Improving Your Mixes With Distortion - Mike Senior

Mike Senior's Expert Tracking & Mixing Tips

Distortion can be a surprisingly useful mix effect, if you know what you're doing. Mike Senior reveals several common applications, and explains how to get the best results in practice.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction

00:49 - Distortion for tonal change

01:27 - Bringing sounds up front

03:30 - Combatting upper-spectrum masking

06:07 - Distorting rock lead vocals

09:56 - Distorting bass

13:16 - Practical implementation tips

Credits
This month's episode features audio examples from the following productions:

* Alex Giddens: 'Get Blown'

Read about my mix of this project in Sound On Sound's October 2009 'Mix Rescue' column at https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-rescue-alex-giddens

* Flags: '54'

Download the full raw multitracks from https://cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/#Flags

Read about my mix of this project in Sound On Sound's March 2011 'Mix Rescue' column at https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-rescue-flags

* Zeno: 'Signs'

Download the full raw multitracks from https://cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/#Zeno

Read about my mix of this project in Sound On Sound's March 2010 'Mix Rescue' column at https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-rescue-zeno

* Actions: 'Devil's Words'

Download the full raw multitracks from https://cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/#Actions

For lots more mixing tips and audio examples relating to this project, listen to the February 2018 Cambridge-MT Patrons Podcast for free at https://www.patreon.com/posts/17201141

Mike Senior Biog

Mike Senior is a professional audio engineer, regular SOS contributor, and author of the best-selling books Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio & Recording Secrets For The Small Studio. He runs the Cambridge-MT educational resources site (including the web's largest free multitrack download library) and hosts two monthly independent podcasts, Project Studio Tea Break and the Cambridge-MT Patrons Podcast.

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts