You’ve
hopefully recorded your tracks very well and now the time has come to mix your
song. Sometimes mixing can seem overwhelming. You can spend hours and hours
jumping from one track to another without any real point and lose your time and
focus if you’re not careful.
You
have to have a plan a road map to get your mix done in a few hours.
Here are
7 steps you can follow to get great mixes very quickly.
1.
MIX PREPARATION: USE GROUPS AND BUSSES
When
you first open your project, sort the tracks. If your tracks are
in disorder, you’ll have trouble knowing which track you worked on, and you
will waste time scrolling up and down looking for your Electric Guitar Solo
track.
Usually,
I begin with drums, then bass, then acoustic and electric guitars, then piano
and pads, then vocals and harmonies, from top to bottom.
Then, create
subgroups and route your tracks correctly. Create a DRUMS bus, a
GUITARS bus, a VOCALS bus, etc…
This
will allow you to simplify your mix, control the volume of many tracks with
just one fader, and apply EQ and Compression on all the tracks at once if you
want to.
Listen
to the song, and find the busiest part of the song.
It
can be the last chorus, or the bridge, etc…
Loop
that part. This is the most complex part to mix, so if you start here and get
it to sound great, the rest of the song will sound great.
2.
GET A GREAT STATIC MIX
I
cannot stress how important that is. Mixing is all about setting levels. EQ,
compression, reverb and effects are just polishing and fine-tuning. Setting
levels right is critical for the quality of your final mix.
You
need to be able to hear all the instruments, yet give them each a place,
because not all instruments are important.
Play
with just the volume faders, and try to achieve a good balance
between the instrument. Don’t touch any panning knob, don’t
use any plugins. Just volume faders. This is real core mixing.
Personally,
I tend to put the drums, bass, and vocals a little more upfront because they
carry the rhythm and lyrics of the song. When listening to music, you sing
along, and bob your head to the drums and bass, so I try to mimic that when
mixing.
Oh,
and don’t forget to leave some headroom! Your mix should not
clip. Don’t be afraid to turn your tracks down, and turn your speakers up.
Also
make sure you’re in mono. The easiest way to go mono is to hit the mono button
on your interface, or to pan everything in the center.
By
this point, you should have an idea of where you’re going. Are you going to
feature the piano?
Does the song need ultra-fat drums? Where will you put the
harmonies? Etc…
If
you decide now what you want the song to sound like, you’ll know what to do
next.
3. APPLY EQ TO GET CLARITY
EQ
is a tool that you should use to get clarity and separation.
If
instruments are competing for the same frequency range, then EQ can help make them sit well together.
A
nice cut in a less important instrument in that frequency range can go a long
way to free up space for others.
If
you have no idea how to EQ effectively, the simplest and safest thing you can
do is to use a High Pass Filter.
The
low end of your mix should be occupied by the bass and drums. The other
instruments do not have a lot of information in the low end, but they have some
that might add up and make your mix sound muddy if you’re not careful.
So
use a High Pass Filter on all your other tracks, and get rid of
the useless low end. It’s really the simplest way to use EQ.
Believe
me, a simple High Pass Filter on every track will cut the uneeded low
frequencies on your instruments, and instantly clean the low end.
·
4.
APPLY COMPRESSION TO GET PUNCH
Compression
is, with EQ, one of your most powerful tool.
Basically,
a compressor evens out the volume of your tracks.
It
turns down peaks, and turns up the quietest parts.
Use
a compressor on your drums to fatten them up, and make them punchy.
Use
a slow attack if you want some snap, or use a faster attack to have them fat.
Another option is to send a copy of the drums to another bus, compress it
heavily and blend the compressed drums with the un-compressed (or lightly
compressed) original to get the best of both world.
Compress
your bass track to tame the attack a little and get more sustain and body.
Use
it on your main vocal tracks to turn up the quieter words that might get lost
in the mix.
However,
make sure to avoid over-compressing your tracks. As a rule of
thumb, 3 to 6 db of gain reduction is enough. Be subtle and start with low
ratio like 2:1 or 3:1.
The
point is to make your tracks more consistent and punchy, so the compression
should not be obvious.
You
can apply compression to other dynamics instrument as well if needed (like
piano for example). But for a typical rock/pop song, be sure to focus first on
drums, bass and vocals.
5.
APPLY REVERB TO GIVE A SENSE OF SPACE
We
homestudio owners have to work in less-than-ideal sounding room. So we try to
close-mic every instrument to avoid bad sounding room sound in our tracks.
The
result is dry sounding tracks.
Use
Reverb on drums and vocals to give them space. Every instrument might benefit
from a little reverb, but you can go little further on drums and vocals.
Again,
be careful not to drown your mix in reverb. A High Pass Filter on the reverb
track can also help you avoid muddiness.
6.
USE PANNING TO GO STEREO
At
this point, your mix is still in mono. It’s time to go stereo!
Oh,
and you can get out of your loop as well!
I
always mix in mono and use panning in the end of the mix. That way, if I can
get a great mix in mono, it will be wider, bigger, more awesome in stereo.
Use
panning automation to bring movement, variations and keep things interesting.
However,
keep kick, snare, bass, and vocals in the center. As I said before, they drive
the song, so they should have a central place in the mix.
Sometimes,
even after compression, you might notice the end of vocal phrases getting lost
in the mix. Using volume automation, a slight 3db boost can make that final
syllable more audible, and perfect your vocal track.
You
can also use volume automation to feature some instruments in certain parts of
the song, or to tame them.
Be
creative and use your shiny fancy effect plugins to make things interesting:
maybe a slight chorus effect on the lead guitar in the 2nd verse might do the
trick and make that verse stand out.
Maybe
drop the bass completely on the first verse, to get the chorus to explode when
you bring it back.
The
point here is to make the mix interesting from start to finish and not bore the
listener.
Do
whatever you feel is right for the song. It might be a subtle effect, panning
automation, muting some tracks, or doubling others, distortion, whatever…
Be
creative, and let your personality shine here!
If
you skip this step, you’ll still have a great mix, but it will not be yours.
Add your stamp to the mix, your vibe, and feel. Get crazy (not too much) and
make a killer track.
SIMPLE
MIXING GETS THE JOB DONE
I am Tope Ajisafe. I manage a home studio where I get all the projects of my students in my music school done...
I
am also learning though...
However,
this is how I approach mixing. Every mix engineer does it differently, and I’d
love you to tell me how YOU mix. Tell me about any differences, similarities,
or if you just plain disagree with me on that.
Now
go mix some good music!
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