Mixing (cont’d)
Crucial mixing tips. If you follow all of these I guarantee your mixing skills will increase by leaps and bounds:-
- Record as few parts as you need to make the song work. Too busy a mix: sense of space and separation lost.
- Build interest for the listener: Important! Have some instruments coming in later instead of all instruments all at once at the beginning. For example, bring more in for choruses to add excitement, drop one or two out in middle eights, etc.
- There’s no such things as ‘fixing it in the mix’. Get your tracking done properly first.
- Mix on a different day to recording. Your ears will need a fresh start.
- Track levels: keep these low or the sum of all the tracks in the mix will give you too high a level overall. Also, you’re probably going to use a software mastering tool on the final mix and these work far, far better if they’ve got some headroom to work with. I aim for around -10dB with the occasional peak to -6dB maximum on a mix. Professional mastering engineers prefer to have work presented to them at no more than -6dB.
- Use monitors, not headphones. Uh-oh, I break this rule a lot. By definition home studios are in homes where others might not appreciate hearing your work, especially as it’s the same song over and over! If you work nearly all the time with headphones though, try and check things via decent monitors or you can make mixing mistakes due to the nature of headphones, e.g. with stereo field placement. If you are using headphones they need to be high-end ones, see the Hardware page 3 here.
- Mix at normal listening levels or lower. Everything sounds better loud but it’s an illusion - loudness induces excitement in the listener, that’s all.
- Work close to monitors so less room effect heard.
- Take frequent breaks - the human ear very quickly adapts to sounds and what sounded good at the end of a three-hour mixing session will sound very different when you go back to it the next day. I came back to a ‘finished’ mix the other day and was astounded how feeble the bottom end was and how dull the top end was. My ears must have been fatigued when I was trying to get it all done and played tricks on me.
Have a few reference tracks loaded into the project or at least handy, i.e. commercial CD tracks similar to the genre you’re mixing and which have excellent mixes. A/B them often with your mix in progress so you can emulate what’s so good about them. NB: I ignored this advice for years thinking it wouldn’t be all that useful, but IT IS!!
- Check your mixes in the environment you listen to commercial music. For me it’s the car, so I burn a CD and go down and sit in the car to play it. I take a pad and pen with me. I can immediately detect errors in the mix, especially in the bass region and the relative levels of the different instruments. As I play the mix over a few times I make a note of the issues to be addressed and then repeat the process.
- Less EQ and less effects = a more natural result.
- Key EQ tip! Cut before boosting. As with track EQ, it’s better to cut than to boost. E.g. If an instrument isn’t prominent enough then always try cutting frequencies on the other instrument(s) before reaching to boost those on the problem instrument. Less is truly more here. Try it. Continued...
