compression now, like in your book, you took like a concept like compressing and there's so many ways and there's so many tutorials you can watch and so much like.

Tyson (20:14.972)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:31.478)

you know, really seldom traveled side roads you can learn about with compression, but you did a really nice job kind of breaking it down into just like big picture categories. And I mean, I think that's kind of like what I'm seeing a lot in the book is this, let's look at the big picture. What are we trying to do here? But I think, if you don't mind, maybe just explain your take on compression. Cause I think that was like, just a really eyeopening way to look at it.

Tyson (21:01.408)

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So this is like the one of the easiest ways that I was able to figure out compression for myself, which is why, like, obviously it's in the book. Because forever I was just throwing on a compressor on a track and just like tweaking knobs, like not understanding anything what I was doing. And then it would sound louder at the end. So I think it was better, even though probably what I was doing was

very destructive to whatever audio I was working with. And so there's a couple of things like the baseline that I want people to understand before we dive into the specifics of compression, which is that gain and volume are different things. And I have my own definition for those. I want to explain that before I dive into the actual compression.

Gain is the signal going into a process and then volume is the signal coming out of that process. So using compression as the example here we have gain, say we have a gain of 12 decibels going into our compressor. The goal is to always have 12 decibels of volume coming out of that compressor. So whatever process we do, whether that's

EQ, compression, distortion, saturation, whatever that is, we should always have that volume being equal to the gain coming in, which is also known as gain staging, right? Because oftentimes, if something is louder, we're going to be biased that that's actually a good decision in our song. And the reason why I'm bringing this up in the context of compression is that compression is one of the most notorious...

items where it changes the gain or the changes the volume coming out of that process and it biases us for or against that particular either type of compression or just that compressor in general. And so by having that kind of precursor in the way, then we can actually use compression properly as well as any other move in our mix because we can A, B it and C does it actually make this mix better or worse with that in the frame. So with that said, let's dive into compression.

Tyson (23:03.632)

Compression is broken down into just four basic styles of compression and it all has to do with attack and release. Most people are focused on the threshold and the ratio of how much gain reduction am I getting and while that's an important characteristic of the compressor, it's really not the main point of it because the main point of a compressor is to impact dynamics and there's two types of dynamics when we're thinking about compression in general that we

want to keep in mind. There's macro dynamics and then there's micro dynamics. Macro dynamics is defined as the dynamics or the difference between loudness from note to note.

like one entire word comparatively to another entire word or entire note. Right? And then the micro dynamics is diving into the note specifically. So we have the transient, which is usually the biggest fattest, you know, peak of the note right at the beginning. And then we have the tail, which is right after that. And so the goal of compression is really one of those two things. We're impacting the dynamics from a macro or micro standpoint.

Let's start with macro. So macro standpoint, there is one type of compression that can impact this. And this is what I like to refer to as normalizing or consistent style compression. have a very fast attack. So right when audio crosses that threshold, we're immediately clamping down on the audio signal. And then we have a long release, which means that we're hanging onto that note all the way till the end of the tail. And so what this does is it compresses the entire note and brings it down in volume.

And what that does though is any louder notes that we have in our track, it's going to bring those down and then the quieter notes are not going to be touched at all. So we have a more consistent performance overall from note to note standpoint. And so if we're thinking about say like an EDM track and we have a sampled kick in our track.

Tyson (25:02.136)

There's really no point in using this style of compression on our kick because all it's doing is making the whole thing quieter and then we can use some make up gain and make it loud again. But ultimately we didn't adjust any dynamics in the track because samples are already perfectly dynamic and or perfectly not dynamic, I should say. Perfectly consistent inside of the mix. Yeah. And so taking that second approach into

Brian Funk (25:20.743)

Yeah, consistent. Yeah.

Tyson (25:28.868)

dynamics now is the micro dynamics, the difference between the beginning and ending of a note essentially is the way we can break it down.

the transient and the tail. And so the way that I like to view this is we can either make the transient louder or we can make the tail quieter or vice versa. We can make the tail louder and the transient quieter. And so we can either increase or decrease the amount of dynamics at the micro level, which I think is a very important point to bring up when it comes to compression, because compression is not necessarily always reducing dynamics, which is talked about all the time.

which I see a lot of people say, compression reduces dynamics, so don't use too much of it. But in reality, at the micro level, that's not actually the case, because we can use compression to reduce the tail, make the transient bigger, and that's actually increasing dynamics. We have a greater difference between the beginning and the ending of the note. So diving into the three styles of compression that impact micro dynamics is the easiest one to really think about is thickness style compression. So...

