How to actually get better mixes?
In recent years quite a few mixing blogs and YouTube channels have developed this really annoying habit of telling newbies what they’re doing wrong and then not really adding much (if any) useful content to actually help people out – well, apart from trying to sell you their new amazing course that is (/mini rant). For this post I will try to be one of the useful ones and write about some quite simple ways to actually improve your mixes fairly quickly.
Mind you, these are not big secrets and not really incredible tricks «nobody will tell you» (as the clickbait titles often suggest). Some of them rarely get mentioned though, for some odd reason.
Anyway, let’s go…
GET ORGANIZED
This is the really big one in my opinion for mixing effectively and quickly, and with as little interruption to creativity as possible. And in my early years of mixing and recording I was horrible at this.
These days I will use 2 different templates, one for tracking and one for mixing. The tracking one will have all of the ins and outs sorted for not only allowing to move quickly, but also for monitoring purposes (which is especially important when tracking a full band). The mixing one will have all of the routing, track labelling, submixes, auxes and stuff like that ready to go. Import the tracks I need and I can jump straight to getting levels. From there adding whatever plugins you need should be a breeze.
And…make sure EVERYTHING is labelled, colour coded and in whatever order that suits you best. Takes some time setting up initially, but once you’ve got it in a way that suits your particular workflow, you will be seeing (or hearing…) better results. And – take care of as much editing as possible that you need to do before you start piling on plugins. Otherwise it’s very easy to lose track of what’s what, what needs to be sorted and what you actually have done. Once that happens you will start forgetting things, particularly when doing a big session with a large track count. You don’t want to do that.
One other thing related to this that I also recommend is have every track going through at least one bus/submix beore reaching the master. I always do this and when I do the final balancing towards the end of the mix I can often do most of it by just using 4-5 group/submix faders. Once the initial balance has been done I rarely touch the individual track faders. Again, this really helps mixing effectively so you can focus more on how it SOUNDS.
STOP LOOKING AT THE NUMBERS
Somewhat related to an earlier post I did, this is a mistake that many are struggling with avoiding, especially when mixing in the box. And a lot of it comes from poor advice from online tutors that imprint into newbs how they shouldn’t do drastic eq and compression moves and things like that. Sure, in an ideal world that shouldn’t be necessary, but fact is that it often is, largely due to most of us not having access to world class players playing great gear, recorded with millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. So basically we have to do what we have to do to make it sound good. And this does sometimes mean you’ll have some very funky eq curves going that will look «wrong». In those cases, trust your ears. Turn off your computer monitor, lean back and really LISTEN.
Same thing with compression, editing time, gating and all sorts of processing we do. Very often things might LOOK «wrong» and we start creating problems that aren’t really there – such as spending too much time editing out stuff that wasn’t even a problem to begin with. That’s a very slippery slope that often leads to over-processed boring sounding mixes.
So, lesson here really is trust your ears, do what you have to. But don’t overcook it. There’s no such thing as perfect and sometimes leaving in something that isn’t perfect can actually improve a mix.
Finding the right balance with this is something that does come with experience.
Keep it in mind though for those times when you will look at the screen and think «that’s too much». Chances are that it could actually be just the right amount.
SATURATION AND DISTORTION
This is extremely important for us mixing in the box. Especially if you’re using a lot of virtual instruments, samples and amp modelling.
Most of us who often use both acoustic instruments as well as VSTi synths, modellers and such will have experienced this thing: a lot of the time these digital elements just flat out refuses to sit right in the mix. Often either too loud or barely audible. When you eventually get the levels sort of right, other instruments start to disappear due to frequency masking.
A lot of this is because of how those sounds are processed initially. The problem often is they’re too «hi-fi» and take up way too much space in the mix. You could argue they sound too good.
What I’ll often start out with in those cases is filtering. Remove the stuff that isn’t necessary. It’s not unusual that I’ll often have to do a fair bit of lowpassing (especially on the synths, but very often on guitar amp modellers as well). One other area where you’ll often find a lot of frequency buildup is in the lower mids, which tends to kill guitars and snare drum in particular, a dip there is often a good solution.
This brings us to saturation and distortion. There are lots of plugins available that can help add some grit to these digital sound, which really helps in making those tracks sit better. Lo-fi, Soundtoys’ Decapitator, Slate Digital has a bunch of good ones (London, Hollywood, and several other preamp emulations), and obviously any SansAmp emulation can work great. Tape emulation is also a great way of taking the edge off of those sounds.
Saturation also adds harmonics which can add some apparent loudness, especially with sub bass synths.
Also, with guitar amp modellers, watch out for the upper mids. On pretty much all of them a narrow notch/dip somewhere in the 4-5kHz area will almost always do wonders for removing that fizz that can tear your head off. This area often buries the vocals a bit as well.
On emulations of vintage synths, organs and such a little boost around 1-2 kHz can also be marvellous and help them poke out a bit more. Remember, keyboards like that were often run through Leslies or guitar cabinets back in the day, and rarely had much high end. Those are, like electric guitars, primarily mid-frequency instruments.
Drum samples as well quite often need quite a bit of saturation, tape emulation and eq treatment. Don’t leave them as is. Like the vst synths, they’re also often a bit too full frequency for a lot of mixes. While they are pre processed, that doesn’t mean they sound just right for YOUR mix. More often than not, they do need a bit of tweaking in every mix that I do.
MAKING VOCALS SIT BETTER
Apart from getting low end right, this is generally the thing that most really struggle with the first few years. Especially if what you have is extremely dynamic singers (very common with inexperienced singers).
When that happens just slapping on one compressor and thinking you’re done just isn’t going to work. Most often you’ll have to use somehing like 2 or 3 compressors in series with different settings, each shaving off just a little here and there. That should get you a whole lot closer. However, even that might not be enough.
What I’ve done recent years is flip the whole thing on its head. What I’ve found to be the ticket in those cases is using volume automation while doing the static mix on the vocal track, going through all of it and adjusting everything until it’s at the right level before doing compression. Once that’s done I’ll usually route that vocal track to a submix and then do whatever processing I need to do on that bus.
Doing it this way I can get away with much less compression, and more than anything I use those compressors more for colour or a specific sound. A combination of an 1176 and a Fairchild emulation can be really awesome for certain songs.
Try it out!
And this leads me to the last one…
AUTOMATION
These days automation is absolutely critical to mixing. Creating movement and keeping things interesting for the listener. And this is why having everything in groups or submixes is really useful.
Say, for some sections of a tune you might want to bring drums or guitars down (or up). Having those things going to one fader makes automation a lot more simple. Other times you might want to go from a completely dry sound to a chorus with loads of reverbs and delays. Then there’s delay throws on a couple of words on a vocal. You get the idea I guess 😉
Even with sparse arrangements there’s a lot you can do – and you should. Just don’t overdo it, of course.
Automating the master can also be very effective. One way you can do it is pull down a little in the verses, a bit up in the choruses and then further up for the climax of the song. Don’t just stop when you’ve got everything audible. Be creative!
Hope this was helpful! These things do really work for me.
Good luck on your mixing 🙂