Mixing And Mastering Orchestral Music

Improving the sound quality.

Mixing and mastering are processes that improve the sound quality of your song. Both are art forms that take years and years to master (no pun intended!).

There are dedicated mixing and mastering engineering professions. People dedicate their entire careers to making music productions sound the best way possible.

Nowadays, more and more composers produce their own music from home without hiring a mixing or mastering engineer. 

In most cases, you'll be doing it yourself.

Therefore, this chapter will introduce the basic steps in mixing and mastering. You'll get a rough idea of what you'll be doing when mixing and mastering your own first track.

What is mixing vs. mastering?

• Mixing is about balancing the levels and frequencies on an individual track level and then ensuring they all fit and sound well together. During the mixing stage, you adjust the volume faders so that all elements are audible the way you intend them ("gain staging"). Composers often use equalizers to fine-tune individual instruments by cutting or boosting specific frequencies. Other plugins can also be applied to shape the sound of individual tracks to taste (e.g. delay, compression, etc.).
• Mastering is the final step in creating your song or album. It involves making adjustments to the entire song on the master channel to make sure everything sounds consistent at a high level. The ultimate goal of mastering is to refine the composition and make it sound loud, clear, and polished.

Although mixing and mastering are separate processes, especially in home productions, they often blend into one.

Preparing your MIDI: Timings, velocities, dynamics

Before we start mixing, you can do a few things to ensure your MIDI is in top shape. First, it's important to go track by track and inspect the timing and velocities of your MIDI notes.

Solo one or a group of tracks and listen closely with the metronome activated to spot any timing inconsistencies.

Be especially mindful about sample delay, and make sure your instruments don't lag behind. Use your DAW's negative track delay or nudge the MIDI notes to compensate for it. We learned about this concept in the DAW chapter of the guide.

_{Cinematic Studio Strings Cello spiccatos. Notes are on the grid, but too late because of the sample delay:}

_{Applied negative track delay. The notes are in time now:}

Next, you should check the velocity of each note, especially the tracks with short articulations. 

Are the accentuated notes emphasized correctly? Are the overall intensity levels okay? 

Adjust single notes or the entire line until it sounds about right.

Finally, before we get into mixing, ensure all your sustain and legato tracks have proper dynamics curves.

_{Flute legato without dynamic curve:}

_{Flute legato with dynamic curve:}

Phrase melodies realistically, with swells and movement to make them sound convincing and evocative.

Mixing basics

Volume Balancing ("Gain Staging")

Next, we want to balance the volume of each instrument. 

Many orchestral sample libraries already have great consistency, especially when using libraries from the same developer. In that case, you'll often do only minor volume adjustments or none because it was already done for you inside the library.

But let's assume you're mixing libraries from different developers. Maybe it's a hybrid orchestral composition with synths and perhaps even a live recorded instrument such as a cello line. In these cases, volume balancing is necessary.

With orchestral music, there can be up to 100 instrument tracks (or more!) which makes it hard to balance all tracks with each other. Instead, I suggest gain staging with the following steps:

1. Solo one section only (e.g. your strings tracks violin 1, violin 2, violas, cellos, double basses)
2. Play back (or loop) a part of your composition where all instruments are playing
3. Turn down their volume faders to 0

1. Now, turn up the volume of one instrument to a moderate level. You can start with the double basses, for example. Don't go to the full 0dB volume because we should leave some headroom for the mastering stage.
2. Turn up the volume of the second instrument, e.g. the cellos, and balance them against the double basses.
3. Continue with the other instruments of the section: the violas and violins, and fine-tune until your strings sound like a convincing section playing together in the same room.

Once your strings section volume is balanced, do the same for the brass instruments. Now that you have two balanced sections, you can solo the strings and the brass folder buses and balance the sections against each other,without adjusting the individual instruments.

Next, balance the woodwind instrument tracks, and then solo the woodwinds bus to balance it against the strings and brass. You get the idea! :)

At the end of this process, you should have an excellent volume balance throughout the entire orchestra, even if you used sample libraries from different developers recorded in different spaces.

Compression

Compression makes a track sound more consistent, louder, punchy, and controlled. 

A compressor levels out differences in volume between notes: Imagine your song as a waveform.

With compression, someone squishes the waveform between their hands, from the top and bottom sides. The loud parts become quieter, and the quiet parts become louder. It evens out the song, and there are fewer volume jumps.

This explanation is very simplistic. There is a lot more you can do with compression, but because many beginner composers struggle to understand and utilize compressors, we will keep it basic for now.

_{Percussion without compressor:}

_{Same percussion with compressor. The sound is slightly more controlled, glued together and energized:}

You can apply compression:

• on an individual instrument level to even out the dynamics e.g. in a solo violin performance
• on an orchestral section like the strings to make it sound more like a cohesive unit
• on the master level to even out the volume difference throughout the entire song.

Equalization

An equalizer (EQ) is one of the most essential tools for mixing and mastering music. It allows you to adjust the volume of each frequency band in an instrument track or the entire song.

In orchestral music, EQs serve one crucial main function: Making space. 