We have a note, we have a big transient, and we have a tail after that, which is quieter. We can use thickness style compression, which is going to be a very fast attack and a fast release. So fast attack is going to grab onto that transient right away and be able to squish down the transient. And then right when it...

is no longer crossing the threshold of the compressor, it's going to let go. And so our tail is going to get bigger. So it's only compressing the transient of the note and leaving the tail completely alone. So essentially, at a macro viewpoint, it's making all of the signal actually fatter. And that's why it's called thickness compression, because it's making everything fat and thick. This is reducing dynamics, though. But it does make things really loud, because humans generally hear stuff from the average volume, not necessarily peak volume.

Tyson (27:18.704)

We don't hear peak volume as humans because our ears aren't that detail oriented in terms of the time to sound ratio, if you will. And so we hear the average volume, which is why thickness oftentimes sounds really good to us initially because it's making things louder.

Which again, goes back to what I said before, is why we want to make sure we're always gain staging, because that can always be... If I'm just adding thickness to everything, and not bothering with anything else, then it's gonna be louder, and so I might think it sounds better, when actually that may or may not have been the right move. Okay, so that's the first style of compression that impacts micro dynamics. And then the second style of compression that...

impacts micro dynamics is punchy style compression. So this is going to be the opposite of thickness. So we have a long attack and a long release. So a long attack is essentially we can control how much of the transient we actually clamp down on once it crosses the threshold, because the assumption is the transients, loudest part of the note, that's what's going to essentially trigger our compressor to start working. So if we have a longer attack, it's going to wait longer before clamping down on it. So we can clamp down on just the tail.

of the note, and then because we have a longer release, we can essentially just focus on the tail for the entire duration of the tail, and so we have a transient that's just being increased in volume essentially as the end result of this tile of compression. Which is going to end up in a more like punchy, more forward feeling track versus thickness, right, is going to kind of push things back because that transient is being pushed down.

The last style of compression is very similar to punchy style, but we have groovy style compression is kind of the best term that I have for it, which is the same as we have a long attack, but we have a very short release. So what this does is it waits until after the transient is passed before it starts clamping down on the track. But then it actually lets go of it right away. And so what you're doing is basically you have this big fat transient and then you're making a scoop.

Tyson (29:24.091)

right behind it and then the end of the tail isn't touched at all. And so it's a very, very quick move, but by doing this really quick kind of dip, it's actually a pumping of the audio signal that you're feeding it. This will actually increase the perception of the transient being way louder. And also it's going to increase the natural dynamics that already exist inside of a track. So this is really great to use on vocals that are a little bit too thick and heavy and they don't have enough dynamics.

or even hi-hats. I will use it 100 % on hi-hats because it increases the natural groove that hi-hats already have so then your overall track can just kind of feel and move a little bit more in the natural dynamics that already exist inside of the track, if that makes sense.

Brian Funk (30:14.116)

that last one, are you listening for almost like a musical time? like, like with the hi-hat, right? Do I want that to kind of move in a rhythm more? Like, okay.

Tyson (30:25.326)

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because you shouldn't hear groovy style compression. It's going to really make your track pump in a bad way if you can hear it specifically. And so I always just try to like add it. If it makes a difference, I can like start to tap my foot a little bit or just like move a little bit more to the music. Like that's a really good groovy style compression, which is another rule essentially that I created for myself and which I...

encourage others to follow as well, is don't compress more than three decibels at any one stage of the process because you'll be tempted to over compress especially at the beginning of your mixing journey because you won't be able to hear compression very well. It's very difficult to hear compression without having mixed for a while, probably years. And so if you just start immediately, I want to be able to hear this, that's fine to be able to dial in your attack and release functions, but then you should back it off until it's only getting again about

three decibels of gain reduction because that's going to be enough that it's going to impact the track, nudge it in the right direction, then you can move on with another style of compression or just another compression in serial, which is going to react more naturally to the music or the track that I'm feeding it to begin with.

