It’s time to talk about something subtle that affects a lot of engineers. This one little problem can affect us all in our daily lives but when it comes to mixing, its effects are particularly damaging. That one problem is impatience.
I know that your biggest frustration might be with the fact that you don’t have a clear path or workflow to get the results you’re looking for, but I’d really like you to take a couple of seconds to ask yourself this simple question…
“Do I have a mixing system?“
If your answer is yes, then great! But do you stick to it religiously on every mix?
If your answer is no, then great! You’ve got something to learn.
By “mixing system” – I mean an approach you take on every mix. Yes, every mix is different but there are steps we take each time we mix that will be almost identical. In my opinion, your approach to mixing should be methodical for many reasons. Here are three:
- You’ll never skip an important step. Why start pulling up compressors when you haven’t set your gain stage?
- Your mix won’t fall apart outside of your studio. If you haven’t balanced your faders and set up a great “static mix” or “fader mix” and you’re messing around with EQ, you really risk losing balance and your mixes will not translate well to other systems.
- You’ll mix quicker. If you follow a methodical approach, you won’t have to go back and rebalance the faders because you didn’t set them up right in the first place. When you skip important steps and have to go back to re-do your work, you lose time. A systematic approach removes that problem.
We’re always trying to find shortcuts to skip ahead and get the results we want as quickly as possible.
While it’s admirable to work fast and I highly encourage you to do so, it makes a lot of sense to work fast within a system. The biggest shortcut you can apply to your mixing is to do things right from the start.
Having that urge to get to a finished mix as fast as possible is admirable but impatience has no place in mixing.
Now… what’s the right way?
Mixing is subjective and I firmly believe there really is no right or wrong way to mix. However, there are ways of getting to a finished mix in a quick, organised fashion. I’ve developed my own system over many years and it’s constantly evolving.
The right way to mix is within your system – that’s the way you’ve learned and adapted your mixing style as you learn more with experience, from other engineers, producers, musicians, courses etc.
How do you avoid mixing impatience?
Here are three steps you can take to start with:
- Use a system. Document your approach and build a checklist (even if it’s a mental checklist) of your mixing system.
- Mix when you’re fresh. I get tired and hangry (When you’re so hungry that a lack of food causes you to become angry, frustrated or both). We all do. The quickest way to jack up a mix is to try mixing when you’re feeling tired, hungry, or both.
- Schedule your mixing time. If you haven’t blocked out the time in your calendar for mixing, then it doesn’t exist. You’re much more likely to actually get your mixes done if you schedule the time in your calendar. If you try squeezing your mixes in around work and Netflix time without the time blocked out in your calendar, you’re definitely going to be impatient and rush things so you can go watch ‘Stranger Things’.
Having a mixing system is very important for me and I feel it really should be for you too.
I really want to hear from you on this one, so please let me know…
What mixing system to do you use? What’s your approach and why do you use it?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
You’re exactly right. When I started out, I had no system and just jumped in and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get everything to sound the best I could and was never happy with the results. After two years of study, experimentation, lots of video training, and hundreds of “tips and tricks” I finally developed a workflow that I wrote down and generally follow religiously. Because I produce as well as play and engineer, my workflow starts in the Arrangement, the goes into recording, a review phase, editing, mixing, mastering, and finally distribution. Today I would never start mixing until the editing was done, then my flow is: Static Mix, Bus Level EQ & Compression, Track Level EQ & Compression (if necessary), Sweetening, Pre-Mastering Review, File labeling & backup, then Mixdown to Pre-mastered WAV(s). This saves a huge amount of bouncing back and forth between the mastered mixes and the originals, tweaking and changing to try and optimize how things sound on the computer, in the car, or the living room stereo. Don’t get me wrong, I still make different alternate mixes for CDs, MP3s, Backing Tracks, etc., but it’s a much more ordered process with fairly consistent results (at last). As for gain staging – I actually work that twice: once to volume level the tracks in the editing phase before I create clean stems for the mix; and again at the track & bus levels when creating the static mix. Kenny Gioia would probably say I’m wasting my time on the second phase – but I still do it because “it’s my way.” I also like your “Mix when you’re fresh” guideline because it’s always harder and takes longer when you’re tired…
Thanks John. Keep doing what you’re doing!
I start in Mono then get my levels then a nice Static mix. I throw up an EQ and go through each channel and carve out any rough frequencies.Then I put some tape Saturation and console emulation on every channel. Then I go to the buses (Strings Brass,Drums Guitar Bass Hits Rises and Stings) and treat them with some Compression and EQ That’s about how I start…
That’s a great way to start, Gord!
Hello Stephen,
Good advice I’d say. I use a system I got from Graham Cochrane. I do become impatient at times and the work does suffer as a result. Then again, my music is not on the net and I don’t have an audience so it can be easy to become impatient. Anyhoo, good stuff and thanks.
