I watched this video with steve duda last night and he was saying how the faders are the most (by a long shot) important part of mixing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjvrHOARC00

Theres the video, i watched all three parts and instantly learnt stuff that improved my mix on a wip instantly.

Is "producer crush" a thing? Because if is, I do have it for Steve Duda. That sentense about outmixing students without external plugins ... this should be carved into a stone! ...especially on forums like this where everyone's searching for all that "magic plugins" that make their mixes professional. There. Are. Not. Any.

Sombody invite this guy on this forum.

That's harmonics of the sound. Every non-sinewave sound has them. You're interested in the lowest sinewave, that's your fundamental.
Also usually (unless you did something crazy with keytracking) sounds have the same pitch at any octave. Try to play it in higher octave and see if the tuner picks it up.
If not, find frequency analyser that allows you to crank FFT window so high you'll see fequencies not as a "hill" but almost as a "line". That should help you tune it by analyser.

Oh, there is this funny piece of advice I heard in one episode of Pensado's Place: "Of course faders need to move. That's the reason why "to mix" is a verb."

...if you study how mixing was done before digital age, you find out that they had this big analogue mixing consoles with usually a 4 band eq, simple compressor and panning on each channel. Nothing more. They needed to get away with it. Also, they needed to record it to tape. No undos, no saving etc... So they got in the room with the musicians and they (not kidding) rehersed the mix as the band was playing. They took notes over fader volume changes they needed to do throughout the song and eventually made a final version on the last take.

Another example: Professional studios still do what's called "riding a vocal" which means to record an automation over vocal to emphasize good parts and supress unwanted ones. (Essentially do what compressor would do, but manually, so you can decide over each detail of the performance yourself.)

So yeah, volume automation something you shouldn't fear. I get that with tons of layers and complex structures, achieving that balance is prescious, but that shouldn't scare you off when some automation is needed.

Pan is difficult. I'm usually not a fan long term pan change (quick effects are ok), but that's subjective. It might work for you.

There's a guitar tuner in Live 9.5. It should work on synths as well.

Discussions like this are about transcription of those buzzwords into something technically exact.

- Width means usually difference between left and right ear. Panning obviously, some enhancers might help, bud don't go crazy with them.
- Giving it a space usually mean (when speaking about stereo space, not frequency space) to place it somewhere between left and right. ...again comes down to simple panning.
- Depth is more difficult buzzword. It can mean volume balance, it can me psychoacoustic "reminiscense" of distance (which is closely conected to frequency band you instument is most active in), it can mean placement of the instrumen in a reverb, or if you're really experimental, it can mean playing with HRTF stuff. (Not recommanded though. Makes difference just on headphones and it screws with phases and frequency content of your instrments.)

Hope it helped a bit.

Or you can use relative scales. If it's in F major (probably ment that way) it means it works well in D minor.

@auvic: OT, but your music is awesome, btw.

I get what your'e saying and agree a lot. I have similar bias, but in my case it's against out-of key notes. Unless it's very well incorporated into the progression (speaking about Pirates Of Carrbiean? ) I can tell it's there and don't like it for some reason. Threre are whole music styles based on harmonic modulation and switching between scales I jus't canť force myself to like. Dunno why. So I totally agree on "If it sound's goot, it's good." saying being kinda wrong. I was illustrating that in a different thread lately on example of my otherwise really good friend who considers Coldplay's music as having no emotion at all, which I can't dissagree with more. Why is that? Who the hell knows.

Also I hear you about the message. Loved that example about hip hop. I experience the same thing. I don't get this alfa-male ego driven hip hop at all. ...a different friend tried to tell me one time it's ment sarcastically. Right... But then you can find rap that talks about ideas, stories, rap with actuall message which is in my eyes pure gold. ...but not so popular for some reason.

Sometimes, when people try to define art, they throw in this quote (can't remember the author): Piece of art is when it has no other purpose than it's own existence. ...interesting quote but in my opinion biggest bull**it anyone said about art ever. Art, especially music, can inspire you, educate you, make you feel better. Some songs can even save lifes. It's ALL about that message in my opinion.

I used to think progressive house is this light chilled trancy-stabs filled stuff you might find on mr. SuicideSheep once in a while. I liked it that way. ...but now it's used to describe Garrix-ish multi-layer epic-esque bigger than life things. So I must admit, I'm lost in this, but ... also ... kinda don't care either.