Brian Funk (31:42.468)

do that move a lot where I adjust something might even be like a reverb. I'll bring it to where I hear it and just a little less so that I'm not overdoing it. Cause I think so much of this adds up in your mix too. Like you said, if I'm mixing something in the beginning, like, yeah, okay, cool. That sounds good. But once I start applying these things to multiple tracks, like, especially with something like reverb, like now it adds up.

and what sounded good maybe on just a couple tracks gets muddy or, you know, just a little over mixed, overproduced.

Tyson (32:20.646)

Yeah, absolutely. So I like to view like that kind of idea with EQ because

And I use the same rule for EQ as well. So I never boost or cut anything more than three decibels outside of if there's like a real, you know, nasty resonant frequency. That's the one exception that I'll get surgical, cut that out completely. It's fine. But just for big moves, right? I'm only, I limit myself to three decibels. And the reason is let's just use vocals as the example. So I have a vocal track and I boost say the top end by three decibels because, you know, again, I'm being conservative in my move here. And then on say the vocal

bus, I add another plugin which then adds another three decibels to the top end of the vocals. So now I've already added six decibels. Let's say on the mix bus I add another, you know, one or two decibels because my whole mix is a little dark and I want to make it brighter. So now I've added a total of eight decibels to my vocal already on the top end. And then I go to mass swing and then I add another three to four decibels. And so by the end of this process, right, you can see the natural conclusion, even making conservative moves, it ends in a mass

result. And so it's kind of like I think you'd use the analogy of baking bread, which I love that analogy because if you assume that you know baking bread is a function of heat and time

then you can naturally assume that I could bake a loaf of bread in like five minutes as long as I make the oven 1200 degrees. But anybody who's baked a loaf of bread understands that that's just gonna end up with the outside being burnt and the middle that's completely undone, which is the equivalent of making massive moves in your mix right away because you're listening to this reference master that sounds like it has a way more top end on the vocal, but yet you don't recognize that there's six more

Tyson (34:12.185)

more steps to go before you actually reach there. And so, you know, just taking your time, making small moves, nudging things in the right direction over time is going to end up with, you know, that perfectly baked loaf of bread or perfect mix that you're actually looking for.

Brian Funk (34:27.706)

Yeah, baking. Not that I do much of it, but I see the parallels, know, just like, overcooking things, you know, like you can't go back from that. It's so much harder to fix things once you've already done the damage. But it's a good way to think too. It'll keep your sounds from getting unnatural as well. If you're just a little careful about that stuff.

Tyson (34:30.591)

You

Brian Funk (34:54.494)

And I guess it also increases your sensitivity to it. you know, before, like, I still feel like sometimes I'm doing things. like, I don't even know. Like if you turned it off or if I A B it enough times real fast without looking, like sometimes I lose track of what was what was this thing on or off. I don't even hardly know anymore. cause you're just so, again, you're, you're focused so hard on something at that point that

Tyson (35:10.483)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (35:24.322)

It's so hard to hear it as a whole as well. You even just mentioned like the foot tap test is that's one I like a lot. Like if, if I'm moving, I really try to trust what happens with my body a bit. that, okay. Like, can I move to this? Do I feel it? If that starts happening, like, okay, that's good. I got to not ruin that. And sometimes the things like compressors, can really suck the movement out of a song.

Tyson (35:55.69)

Yeah, absolutely.

I have a hard time doing that, like just personally, I have a really hard time doing that test very much. Like I think groovy compression is like one of the few times where it actually like works for me. But because naturally I'm a very like analytical person and I don't really like get it if you will, in terms of like the vibe check of a lot of people like, like, you know, does it, does it feel good? And it's like, I don't, I don't know. And just cause like I'm all stuck up in my head and I'm like, I don't, I don't know how like this is going to translate anywhere else. Like I just.

Brian Funk (36:20.457)

Yeah.

