So many of us out there in home/project studios fail do start a mix right, and this is something I struggled with for years. In this blog I’ll share the steps I usually take now that has improved my mixing immensely.
ARRANGEMENT
This normally applies to my own stuff, or if I’m producing someone elses songs.
A good mix actually starts here in my opinion. You may have a great song, but far too many artists and bands screw this up. Many don’t even do any form of pre production, so they don’t really have any idea if it’s even going to work. You may think it sounds fabulous in the rehearsal space while you’re playing, but you may well be in for a nasty surprise when it’s recorded and ready for mixing.
A good arrangement is way more important than what mics and other gear used to record it. And what very often happens is…the vocal is the neglected part often fighting for very limited space. And…unless you only do instrumentals, it’s by far the most important part of any mix.
A poor song arrangement can kill a mix before it’s even started.
MIX PREP
This is one we’ve all been guilty of early on, and something I just overlooked for yonks. What most inexperienced guys will do is just start throwing plugins at everything, and a few hours later run into some sort of problem we can’t quite figure out.
Let’s say you’ve all recorded your tracks for a song. First thing I always do is take care of any sort of editing that needs to be done. Cut out everything that you won’t be needing for the final mix, and by that I mean EVERYTHING. Get rid of any unnecessary background noises, squeaks and such. If have to do any time editing on things like drums, bass, guitars and stuff like that, do it at this stage. Same thing for tuning vocals. Start with the tedious stuff – this will free you up to be creative when you start throwing on plugins.
When that’s done I will normally export those tracks and import them into a new session that I’ll be using for the actual mixing.
For that new session I’ll have templates set up with all of the routing I’ll be needing, busses, auxes and all that jazz. This is a huge timesaver, and something I really recommend. Note: I generally don’t have any plugins saved with my templates, as every project tends to need different kind of processing from the last.
But the routing will most times be very similar, and you can always tweak a template for each mix. Much quicker than starting from the ground up every time.
LISTEN AND TAKE NOTES
I’ve now imported all the tracks and done whatever tweaking I need to whatever template I’m using. I’ve set basic levels so I can hear everything. What I always do then is sit back, listen through it a few times and take notes. Pen and paper!
At this stage I’ll write down everything I need to fix, what eq moves I need to do, volume automation (if applicable), what sort of fx the mix might need. Everything I can think of really.
I strongly advise you resist the urge to put on any plugins at all anywhere until you’ve done this step. Seriously.
CLIP/ITEM AUTOMATION
Last step of this part of the process for me, and one I can’t believe I neglected for ages.
Names vary depending on what DAW you use, but most often it’s referred to as clip gain (item/object volume in Reaper and a few others).
What I’ll then do is go through every track and clip gain wherever necessary so that levels are as close to perfect as possible, allowing me to hear every part clearly. This helps a lot with deciding on further processing, and has a major added benefit in that you can get away with a lot less compression – very helpful especially on vocals!
Having taken care of that, we’re now ready to start throwing on whatever plugins we need and not least getting creative.
A lot of these things are very boring and tedious, but in my opinion necessary to do a really good mix. And you don’t want to start doing these things towards the latter stages of the process, as it kills creativity rather quickly.
Hopefully you found these tips helpful, I’d definitely recommend adding them to your workflow.