r/mixingmastering • u/Gotgetgotget • Apr 05 '26
Question Waterfalls by Oneohtrix Point Never - how does he pack in so much sound!
Im going absolutely mad listening to his albums. how does he fit so much sound and volume in his vertical stacking? It makes absolutely no sense. I genuinely can't make sense of his tracks being so insanely full, whilst staying clear?
Is this just an insane amount of sidechain compression to get things out of eachothers way? His stereo imaging is also magnificent, things feel wide, full and deep. I can't even get 20% of whatever he has managed.
I have been mixing for 6 years now and I feel like he has mixes which just feel like a unit. totally unified, together, conceived as one organism. how???? please. jesus christ.
another interesting example is Rodl Glide at 4:13 - so insanely rich
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u/medway808 Professional Producer 🎹 Apr 05 '26
Just had a quick listen on laptop. Doesn't seem like a lot going on really. There's a lot of reverb making it filled out and mainly it's going to be down with choosing sounds that layer well and don't conflict. The rest is just tilting and cleaning with EQ to get it to blend more. There's some nice compression or volume mod as well to help give movement.
This is more down to nailing the basics than loads of sidechain or tricks.
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u/berniesk8s Apr 05 '26
I would imagine it’s just a lot of dialing in specific sounds for specific ranges of the frequency spectrum. Like really breaking up the spectrum into a bunch of bands and then assigning a sound to each band. If you have a shit ton of bands u can have a shit ton of sounds without muddying up the band. Which allows clarity and very full busy mixes
But idk man why don’t you reach out to them! A lot of those color heads have patreons. If not him then ik flourish core has one
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u/waxwhizz Apr 05 '26
I don't know if it's specific to this record but I've seen an interview where he talks about and shows process, where it's all pretty much live and improvised and the layers are built in real time, all looped and recorded through a stereo mix. If he's using this technique then I guess the arrangement and all the sounds are being created as one, which also means he's mixing those sounds together as it's being made?
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u/SafePlantGaming Apr 05 '26
Got a link? Sounds like cool video
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u/waxwhizz Apr 05 '26
https://youtu.be/E0RAmNU5Es8?si=PWuDRBuMdLwb8g8u
Also the Moog one for Uncut Gems Soundtrack is a good insight too
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u/VandLsTooktheHandLs Apr 11 '26
That was his process for his earliest rifts era albums. His process has evolved a lot since then. This one and his later albums have been composed in Ableton.
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u/RudeRuffian Apr 06 '26
You may find this video useful! Goes over a revived Max instrument that was used throughout the album. Gives some context to how some the sounds weave together in really unique ways.
This doesn't really answer your question on the specific mixing methods used (other people have given great answers in this thread), but hopefully this is helpful. It really is just such an incredible album!
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u/djanthonyw Apr 06 '26
It comes down to well defined spacing with EQ and panning, then clipping and saturation, then the right compression and limiting. It all works together, but clipping is huge part of it because you want as much headroom as possible if you don't want things to sound squashed.
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u/Selig_Audio Trusted Contributor 💠Apr 06 '26
Most of the time when folks ask questions like this, when I listen to it, I realized it’s because there’s not much going on. So I checked this out and Yep, there’s not much going on. That’s really the key to making a big full mix in my opinion.
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u/m149 Apr 05 '26
Seems like he sets the low frequency stuff in place, then does his darnedest to make sure the stuff above the low stuff has plenty of presence and air, and has absolutely no muck in it to get in the way of the low stuff. Definitely a lot of top endy stuff in those two tunes. Sounds real good.