Tyson (36:27.194)

I have a really hard time like personally with that like

test, if you will. So I always like, am looking for the, like, okay, what is the goal? Like, what is the objective standard here that I can use in this situation to be able to then end up with a far better result in the end? Because I know like what the end goal is over here, which is again, like really the crux of my whole like philosophy around mixing and mastering is that there is an objective truth, which is what I adopted to my for my own mixes and masters to be able to get them to that level, which some people are approaching it from the very opposite

standpoint, which I think that that actual like objective approach is very good for people who do approach things from a little bit more creative standpoint because they get stuck in the creativity and they there's because there's kind of two sides to this whole process of there's the creatives and they're usually really good at, you know, songwriting and production and like getting that the arrangement overall. And then there's the more like analytical objective side of of people that are generally better at mastering, especially, but also mixing.

Brian Funk (37:12.483)

Hmm.

Tyson (37:31.04)

Even leaning more into the editing standpoint as well And so there's basically two parts that you have to if you're doing everything yourself as like a bedroom producer you have to master some aspect of both of those which is the you creative side but yet also this analytic more analytical side and I in my experience people tend to very much lean one way or the other right and so I have a student right now for example and he's very very much the creative like he's all focused on like okay, know what is like tonality that this is chord bring to the

song, things like that. and then, but when he's like mixing, he's like trying to approach it from the same mindset and it really holds him back. And he tries to, again, like we were talking about making massive moves in the mix. And then it ends up just harming his tracks overall and really ruining what was great about the song and versus just like letting it breathe a little bit, making smaller moves and just letting it kind of go through the process. And then it's going to end up far better. The fewer moves we actually do to the track and actually going to retain that kind of creativity.

initial spark that we actually had to begin with.

Brian Funk (38:34.98)

Yeah, that's a good thing to know about yourself. I'm definitely on the more creative fun side, which is why my turn it up until I notice it and then drop it is sort of like a, you know, self-awareness thing that I know I want to hear that like weird effect, but I want to hear it a little too much. I'm going to let me just chill on it a little so that we have something that's a little more acceptable.

Tyson (39:01.813)

Yeah, I mean, think that just comes with experience, though, right? It's like, how long did it take you to figure out, like, you were over overdoing stuff before you started to notice that and then, you know, drag it back?

Brian Funk (39:09.635)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:13.147)

Yeah, a long time. I was really surprised with how much, you know, like something like vocal effects, reverbs on vocals. I would think I had these like really cool sounds, but then people would tell me like, I can't understand what you're saying. It's like, yeah, that's, I guess that's part of it, huh?

Tyson (39:28.954)

Yeah. Yeah, I had, I...

You have really good trick for you you want a lot of effects on your vocal, but you don't, you still want your vocal upfront, is I, I'm a huge fan of slapback delays, which are kind of like a weird, right? Most people don't think about slapback delays very much, but I'm a huge fan. The reason is because you can delay your effects using slapback delays. So what I'll do almost a hundred percent in all my mixes is I'll have my vocal and then I'll add a slapback delay and then I'll, I'll change the left and right channel a little bit.

Brian Funk (39:44.037)

Mm-hmm.

Tyson (40:03.175)

So for example, I'll have the right delay be 120 milliseconds and then the left delay maybe 90 milliseconds, right? So it creates this stereo image of the vocal, but it's right after the main vocal. So.

Just for context, most humans can't really tell a difference with anything less than about 50 milliseconds. And so you need to get kind of over that hump. And then you can create, create enough distance that there's a distinct like echo rather than just, it sounds like reverb or almost something like that. And so, but once you have that set into place, then you can actually process that separately. So oftentimes I'll just like make it thicker, a little bit darker, you know, adds me cue and then put your effects on that though.

you can actually add a ton of reverb if you want to that effect and it's separate enough from the main vocal that your main vocal is going to sit nice up front and personal, but yet still have this like really nice like wet background. And especially if you're cognizant of creating that depth of just like, you know, making it darker with EQ, making it quiet enough that it actually sits back in the mix as well as, you know, making it thicker with maybe some saturation distortion or compression using that thickness style compression that we were talking about earlier.

then you can really make that effect push back in the mix, but it can still be really, really present and really, really wet and still add that texture that you're looking for, but still keep your vocal nice up front and personal. So maybe you can try that if you want.

