Music and mixing questions, answered

A song's key is the note and scale it resolves to. How to find it, the seven chords that belong to it, and how Zammoth reads the key from your audio.

A ii-V-I is the chords on the second, fifth and first notes of a key: Dm7, G7, Cmaj7 in C. Why it resolves so strongly, and how the voices move.

Chords turn muddy when thirds and close intervals sit below about 150 Hz. Why low intervals blur, and the voicings that stay clear.

A second chorus sounds bigger through contrast and added parts, not volume: what to add, what to take away before it, and how to check the lift.

The classic drum-machine feel is 54 to 58 percent swing on sixteenth notes. What the number means in milliseconds, and which value suits which groove.

Stiff drums are usually too close to the grid or too even in velocity, so harder quantising makes them worse. How to tell a deliberate lean from sloppy timing.

Rushing is hits that land consistently ahead of the grid. How to measure it, how many milliseconds matter, and how to tell rushing from loose timing.

Start 2 to 5 cm from the grille, aimed where the dust cap meets the cone. How position and distance change the tone, and how to keep two mics in phase.

A muddy mix has too many instruments between 200 and 500 Hz. How to find which tracks are masking each other and what to cut, in order.

A buried vocal is usually masked, not quiet. Find what competes with it at 1 to 4 kHz, cut that, control the vocal's level, and raise the fader last.

Yes. EQ before a compressor changes what triggers it; EQ after shapes the tone without changing how it behaves. Cut before, boost after.

A send keeps the dry track untouched and puts the reverb on its own channel, so several tracks share one space and the wet signal can be treated alone.

A compressor's mix knob blends the compressed signal with the dry one. Below 100 percent it is parallel compression: more sustain, transients kept.

A bus compressor reacts to the sum of its tracks and moves them all together, which per-track compressors cannot do. Settings: 2:1, slow attack, 1 to 3 dB.

A de-esser turns the sibilant range down only while an 's' is sounding. A static EQ cut dulls every word to fix a few consonants.

Pumping comes from a full-band compressor reacting to the bass. Use compression that acts on the low band only, or control the bass before it reaches the bus.

Pitch correction, clean-up, subtractive EQ, compression, de-essing, additive EQ, saturation, then reverb and delay on sends. The reason for each position.

Measure each phrase's pitch against the nearest note and read the error in cents. How many cents is audible, and how Zammoth finds and corrects the notes.

Start with the reverb return 6 to 10 dB below the dry vocal. Near the vocal's level it washes the voice out; 15 dB or more below, it is not heard in a full mix.

Turning the pads down lowers them for the whole song. Ducking lowers them only while the vocal sings and lets them return in the gaps.

A phone speaker is mono. A supersaw's width comes from detuned voices panned apart, and what is out of phase between left and right cancels when summed.

EQ raises the high frequencies that are already there. Saturation creates harmonics that are not. Measure which case you have before choosing.

Saturation adds warmth and density without sounding distorted. Overdrive is for distortion that should be heard: grit and edge. What differs between them.

Width is the level of the side signal against the mid. Mid/side EQ and width controls help if there is side content to raise; if not, the fix is panning.

Spotify plays every track at about −14 LUFS, so a quieter-sounding master is one that is less dense, has too much sub bass, or sits below the target.

Not for streaming. A −6 LUFS master is turned down by about 8 dB to match everything else, and what remains is the damage done getting there.

YouTube normalises to about −14 LUFS. Louder audio is turned down to match; quieter audio is left as it is. Master at or just above −14, with a −1 dBTP ceiling.

The limiter is being asked for too much gain reduction. Lower the loudness target, adjust release and lookahead, then take the peaks off earlier.