Mixing Tips for Music Producers & Audio Engineers
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I get it, mixing is intimidating. Not only will mixing make or break every single song you work on, but it’s a complicated craft that professionals take years and years to master.
But guess what? I have some good news for you: with a little guidance, I guarantee you can improve your mixdowns quickly and make your music sound more professional. All it takes is a little direction and coaching to get moving in the right direction.
In this article, I’m providing you 10 essential mixing tips that you can apply to your music today. These mixing tips cover a range of topics in mixing: EQ, compression, saturation, stereo width, and plenty more.
They will help your music sound clearer, louder, warmer, and wider. But before we get to the list, I need to first dispel one major myth.
Mastering is not this magical process that will make your music sound professional. Mastering is severely overrated in the minds of many producers. In fact, most masters do very little to a song other than increasing its loudness.
If there exists a process to make your song sound comprehensively better, it’s mixing. When you mix, you get to address every single sound in your song. You can adjust its loudness, EQ it, or add saturation, reverb, and delay.
Mixing can truly transform your entire song. Mastering, on the other hand, usually only permits broad, high-level changes to your song. This means that if your kick isn’t sounding great, you can do much more to fix it in mixing than in mastering.
Putting your efforts into improving your mixdowns will help you improve your track the most. That is why it is so important to focus on mixing. Now, let’s get to the tips. I’ve included tips in five categories: Conceptual Tips, EQ Tips, Dynamics Tips, Saturation Tips, and some bonus Stereo Width/Automation Tips.
1. You’re in the Business of Mixing, Not Fixing
Mixing won’t take a boring song and make it a hit. Instead, mixing is about getting the best possible sound out of your source material. And if the song underlying the production isn’t that great, the song in the mix still won’t be that great.
So remember, our goal is to get the best result out of the input material, not apply some magic fix to it.
This one goes hand in hand with an order of importance mixing…
2. Get Organized!
Executing a proper mix is about following a process, in fact, I view mixing as scientific whereas production is creative. Staying organized will help you quickly complete a great mixer. Here is what I recommend for staying organized:
Step 1 - Export each sound from your DAW as a separate WAV file. Add all the new files into a new project file, this brand new “Mix Session” is where you will do your mixdown.
Step 2 - Neatly label each stem.
Step 3 - Arrange your stems in a logical order. I like to do my drums on top, then my vocals, leads and chords, basses, ear candies, and atmospheres and FX.
Step 4 - Color code each of these groups in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing to you.
Step 5 - Set markers for each section of the arrangement
Step 6 - Handle any audio routing and grouping you can at this stage, as not doing so risks killing your flow state mix-mix.
3. Mixing in Order Of Importance
This step is crucial. The key to finishing your mixdown is mixing in order of importance. This means mixing the most important elements in your song first before moving to the least important ones.
Once you’ve mixed the important stuff, we want to avoid going back to tweak it as much as we can. Here are the steps you should follow:
Step 1 - Ask yourself this: “of all the elements I haven’t mixed yet, which is the most important one left?” I usually go for kick, sub-bass, a couple of important drums, and the vocal first.
Step 2 - Mix that most important element (using the rest of the tips below!)
Step 3 - Add the element that you just mixed to a group/bus called “MIXED”. This is where you will store all the elements you’ve mixed so far.
Step 4 - Adjust the volume and make any final tweaks to this element to get it to match up with everything else that is already in the MIXED group. 5
Step 5 - Repeat Steps 1-4 until all the elements in your song are in your MIXED group. Then, you’re done!
4. Once It’s Mixed, Let It Sit!
Once you’ve mixed something and added it to your MIXED bus, try not to touch it again. Instead, mix the less important elements that you’ve yet to mix to match up with the more important elements you’ve already mixed.
This way, you’re never making adjustments to important things in the song to accommodate less important things.
When boosting, we do so widely because we want to change how the sound sounds, this often means using a high shelf boost to add some shimmer or low shelf boost to add some weight to a sound.
Frequencies that are low and wide almost always make your mix sound muddy and cluttered. Address this with Mid-Side EQ.
5. Reduce, Reduce, Reduce
Reductive EQ is MUCH more important than additive EQ.
We use reductive EQ when we want things to sound better, which is what mixing is all about.
Additive EQ, on the other hand, we use when we want things to sound different. For each sound in your track, try to make at least a couple of reductive EQ moves.
At a minimum, there should be a high pass filter on almost every track to reduce the low-end rumble in each sound.
Other problem spots include the low mids on synths 200-400hz and the high mids on vocals 3-5kHz.
6. Reduce Narrow, Boost Wide
Following from above, we want to reduce frequencies with a narrow Q and boost frequencies with a wide Q, in other words, we want to reduce specific frequencies and boost general frequency bands.
Why this approach? When we reduce, we are seeking out problem frequencies that are making something sound bad. Hopefully, if the track is produced well, there won’t be HUGE bands that need reduction.
7. Tame Low Frequencies With Mid-Side EQ
FabFilter Pro-Q is our favorite tool for Mid-Side EQ. Add a high pass filter to the sound, set it to affect only the sides, and adjust the cutoff to around 125hz. This will get rid of any wide low-end rumble while preserving the low-end power of your kick and bass.
Source:
8. Add A Broad High Shelf Boost To Vocals
Vocals are often the key element of a track, and nothing is worse than having your vocal buried in your mix. One strategy to address the “lost” vocal problem is a simple high-shelf boost on your vocal group.
I like to go for an API-560 emulation (Waves or UAD preferred) and boost at 16kHz around 6dB. Any EQ will do, though, look to boost the “air” on the vocal group above 15kHz a few dBs.
9. Apply Bus Compression for Glue, Warmth, And Tone
Bus (or group) compression is a topic that is unnecessarily complicated. Here’s all you need to know: the whole point of bus compression is to make all your elements gel together a little bit extra. Bus compression will not fix any issues with individual elements in the bus.
It will only make the whole complete picture slightly better.
In general, my winning formula is this: slow attack, fast release, low ratio, low gain reduction. My all-time favorite setup is an SSL compressor (Waves or UAD preferred) with a 30ms attack, 10ms release, a 2:1 ratio, and about 2dB gain reduction.
If you want the two-minute version of how compression actually works before reading the rest of these tips, this is worth your time.
10. Use Parallel Compression On The Drum Bus
Parallel compression is a technique that gives you the benefits of compression (tighter dynamic range, more size, and body) without losing the transient punch of a sound. Parallel compression on a drum bus can make your drums sound louder, beefier, and punchy.
The goal is to layer together with a heavily compressed version of the drums with the dry version of the drums. Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe is my recommendation here. You only need about 5% wet to get a lovely boost in loudness and body.
Insert the plugin onto your drum bus and tweak the MIX knob to taste.