Brian Funk (41:28.552)

Hmm. I like that idea. I I love a slap back. It reminds me of like Elvis or, you know, early recordings where they had a lot of that going on. but I never really thought to treat it, you know, as a separate thing and then put all the fun on there. And that's a great idea. sometimes what I'll do is like some side chain compression on the effects. So it kind of ducks it when I'm, the words are actually happening.

And then as soon as they go away, kind of fix back up. And that can work well too. But I like this idea. I'm going to play around with the, yeah, just fool around with the slap back. And like you said, you've got enough space so that you hear it. And then by coloring it, dulling it out a little bit, set it back a bit. That's cool. It's a fun thing I got to try.

Tyson (42:22.686)

Yeah, mean, and the main, yeah, the main reason why it works is that human, like in natural spaces that we're used to being in, like, you know, a church or a room or whatever, like that natural, predelay. the difference between the direct sound and the actual like first inklings of reverb, the biggest room that we're used to hearing is probably about 30 milliseconds. And so if we go beyond that and no longer sounds like reverb attached to that main element, it's just its own type of like entity back in the background as well. So although.

Brian Funk (42:46.506)

you

Tyson (42:52.619)

It's funny that you mentioned sidechain compression because I really don't like sidechain compression. One of my students, he's an EDM producer and he makes fun of me all the time from my hatred of sidechain compression because the reason why I don't like it, granted the use case that you're talking about, perfectly legitimate, totally fine, I would argue though that maybe you need to revisit your EQ of your reverb because that's what's actually going to create the separation and the preventing.

Brian Funk (43:05.578)

You

Tyson (43:22.569)

of that masking the main vocal while still being very present in the mix. And so I would encourage you to look at the overall sonic balance that you have in your mix, so all the frequencies, like look to see where it's weak and then put your reverb in that section because that means that there's room enough in the mix for that sonic character to exist as well as you're likely not going to be covering up your main vocal if that's what you're adding your reverb to. So I think that a lot can be done before we reach for sidechain.

Brian Funk (43:25.567)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (43:37.374)

Okay.

Tyson (43:52.444)

sidechain should be like a last resort and it's more of a stylistic choice rather than a utilitarian move which is why what I find a lot of people doing is you know or the the other example is you're kicking your bass right I want to create some separation between my kick and my bass and so I'm just gonna throw a sidechain compressor on my bass link it to the kick and then my bass is gonna be out of the way every single time my bass or my kick comes in which I think there's better ways to do that through especially EQ and just separating those

Brian Funk (43:59.18)

Mm-hmm.

Tyson (44:22.337)

Thanks.

entirely frequency wise so that we're not needing to resort to this other thing that's going to impact like the actual style of the song. Again, if that's your goal, so like use it as a stylistic thing, then by all means, like absolutely have at it. But it's just from, I find people overuse it in a utilitarian standpoint, which I just like, again, it's like one of my soap boxes. very, very opposed to it because I just feel like people aren't utilizing the tools EQ compression that they actually have to be able to create that

Brian Funk (44:47.073)

Yeah.

Tyson (44:53.323)

separation first.

Brian Funk (44:55.584)

Yeah, it makes sense. It's like kind of a, you get like your cake and eat it too almost. It's what you're trying to do. I mean, I've, I've used it for those reasons. Sometimes there's like a rhythmic thing that happens. That's kind of interesting. I think that's a big part of a lot of EDM. They're, they're going for that kind of like, a kind of like a interaction, but I've taken some of that into like guitars too, where

So I can have like my rhythm guitar still living in those frequencies, but then the lead kind of pushes it down a little. That sounds like the kind of thing you're objecting to.

Tyson (45:37.23)

Yeah, yeah, I would say.

Mostly, I think there's also like a lot you can do is just automation too. Cause if you have, you know, like this whole section, right. And like, instead of reaching for that side chain compressor, you could just automate the volume down a decibel or so. And it's going to achieve the same end result. I just think it's risky to use compression because you're inherently adding more harmonics to that signal while you're compressing it, as well as like you have an unknown like input to that. Granted, if your vocal is very consistent in using that as an example, like that would

Brian Funk (45:44.728)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (46:07.843)

Right.

