Mixing outside of RW

[Muddhole]

I was just wondering if anyone else is trying this method as I am now doing to see if I can get a better mix of my music I create in RW. After creating aroung 50 songs or so and mixing them down to MP3's, I'm finding it "hit-N-miss" with how well the song sounds on my car stereo. Although I am using headphones, I think I have a good mix and expecting to hear incredible results, but when I play it through my car stereo I sometimes get dissapointed. So I thought of this other way after seeing a friend do this with his recording equipment and discovered a way to do it with RW. I love RW and the way you can just re-record when you make a mistake, but it's very difficult to get a good final mix when using just RW.

After creating all the riffs be it vocals, guitar, bass, and the choice of drummer ID's for each riff. I then (as usual) lay out each riff on the song layer.

Then...

I silence everything except for the drums and mix that down to a 16 or 24 bit (your choice) WAV file so that only the drums are on that WAV file. I do this for everything else as well by silencing the drums and just leave the guitar and mix that down as a WAV as well and continue with the rest of the instruments.

Then I import those WAV files into another program like "Mixcraft" and then master each WAV file. So far I've gotten it to sound pretty good and I just need to dial everything in. Without a good pair of monitors it's kinda hard though.

Here is a tutorial by Gator and was very helpful, but it's only mixing through RW itself but can help you to get off to a good start.

https://gatorjj.wordpress.com/riffworks-mixing-overview/ - it's 5 pages]

[GuitarSlinger]

My main gripe is the reverb. I can get everything pretty much just the way I want it with Riffworks only, but sometimes I just want to add a subtle room verb to the entire mix. So I'll add just a reverb in another program.

Also some songs don't mix down to MP3 so well. Not sure why. My last song sounded fantastic(not the playing) in wave format and in MP3 it just sounded like junk. Ogg was a bit better but still the difference was really noticeable this time.

[JouniL]

Hey Muddhole!

There is a whole new section in Riffworld dedicated to these and similar questions, the "Music creation" section. This topic lists a bunch of interesting links to articles regarding mixing and mastering:

Learn how to mix your Riffworks masterpiece!

90% of my songs are mixed in RW, then exported as a 32 bit wav to a program called Reaper where I use various plugins to master it (make it louder, eq, compressing and some slight reverb).

Sometimes it is hard to get the mix right in RW and in those cases I just export all layers to separate wav tracks and do the final mix in Reaper. Usually I strip of all RW effects from the tracks before I export these.

I suggest you get yourself near-field monitors, you will be amazed how much that helps you in mixing.

[Muddhole]

Hey Muddhole!

There is a whole new section in Riffworld dedicated to these and similar questions, the "Music creation" section. This topic lists a bunch of interesting links to articles regarding mixing and mastering:

Learn how to mix your Riffworks masterpiece!

90% of my songs are mixed in RW, then exported as a 32 bit wav to a program called Reaper where I use various plugins to master it (make it louder, eq, compressing and some slight reverb).

Sometimes it is hard to get the mix right in RW and in those cases I just export all layers to separate wav tracks and do the final mix in Reaper. Usually I strip of all RW effects from the tracks before I export these.

I suggest you get yourself near-field monitors, you will be amazed how much that helps you in mixing.

Thanks guys, yeah I can really use some good monitors. I need a lot of things, some guitar lessons too!