Mixing Cinematic Music 2022 – Joel Dollie

1 Fundamentals of Mixing

In the first Section Joël goes over all the key concepts of mixing cinematic music. These lessons will make sure you understand all the fundamental mixing principles and don’t just follow some rules.

From tweaking reverbs to fine tuning your panning to perfecting the tonal balance of your tracks, everything is covered.

This series of videos is designed to be highly applicable and straight to the point. EQ, reverbs or panning won’t have secrets for you anymore. No matter how advanced you are, you will learn something new from this part of the course. Basic topics are covered, like routing or balance, but we also go in depth with advanced reverb techniques or parallel compression tricks, for example.

He covers topics like:

• tonal balance
• creating depth in a mix
• panning
• dynamics and more

2 Mixing individual instruments

The second set of videos is called ‘’how to EQ’’ where Joël breaks down all the main orchestral instruments and how to EQ them.

How many times have you been sitting in front of your production asking yourself: „how did the mixing engineer EQ this instrument again“?

To help you out with speeding up your workflow, we built this section as sort of an encyclopedia for the students to come back to and check how certain instruments are usually processed.

This series of videos is useful for orchestral instruments, as there often are common problem areas unique to each orchestral instrument, even between two different libraries from different manufacturers.

You will learn:

• the problem areas of orchestral instruments
• how to EQ strings
• how to EQ percussion
• how to EQ brass
• how to EQ woodwinds

3 Mixing Sound Design

The third section is all about sound design. Since sound design elements like braams, risers, downers, wooshes, hits, synth elements, signature sounds, pads, atmospheres and so on are a big part of modern cinematic music, Joël dedicates a whole section on how to process them to make them sound polished and impactful at the same time.

He teaches you how to enhance synths as well as custom sound design elements made by Simon Haglund during his course „Sound Design for Media Composers“.

He teaches:

• how to process synths
• how to process custom sound design elements
• how to mix creatively
• how to blend sound design elements

4 Mix Deconstructions

The fourth section, and arguably the most important, is the mix deconstructions. In order to put everything that was previously learnt into practice, Joël mixes various styles of tracks provided by industry professionals such as Adam Lukas, Christoph Allerstorfer, Mattia Chiappa, Simon Haglund, Luke Olney, Julien Casel and Layal Watfeh. In order to prepare students for as many situations as possible we made sure to include a variety of different styles as mix deconstructions.

Mix Deconstructions

• 1. Mandragoraby Adam LukasWatch Joël mix ”Mandragora“ composed by EMMY© Award winning composerAdam Lukas. This track illustrates perfectly how to balance the mid range and low end tastefully and create separation in a darker mix.
• 2. Mother ; Jack Kills Againby Christoph AllerstorferThis horror cue combines two tracks from the Jack and the Box- Awaking OST, written by Christoph Allerstorfer. It incorporates organic sound design and frightening live orchestral sounds. This mix really showcases how to blend live orchestra and samples, which is something that composers will often need to do.
• 3. Cinefestby Mattia ChiappaCinefest is a beautifully orchestrated traditional ”film score style” track. As it is a live orchestra with strings, brass, winds and percussion recorded together in the same room, this mix deconstruction showcases the challenges we face when mixing such a piece.
• 4. Krigby Simon HaglundIn this hard hitting, sound design trailer cue, Joël showcases mixing synths and sound effects, more creative mixing techniques and how to create separation in a dense mix.
• 5. Ghostbustersby Julien CaselIn this hybrid orchestral trailer cue by Julien Casel, Joël shows how to mix a massive fantasy orchestral hybrid track, and achieve the perfect ”wall of sound“ backend of the piece.
• 6. DNAby Layal Watfeh”DNA“ is a dense modern track that blends libraries, synths and live instruments. The drums in particular have a fair amount of layering, so this mix deconstruction is a great example on how to achieve a powerful wall of cinematic drums.
• 7. Going Home Againby Luke Olney”Going Home Again” is a gentle traditional sounding orchestral cue. As an official demo for the Spitfire Appassionata strings library, it showcases a lot of beautiful string writing, alongside supporting woodwinds, brass and percussion. This is probably the most ”conservative” mix out of all the mix deconstructions. Realism is the key word here as this track was arranged and the midi was programmed to sound as realistic as possible.

Listen to the mix deconstructions in the course curriculum previews.