Tyson (46:11.655)

be less risky or a kick drum is especially not very risky because you know exactly what the input of that coming in is and so you know exactly how much gain reduction you're going to get. But in other scenarios if you're linking it to like a lead guitar like they can have some like low-end harmonics that all of sudden are really super loud and then it's going to duck your rhythms even more than you wanted to. And so in my mind it's just risky to do that. It's not necessarily wrong like inherently but it's just I don't think the risks

Brian Funk (46:32.856)

Hmm.

Tyson (46:40.975)

outweigh the benefit that you get from those types of moves.

Brian Funk (46:44.421)

Yeah. Well, it's a good point too, that, some of those frequencies that we're not really hearing, we hear them, but like, they're not the main things you focus on. They do add up and they affect the way the compressor reacts. Like you said, like some, might be playing really high lead part, every once in a while I might do like a, you know, a muted string or something. And that's like lots of low end that's gonna, you know, do, do some damage to that guitar.

Tyson (47:13.167)

Yeah. Or I mean, even if you're just like, you know, sliding up into like a part, right? Cause that you're starting low, like that those are going to be way louder, especially on that bottom end. And that's, know, even looking at a mix overall, generally you're, you're thinking about that of the low end takes up so much room in the mix. It's, it's honestly very, very loud in the modern mixing context, because even though it's an equal power with, or should be an equal power with, you know, say the mid range or upper mids, there's just less room because these waves are so much bigger down.

Brian Funk (47:16.709)

Mm-hmm.

Tyson (47:43.17)

low end and so if you have you know a bass part right that's really low it's probably gonna take up more space in your mix the lower it goes because inherently I always like to think of like a mix that's shaped like a V so you in the bottom end of the V you have like all of your low end and there's just like no space down here because you can have like maybe your kick in your bass and maybe 808 or you know something else down there but it's very very limited and versus in the top end I can add as much elements at the you nine

to 10k region as I want because there's just so much space up there the difference between you know 10 kilohertz and 10.1 kilohertz is still 100 Hertz which is more space than we have in the entire sub region of the mix.

Brian Funk (48:26.0)

Right. Hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. I like that visual too. It's like, I think about that kind of stuff a lot. My visual is more like a canvas on a painting and almost just like you're looking at your frequency spectrum and you want everything to be like thick and bassy, but that's like painting your house in the left side and your tree on the left side and everything's covering that area of the

you know, the frequency range. you can, gotta move things around. Do you do a lot of cutting of low end on things that aren't those types of, you know, bass instruments?

Tyson (49:07.112)

Yeah, because that's yeah, that would be the natural conclusion right is You should cut out all the low end and all the other elements I don't most of the time unless there's a very obvious issue like say I have a rhythm guitar or something that just has way too much, know 60 Hertz in it. Yeah, I'm probably gonna cut that out, but I

I try not to, and then I only do it if there's an actual issue that is running into the mix. Because I find that most of the time when we start high passing everything and just start cutting out all the low end, all of our elements start to sound really weak and thin, and especially using guitars as the example, because that's a very common one, like let's high pass it all the way up to 100 hertz. But there's a lot of energy at like that 90, 80 hertz range that isn't very loud in a guitar, but does give

some of that like just chunky meaty character that we still want to have in the mix. And vocals are another example where I see a lot of people just high passing those all the way to 200 hertz or something. There's a lot of energy in a vocal around 100 hertz or 150 hertz that if our vocal sounds really thin and weak, we can actually boost there sometimes and it'll just fill out the vocal and sound really nice and rich. And so if we're just high passing all of those, especially automatically, then we're sacrificing a lot of the

tone that would otherwise be present in the mix, even very quiet, it's still there and it still adds up over time.

Brian Funk (50:35.932)

I guess that's like you said, automatically that's like kind of the whole theme here is like do things with purpose, not just because you heard you're supposed to cut all the low frequencies. Are you supposed to compress everything or you have to understand why you're doing it. It's definitely that comes up in the book all the time, which is great. Like it's. It's like, here's a lot of things you can do a lot of ways you can get here, but think about why, like why are we doing this?

Tyson (50:39.514)

Right.

