Mixing is a balancing act. That’s pretty much all it boils down to. If your mix sounds unbalanced, you haven’t done your job as a mixing engineer. It couldn’t be more simple and it’s something that I used to get completely wrong. I wanted to know all about EQ, compression, effects and all that fun stuff. But it took me a long time to learn how to balance my music mixes.
In post production, I never had that problem. There was a clear starting point, technical specs to meet, meters to use and always an end in sight. With music, there were a thousand and one different ways to go about the same task. I was picking up lots of tips and tricks from other engineers, videos and books, but my mixes still didn’t sound right.
It wasn’t until I did some test sessions with a new team of producers that I truly understood balance. And I learned my lesson the hard way. The task assigned to me was to mix a track that another producer on the team had created. The advice given to me was to “make sure it’s balanced really well and they’ll love it“. What I heard was “throw the kitchen sink at the mix and make it sound amazing”.
Here’s what came next… I fattened up the bass, added EQ to the synths, compressed the drums and did my very best to get the mix sounding as close as possible to the idea I had in my head.
It was taking way longer than I expected and rather than it being a fun experience, I was wrestling with that mix. I couldn’t get it to sound the way I wanted it to sound. I was turning plugins on and off, moving faders up and down, re-assigning pan positions and so on. The more I did, the worse it sounded.
Eventually, I did manage to get it under control and sounding good, but not the way I wanted it to sound. It was a frustrating, time-consuming experience.
The producer I was working with was checking in on me from time to time to see how I was getting on with it. He must have been bewildered by what I was doing. While he was very polite about it taking longer than expected, he did reiterate his advice…
The mix was to be “balanced really well”.
The day before, I had mixed a complicated orchestral piece for him without any problems. On the day in question, I was struggling with a simple trap music track.
Why was this happening to me?!
The next day, I got some feedback from the supervising producer and it wasn’t good. As you might expect, his feedback was that the balance was off and my mix wouldn’t be used.
It was a failure
But why did I have an easier time with the more complicated orchestral mix and mess up the trap music? It wasn’t anything to do with genres or complication. The real answer was simple. I focused most of my efforts on balancing the orchestral piece well and left it relatively unprocessed.
After that experience, I started to pay a lot more attention on getting the balance right in my mixes. I was always too quick to start adding effects and processing to my mix before I had it balanced. That led to an uphill struggle and wrestling with my mix, rather than it being a fun, creative process.
So, before you add any effects or processing to your mix, spend some time listening to it and get a feel for how you want it to sound. Start moving faders and pan pots around and get the balance between all the elements in the mix right. Make sure to double check against the rough mix(es) and your references so that you know it’s in the right ballpark.
You shouldn’t be using any processing until you’ve maximised the sound of your music with the faders and pan pots. Once you’ve done that, you can move on to EQ, compression, distortion, delay, reverb and the fun, sexy stuff.
It might have taken a while to sink in for me, but you can create a great mix by only using your faders and pan pots. Sure, it might not be pristinely polished but the average listener won’t notice. Trust me.
Now, I’m not saying you should stop adding all processing to your mixes. But I am definitely saying that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts.
Take a little bit of time at the start of your mixing session to balance the mix and you’ll get better results. Use your faders and pan pots to get you 80% of the way there and you’ll notice that everything else looks after itself. It’s that easy.
Now, I’d love to know…
What gives you 80% of your mixing results?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
The recording.
I like it!
As the track count starts increasing, I create a rough mix using only the faders and panning, with no effects at all at this stage (except for an SSL G channel strip inserted in the first slot of every track). When I finally get to proper mixing, I’m 80% done as the problems are pretty obvious by then.
Nice! Sounds like your workflow is really solid. That definitely stops you making panic decisions near the end of a mix. Great work Alan 🙂
During the RECORDING stage, it`s always possible to make changes like chosing different instruments (if possible) and / or sounds and make the ARRANGEMENT in a way that they don`t kill each other. From that point on, it beacomes easier to balance (only?) volumes and play around with panning. Unless we want a realy “spacial” mix, there will be no need for more than little adjustements and subtile moves.
On the other end, with raw mixes made by others / recorded elsewere, it will all depend on the “quality” of the initial mix. Luckly, unless it`s already too crapy when it reaches our hands, volume balance first (to it`s limit) and frequency balance becomes necessary to avoid unwanted masking problems…
(I think)
Thanks Paulo. I’m picking up what you’re putting down!
I’m the one who should
thank for receiving this valuable content, Stephen. All the best.
The recording, the comping, the cleaning, track volume corrections, attack/sustain and groove/timing editing. Then balancing. I know from experience that I have to go trough these stages and indeed they make for most of the quality.
But to be honest, I too slapped in EQ, compression and various effects right away and made things far too complicated in the beginning. I admit I still do this quickly as a first step on the raw material tracks. But then briefly, just finding confirmation on the feasibility of the overall sound I’m seeking, and suitability of recorded material. Then I strip all off again, and start doing the prep stage as detailed above. Only then it’s final mixing time.
I find this two stage approach very productive: In case I’m not happy with the sound after the initial brief tweeking, I stop. Leave my editing table and do something different. Walk, work, come back next day. To reflect & find a new strategy and then test it. As long I’m not convinced the envisaged sound is within reach, I do not spend hours and hours any more.
I think there’s a lot to be learned from what you’ve mentioned here. You spend so much time on getting your raw material sounding great before you even mix. Then, when you mix, if things aren’t going your way, you give yourself the room to come up with fresh ideas or a new approach overall.
Love this!
I focus a lot on the “static mix” too, after the mix prep because I preffer to not move the faders too much after starting putting plugins. The only downside is that sometimes I have to move faders no matter what because as you already know, some frequencies make tracks sound louder than they really are