Getting back into mixing

Seems that i would need to work my way from the 80's to present time. Loudness control is my main issue because i cannot compete with todays music when mixing in 80's style. Today music is made to fit into a soundwall, meaning bass and kick and arrangement have been made to get very high loudness. As an example, the typical synco bass of Rick Astley wouldnt fit into todays music because it would kill the ability to make pumping loudness mixes. A bass today needs to be straight on the beat or on the offbeat to produce the pumping effect.

I'm starting to get more familiar with my compressors and started to see where they fit in. The Sonalksis compressor is the only comp/limiter which can tie bass/snare and kick together as a single entity, it produces a warm compression and is a sound i'm used to from the (old) days.

This is my main goto comp/limiter

Then there is Kjaerhus Comp/limiter, well this one is not so musical but its precise and precision is what you need on the overall master. I use it to take all peaks and keep output at zero.

Fabfilter Comp is a bit complicated but have tons of nice presets, i would say that this one is more a nice tools for todays pumping methods.

So a typical setup would be:

Sonalksis is first in line comp, then Fabfilter on the general mix and finally Kjaerhus to control the mix.

All this mixing is going to take quite awhile because i'm starting from scratch and need to get my head around all the aspects.

As usual Zebra is the instrument i use for dropping down mixing ideas, in this case i've added a piano and Stylus RMX. To show how much Zebra covers i made the start of the mix with only piano and stylus. Zebra kicks in after that in 80's Disco style.


http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/Z2_Dubbing_DiscoA.mp3

Far from perfect as usual but at least i'm trying :)

/Michael