Tyson (50:53.584)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (51:06.728)

That's, I guess so many things, right? Intentionality. And I mean, sometimes the best thing you do with your mix is just adjust the volume faders, I find. That's the number one tool, really, right? Like the volume.

Tyson (51:23.888)

Yeah, absolutely. I always like to bring that, because I talk about volume all the time, because it is the most critical. It's the biggest lever you absolutely have in your mix to be able to get. Yeah, yeah, just make your text bigger and it'll automatically make them bigger there. Yeah, so but I love the analogy of John Wooden. you do you follow basketball at all?

Brian Funk (51:33.064)

That should be way bigger, right? I should take them like half the screen.

Brian Funk (51:48.948)

not a lot. Not enough to know who that is, no.

Tyson (51:51.61)

Okay, okay, so John Wooden, I'm not really into basketball, but I love John Wooden because he's a cool character in the world of basketball. So he was a coach at UCLA during the 60s and 70s, and he was the head coach for 12 years, and of the 12 years he was the head coach, he won the NCAA title 10 times. So he's the most, you know, the...

like objectively the best basketball coach of the 20th century in the US or at the collegiate level at least. And what's fascinating about this story is that not only like his levels of success and achievement that he was able to get but the way he started each season was he would bring all his players into the court and they would know it'd be warming up and shooting hoops whatever and then he would come out and he would have them all sit down

and then he would sit down in the middle of the court, he'd take off his shoes, and he would start to demonstrate how you put on your shoes. Because he knew that how you did the smallest things, and how you did that first step of the whole mindset of the game of basketball, was how you were going to do everything else.

And so while most freshmen going into that team, knowing the record that they had, probably thought like, we're going to learn some really advanced tips and tricks, or like, that's what we expect the...

producers of the world to tell us when we hire them, know, spend an hour with CLA or whoever and you're gonna think, okay, they're gonna tell me something super like wacky, like some industry secret that I don't know. And most of them are focused on these basics. They're focused on volume. They're focused on just basic EQ compression. like that was the moment for me as well of...

Tyson (53:38.641)

I talked to hundreds of mixing engineers, mastering engineers when I was first getting started and like wanted to do this as a freelance gig. And so I was just talking to everybody I possibly could. And that was the theme that came up again and again and again is like, well, like all these tips and tricks, all these advanced things that I have learned on YouTube don't actually matter. but it's not nearly as sexy to say that. So they probably don't perform as well, on YouTube. So, but you know, using the John Wooden, like keep that in mind of like these basic things do matter.

Brian Funk (53:58.775)

Hmm.

Right.

Tyson (54:08.571)

and they end up being the best of the best. Like one quote that I love is, the advanced is just the basics taught at an advanced level. Like that's really all it is. It's just the basics done really well is what creates advanced levels of anything, like whether that's golf or basketball or mixing and mastering.

Brian Funk (54:30.392)

Yeah, those fundamentals. Well, Tyson, I know it's a time to go, so I don't want to keep you too long, but we should shout out your site, objectivemixing.com and the book, The Objective Mix, which is a great read. It's practical. It's an easy language to understand. Still gets kind of technical, but not any more than necessary, I'd say.

Tyson (54:39.903)

us.

Tyson (55:01.063)

Thanks, Brian.

Brian Funk (55:01.557)

Anywhere else you'd to send people?

Tyson (55:03.816)

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. It was super fun. I loved chatting with you. And then, yeah, I created a nice freebie for all of your listeners. And so you can get that at objectivemixing.com slash funk. I will leave two things for you. So the first thing is the cheat sheet for the compression stuff. So if you're trying to rewatch this episode and try to like learn how all those compressor compression styles work, just, just download the guide instead. It's at

Brian Funk (55:07.523)

Thanks for being here.

Tyson (55:34.02)

theobjectivemix.com slash funk, F-U-N-K. And then also I'm going to include a free course in there. It's just the overview of the five objective standards that you need to be hitting in your mix for it to be industry standard. And that's just, again, all free just for watching this episode and being a part of Brian's community.

Brian Funk (55:54.042)

That's so nice of you. Thank you. I can't wait to check it out myself. Awesome. So great. Yeah, everybody check it out, the objective mix. And thanks for listening. Have a great day.

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