Distorted strings? What do you need to know?

Ay y'all are too kind helping me out.

Well I dunno if they are strings exactly or just some kind of synth or how that sound in specific it's called, but in the video I posted before it's starts at 00:15, you can hear it in the foreground in the hook, it also comes up at 1:47 , starting on the 1's and afterwards shortly before it repeats (like between 1:53-1:54), but it's volume is lowered everytime after it introduces the hook, so it's more in the background. Also again on 2:32, 3:04 (and I believe I can hear it real subtle in the background throughout the first verse 1:19-1:32).

I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say lmao.
Really not a genius at this stuff.

Gonna @spacecwby in this too.

Yeah that’s just a synth i can see if i can make it

I've got to this setup, it sounds similar but there's something missing.

Am i doing too much by adding an EQ, Multiband Compressor and Fruity soft clipper to master? I keep hearing you only need EQ and the clipper. But my mix is still weak if i only use a soft clipper so im not sure what im doing wrong.

Are there any sites where I can get unmixed rap songs to practice mixing and mastering with?

you can definitely add a compressor/limiter to the master, that's pretty common practice.. idk who is telling u to leave it out

My bad im late fam im about to check it out

The soft clipper isnt really necessary as far as I know but you should have first your EQ then your multiband which you do need to balance the track (or this plugin called gullfoss can pretty much replace it and its amazing) and then a normal compressor and you can have other stuff in here too but if youre just going with the basics then this is what you need

Fix your mixdown before slapping stuff on your master imo. Bus processing and limit/clip the buses individually. This makes the limiter on your master have to do less work.

I go back and forth between soft clipping my master and limiting it. Sometimes a combination of the two. Either way my mixdowns aren't quite where I want them yet. 🤷‍♂️

How does one achieve this level of drum panning like this song here

and how come this style isn't being done more in hip hop nowadays

the modern producers on instagram. its a meme now on producer grind. Tons of big producers act like that's all they put on their master and I never understood how that could be it.

dont listen to them listen to mastering engineers about mastering not producers and same going for mixing too most of the time but certain genres like electronic mix their own tracks pretty often but still best to listen to a mixing engineer first.

i was trying it out but it was hard for me to get that sound with the 3osc i might just be doing it right idk. I say you should try other synths tho i really suggest the arturia v collection

that sounds like a dangerous meme man. s***s just untrue lol
just for reference this is what my master usually looks like:
virtual tape machines for saturation and warmth
then an EQ. i mostly use plugins modeled after older hardware like this API-560, it does basically the same thing as fruity EQ but with some character
lastly i use a limiter/compressor combo plugin that also has a clipper built in. its good practice to mix at like -6db and use a compressor or limiter on the master to jack everything up

Bro no offense but you really shouldn't be doing all this if you're serious about releasing your music. Every big name master engineer I've read or watched an interview from wants the master bus with as little processing as possible so they have room to work. However, if you don't have the money for a mastering engineer (or even a mastering service like Aria) you can do all that, just be super careful to make sure you don't f*** up the dynamic range with too much gain reduction or introduce unwanted pumping/distortion. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll do more harm than good with more plugins.

Hold up is this man putting s*** on his master in his mix down

Thought it went mix -> bounce to single audio file -> master that s***

Yeah he is and yeah I bounce my stuff to a single file too when I do my own mastering

someone tell him

You don’t have to bounce it down to a single track mix, I just throw Ozone on the end of my master once I’m done mixing

i throw ozone and run that automatic s***

but i do prefer just bouncing it out

It’s not that bad its only 3 plugins. Edison doesn’t do anything but FL just throws it on the master sometimes after you open it for whatever reason and the second one is off

Yeah I'm an FL user too because I love the interface and it's what I started with so I'm used to the Edison thing but my issue is mostly that A. Stereo effects on the master bus can do weird stuff with the phasing that can produce unwanted artifacts on certain playback systems (he has it turned off in the screengrab but this is assuming he's used it on other stuff) and that B. Clipping is another technique that'll be heard differently on different systems and doing too much will really f*** up a mix if you aren't careful

Nah you don’t have to bounce it it’s just more common to because you don’t need to send a mastering engineer the whole project and you only need the one track and it can save your CPU a bit and especially when people are doing it themselves it kinda signifies that you're finished with the track because its so easy to want to go back and edit the mix but that needs to be done before mastering

Oh yeah that’s true it can get risky with stereo effects its better to just stick to all that in the mix and midside eq if anything. Also I wouldnt recommend that anyone put this on their master but theres a plugin called widener and its a stereo widening plugin that doesn't mess with your phase and its free too. With this it widens everything tho not individual bands like some others but it’s really good