Allowing the dozens of instruments to sit next to each other in the frequency spectrum without drowning each other out. 

For example, you might want to remove the low frequencies of a violin. Violins are high instruments, but still, there will be a bit of rumble and noise in the low frequencies that can make your lower-pitched instruments, like cellos, sound less clear.

_{High violins with lots of low-frequency noise and rumble:}

_{Removing noise with a low-cut filter makes the violins sound clearer:}

And since an orchestra has so many instruments, these frequencies will build up and lead to an overcrowded, "muddy" mix, where the instruments overlap and fight each other. 

Muddiness in the mix is one of the biggest challenges for most beginning orchestral producers.

So, what can you do?

There are many things. It's a complex problem that requires experience and good problem-solving skills.

But one thing you can do is: Apply an EQ to each, or at least on your piece's most prominent, instruments. 

For high-pitched instruments like flutes, violins, or trumpets, apply a low-cut filter (or "high-pass" same thing, different name). Remove all frequencies to a certain point where it starts to influence the instrument's sound.

You want to eliminate the inaudible noise but not change the instrument's sound. 

You can also reduce the mids and higher frequencies for low-pitched instruments like double basses, tubas, or contrabassoons, when you want to give them more a bassy-percussive feel and reduce some of their tonal character.

Be careful with this, because low instruments often contain large parts of their tonality in the mid (or even higher) frequencies.

EQs can also boost or remove specific frequencies with precision. Imagine the EQ as a scalpel with which you can surgically remove harsh frequencies from an instrument. 

You may want to do this due to poor recording with actual noise in a particular frequency area or creatively shaping the instrument's sound.

Space (Panning, Reverb, Delay)

In music, and even more so when an orchestra is involved, it is necessary to space out instruments throughout the virtual stage to provide an exciting listening experience:

Panning is used to placing sounds left and right in the stereo field. You can use it to add depth to your mix and make your music sound more immersive. It's also helpful in creating separation between instruments when you want to emphasize certain parts of the song. 

Listen to any of your favorite sounds with headphones.

You will notice that some instruments or vocals come from the left and others from the right side of your head.

Reverb is an effect that creates a sense of space by adding - well - reverb (a sort of hall effect) to a track. This can be useful when you want your music to seem recorded in a large space like a concert hall or church. This is particularly important with orchestral compositions usually recorded in larger halls. But even a short reverb for a studio-type of room helps make a track sound more realistic. 

_{No reverb:}

_{Reverb (Seventh Heaven):}

Orchestral libraries often come with internal reverbs. But when mixing several libraries with each other, it often makes sense to deactivate the internal reverb and add a third-party reverb that blends them together.

Delay creates echoes that bounce off surfaces such as walls or ceilings. You can use delay creatively to add atmosphere to your hybrid synths, vocals, or solo instruments. Feel free to experiment!

There are a ton of other effects you can use for mixing. Some effects improve a track's overall tone and clarity (e.g. exciters or transient shapers).

Others add creative nuances for a more interesting sound (e.g. distortion and filters).

Mastering basics

Mastering is the final stage in the production process and is applied to the master channel that affects all tracks of your song. It's where you take all your mixes, put them together, and make sure they sound good.

Mastering can be done at any point during the production process. Still, it's generally best to wait until after everything else is done and then go back and master everything.

Like mixing, mastering often uses EQ and compression to ensure that everything sounds nice and tidy and that the overall volume level is consistent throughout the song or album.

_{Full orchestra (unmastered):}

_{Full orchestra (mastered):}

It's like leveling all your bookshelves at home: no matter which book you pick up, it'll all be at eye level, not too high or too low. Imagine people come over and have something to read while they're waiting for you to finish your monologue about that exciting last sample library purchase. They'll be able to pick up a book and read it without having to adjust the height of their nose to see what's written on the page.

Mastering also takes care of the overall stereo balance of your track, meaning how far the sound spreads between the left and right stereo signals.

Lastly, a limiter is an essential tool for mastering. Limiters boost the volume of your song without clipping or distorting the sound. This will make your song sound fuller and more professional.

Conclusion

Mixing and mastering are not the same, but they are often done together. Mixing is the process of balancing each track to make sure all tracks sound great together and that there's no unwanted noise or distortion. Mastering is what happens after you've finished mixing all your songs.

It usually involves adjusting levels, EQ settings, and effects settings until it sounds perfect for distribution or streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music.

Congratulations! You've made it through the entire Beginner's Guide to Orchestral Music Production! Now it's time for the fun part – applying it.

The most important thing to remember is that practice makes perfect. If you want to be a composer, you need to put in the time and effort, but it will be worth it!

And remember: it's not about having perfect pitch or being able to copy a melody right off the bat. It's about understanding how music is made and how you can use those tools to create your own compositions.

So what are your next steps? 

Practice! Apply the tips and tricks from this guide to your first orchestral composition, and see where they take you. 

And if you're feeling stuck, join the Become A Pro Composer Discord community and let us help you!

Good luck on your musical journey! You're not alone :)