Lead Instruments Mastering And Mixing

Lead sounds do what they say on the tin. Together with vocals they form the landmarks ot our track's skyline and are meant to stand out and be recognisable – so you should EQ, process and mix them accordingly. Be careful of effects that push them into the background, like chorus or too much phasing and make sure you have compressed them well to achieve a consistent sound that cuts through the mix. Too much stereo panning, too, can drug a sound down into the mix in a hurry. Even common effects like reverb and delay can mask a lead, so use them carefully, bring them up slowly and constantly compare their placement to similar sounds in other pro-produced tracks. The other thing to remember is that adding EQ boost to your lead to make it stand out fram a busy backdrop might not work as well as some Judicious EQ cut from the tracks in the background…

Bringing processed guitars into the mix

1. The most common effect for searing guitar leads is a distortion. There are many great amp emulation plug-ins and virtual stompboxes out there, but here we're using a basic overdrive plug-in. To give our sound width, we've also added a stereo spreader.

2. To give our guitar bite in the mid-range we have two options – EQ or resonant filtering. To give our track more personality, we use low-pass filtering, setting ttie Resonance to 34% and sweeping the Cutoff frequency until we like the sound. Then we low cut below 270HZ for clarity.

3. Finally we add a touch of warmth with vintage Warmer (especially important for guitars and other sounds with Vintage' connotations). After that we simply add a touch of tape delay to fill things out a little. You can also use reverb, but keep the tall short enough…

Mixing natural guitar sounds

1. Our guitar has passed through a Line 6 POD but is still quite clean, and we want to retain that. First we insert a compressor with a slow Attach and Release and then a little Vintage Warmer compression tuned to around 8kHz to emphasise the sound of each string being plucked.

2. Next we add a small amount of plate reverb with a very short tall to give the guitar a more real-world sound, and a tiny amount of tape delay to lengthen the notes. Our sound is to be set a little back in the mix, so we also add some chorus.

3. А stereo spreader is next along with another analogue-style compressor with relatively soft settings to bring out the reverb and tape delay. All that's left is a low cut at lOOHz to tidy up the unwanted frequencies. Finally, we do an A-B comparison with and without our chorus effect.

Fitting synths in the mix

1. Synth processing always starts with the synth itself. So here we detune our two oscillators, adjust their relative accent controls and pan them hard left and right. We then add a little of the synth's built-in reverb. The resulting sound is now already bright and wide.

2. Next we apply a low-cut filter and remove everything below lOOHz to keep our mix headroom intact. Our lead is playing the same riff as our bassllne, otherwise we might experiment with a higher cutoff frequency. After the cut we apply Sonic Maximizing to the treble for clarity.

3. Аnу other effects at this point might delract from the impact of our lead – especially an additional stereo spreader or panning, so we leave our lead synth mired and lust add a little compression with a 5ms Attack id 92ms Release to emphasise the attack of the notes.

Mixing keyboard sounds

1. If you're using an instrument with a plucked-sounding attack, you'll most likely want mat sound, so to ensure that it comes out in the mix. Apply a compressor first to accentuate the pluck. We've also added Sonic Maximizing to the treble, and some Vintage Wanner limiting for warmth.

2. Then we apply a stereo spreader, followed by a tape delay with low Feedback to fill it out a little and give the riff a syncopated feel. Next we insert a low-pass filter with a classic 12dB slope and set the Resonance to about 39% so that any filter sweeps will sound interesting.

3. Our sound is a lead but is not the lead, so we push it a little further back in the mix with phasing. We first apply a low cut to clean it up. Followed by a phaser and, lastly, a compressor with a high Ratio to flatten out the severe aliasing-induced volume fluctuations.