You’re welcome. Graham is an excellent teacher 🙂
I am fairly new to mixing I learn what i can and I do have a system though it’s not tweaked to my liking yet .I’m running a xr18 into reaper daw a lot of good mics se4400 voodoo sm58s and 57s di but never sure if record start level I usually record everything at -18 witch works ok most of the time and it’s all raw no gates or comp.alot of it is live as well so always!deal with feed back issues anyway I group everything into categories and usually match but haven’t figured out fading to get the sound i want I am a work in progress but I love it
Mathew I set up and use the same system and DAW at my church. I works great with absolutely no problems. I also use Reaper as my Daw of choice for recording portable. Cheers and Happy Mixing…..
Sounds good Matthew. What do you mean by fading to get the sound you want?
Stephen,
I’ve been through many ‘mixing and sound systems’ in my long journey through the music industry. Not the least of which was scrapping all my analog gear and methods and switching to digital. I’m still a digital greenhorn and struggling with the changeover.
In a nutshell,
1st: Make sure the song and arrangement are tight and worth recording.
2nd: Prepare your instruments and players for recording.
3rd: Tracking (take your time here or you’ll regret it later).
4th: Editing every track individually to your tastes, then render all tracks down to audio tracks (hide and make inactive all tracks you’ve finished with so you’re left with just what you’re going to mix).
5th: Get your static mix.
6th: Refine and balance the static mix.
7th: Add the plugins and sweeteners.
At this point, I’ll generally put the song on the shelf for a few days to let it gel. Then I go back and listen (and I ask myself while listening…”is anything bothering me about this mix?”). Make any changes that makes the mix better. (totally subjective)
Last would be mastering which I’ve never done myself…..but I plan on studying that as well after I feel comfortable with all the above.
You ask good questions…..
Dave – your system is one that will keep getting you results. Nice work!
Hello Stephen,
I am and OLD analog person as I started recording and mixing in the sixties. I told you old in fact 72 now and almost 73 in February. I have been mixing digital for around five years now and after making all the blunders that one does coming from analog I took on some courses that got me in the right mode. In reference to Mathew Brown above I set up and use reaper and an XR18 interface/mixer that works very well for my interns and I.
In my studio I use Studio One 3 and Harrison Mixbus 32 C for both recording and mixing. Mixbus is really great for me because of it being and analog console in digital form.I still have quite a bit of analog pres and hard ware I use in recording though. But I mainly do all mixing and some mastering in the box.
I start my mix using the same process each time. First bringing in the template and importing into the DAW my tracks I am going to mix. In reaper I put Blue Cat ‘s gain plugin on every track set to either -18 or -15 db. Then I gain stage my mix followed by listening to the mix in it’s entirety making not and writing down all the problems I hear and where they are located. The I start by doing my subtractive EQing. Followed by adding compressors and building my mix. Then it gets the refinements reverb,delays, doublers etc. I have already set saturation plugins or an analog tape J 37, Kramer, Slate plugins. My system stays the same on every mix. The only change is whate and where I place effects,eq’s,compressors, and dynamics processing.
Sounds like you have your system down, Phil 🙂
Hey Stephen, I haven’t moved from Cubase 5.1 since 2011 even though I had to exclusively use Logic X between 2015-2016 in a studio I was employed in but back home and my now new studio has always been Cubase. Eitherway, I start with noise-gating (Because my studio has the worst acoustics possible), then tweak pitches and/or “Auto-tune” depending on the intensity of the tone-deafness, EQ, Compress and Reverb/Delay according to the song. The Reverb/Delay I use to soften some unwanted elements like reflections from the recording. I never use buses because I run much faster with copy/pasting the presets…long story. So, that’s pretty much my mix routine. I also do pre-master in the same session rather than export-import-master like most people usually do (and how I used to do in Logic X). Any pointers?
Sure – why do you use so much noise gating?
Because my studio has horrible acoustics. I’m still working on the wall padding…actually as we speak :p
So I record at around -10db to -20db then noise gate artifacts that are from -36db to -40db and below. It almost always works except for live acoustic recordings like one I did yesterday evening…AMAZING SONG…bad recording…I felt like burying my head in sand man!
I record through my Mackie mixer and Roland Tri-Capture to my DAW at -18dBFS, but acoustic sources a little hotter at -12 without any artifacts. Perhaps you’re having some grounding issues? Do you use a hum destroyer?
That sucks. I hope you get it sorted.
I kinda did. Extra padded the booth and some. Is there a preferable level for room noise? Just going through your Ebook btw 🙂
The preferable level for room noise is no noise at all. I know that’s hard to achieve, but it is what it is. I hope you enjoy the guide!