Mixing Tips from A Pirate Site Tech in Dublin

[Pirate_Gareth]

I’ve been recording and mixing for over 20 years, some successes but also a lot of failures! Don’t let the failures put you off that’s where you learn something…and I’m always up for learning something new when it comes to the craft of recording and mixing.

I’m going to post some mixing tips and tricks, advice and recommendations here from things I’ve picked up along my journey as a sound engineer.

Please feel free to chime in with things you find useful, techniques you’re interested in exploring more or killer cheats to getting a better sound you’ve discovered!

The good side and the bad side of Producing and Recording is that you’ll never master it all…but you’ll have a whole lot of fun trying!

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing Tip 1 – Get Organised!

Before you touch a fader, before you listen to the track

Organise!

Organise!

Organise!

Setting up your project correctly to start with may save you a lot of headaches in the long run so if you haven’t started already, start now or if you have inherited a project from someone else to mix get it all neat and tidy and ordered before commencing your mix

To begin make sure all the tracks are labelled correctly…there’s nothing worse than trying to find an instrument when all the tracks are named something like Audio-01, Audio_29, Audio_TK2_37.

Solo each track and name correctly. i.e. kick, snare top, snare bottom, Left Overhead, Rhythm Guitar 1, Rhythm Guitar 2, Bass Amp Mic, Lead Vocals, Pad Synth 1 etc you get then gist.

Once you’ve done this try organising your tracks so they sit together for example here’s how I might lay out a project window

Kick

Snare top

Snare Bottom

Rack 1

Rack 2

Floor Tom

Left Overhead

Right Overhead

Drum room mic Left

Drum Room Mic Right

Bass Amp Mic

Bass Amp D.I.

Rhythm Guitar 1

Rhythm Guitar 2

Lead Guitar

Piano

Synth Pad

Moog Lead

Lead Vocals Verse

Lead Vocals Chorus

Backing Vocal 1

Backing vocal 2

Giving your different sections a colour can also help identify areas you want to work on quickly so I might colour all drum tracks red, guitar tracks yellow, vocal tracks blue etc.

Once you’ve done this maybe set up some sub group channels on your mixer where you’ll send tracks to. So for instance create a drum group, a guitar group, a brass group, keys group and a vocal group etc. This will make it easy to make overall changes to things without having to adjust a load of faders.

Next I’d recommend cleaning up all the stems in the mix. Check all crossfade points of edits, check for fades on the boundaries of clips and what I personally like doing is going through all parts and removing sections where there is no playing (this will cut out amp noise, ambient noise you mightn’t want in the background of your mix cluttering up the frequency spectrum by adding unwanted hum, rumble and hiss etc)

Once you get into the habit of doing all of the above you can start working out your own templates for mix sessions. So for instance there are usually some FX channels I use a lot on mixes like my favourite reverbs or parallel compressors (I’ll go into this in a later tip) so I’ll add these FX channels from the start as I know I’ll probably be using them in the future.

Setting up for mixes is a great practice to get into as it insures that if you have to revisit a mix months or years down the line it’s going to appear familiar like your other mixes and you’ll be quickly able to jump back into the mix from where you left off without searching for that cool lead guitar that needs to come up because you don’t know if it was Audio_33_01_Tk6 or Audio_21.

The least amount of head scratching you’re doing looking at a project window the more creative and fun your mixes will become…

So now it’s time to Gain Stage which I’ll deal with in Mixing Tip 2.

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing Tip 2 - Gain Staging

Is it important? Hell yeah!

Initially developed in the analogue era of recording gain staging was used to make sure there was a good signal to noise ratio entering into equipment in the recording/mixing chain. The last thing you wanted back then was more noise in your recordings particularly since things were being recorded to tape and generations of tape at that!

It was achieved by monitoring VU’s and making sure that the signal was as close to 0db going into a piece of equipment and as close to 0db coming out of a piece of equipment.
With the advent of digital recording and floating point technology some people thought their days of gain staging would be over. For some it is for those who know it’s value it’s not.

Even if you’re using a DAW to do all your work, gain staging is still an important step for getting set up for your mix.

Think of it this way… db’s work on a logarithmic scale so for instance on a fader the lower you are on the fader (i.e the closer to infinity ∞ )the slightest move of it will increase or decrease your volume to a much larger degree then if you were closer to unity (0db) on the fader.

Gain staging allows you to have more control of your faders as you’re initially set to unity which can help you dial in precise volumes more accurately.

Another big point to bear in mind is all the analog equipment plugin emulators we use these days in our DAW’s from classic renditions of the LA 2A to Pultec EQ’s to SSL G series buss compressors.

All of these models of classic studio equipment were designed to operate to their optimum when the signal being sent to them was as close to 0 db as possible. Since the developers of a lot of these plugins have gone to great effort to faithfully recreate these classic pieces of analog gear they do sound better when they are used in the same way the old equipment was intended to be used…however that doesn’t mean you can’t crank the input or output for creative effect but if you do place a gain leveller after the plugin so you can get back to 0db

So how do you gain stage?

First things first make sure that any plugins you might have inherited in the project are turned off!

To be honest when I’m starting a mix I prefer to remove everything and start from scratch anyway, unless there is something truely awesome going on with the mix as it’s developed whilst recording, however still bypass all those plugins whilst gain staging them!
Next set all your faders in your mix to unity.

After that on your plugin inserts place a VU meter on your post fader insert (Waves have a great one that’s free! (Can’t say fairer then that!)

Solo the channel you are gain staging and adjust the gain until the VU is working between -6db to as close to 0db as you can get it.

On some DAW’s you can turn the Waveforms gain up/down in the waveform. If not most DAW’s have a pre fader trim that you can adjust to reach the desired point. Once you’ve done one channel move on to do the same with the rest of your channels.

Now here’s the important part…For every plugin you add to a channel you’ll have to check the gain level again and make sure to adjust the output volume of that plugin to make sure it’s reading 0db on the VU. Do this for each plugin turning them on one by one and gain staging as you go.

Another important point to remember is that if you are using older plugins that don’t utilise floating point technology you’ll have to make sure that your signal does not exceed 0dbFS (zero decibel Full Scale) as this will cause clipping. Check with a PPM meter which alerts you of clipping if unsure.

So there you have it! Ready to start mixing!

Gain staging is a simple yet an important methodology for getting your tracks ready for mix as important if not more so then grouping your channels, naming them correctly, setting up sub groups or even making your edit window look like a Picasso painting!

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing Tip 3 – Use your ears…oh and the faders

Use your ears!

Use your ears!

Use your ears!

Sounds obvious really but I can’t stress this one enough. You’ve all been listening to music for years and know what you like…so you should know what you want your music to sound like, aim for that.

Ok, ok Ok I know that sounds too simple, but it really is that simple…well as long as you know how to translate what your ears hear to what your mixes sound like it is…here’s some steps you can take early on in your mix to help your ears do the work they’re really good at.

The following does help if the material you are working with has been recorded well but even if it hasn’t you will see the benefit of this method in more solid, spaceous, punchy and open mixes.

Also I can’t stress how important a well treated room is and also how familiar you are with the speakers you’re using.

If your room isn’t treated/tuned your mix will suffer as you’ll be compensating for areas the sound of your room is affecting.

If you’re in one of Pirates rooms you should be fine but I’d still recommend getting to know the speakers by listening to some of your favourite albums on them and really getting to know the speakers characteristics with mixes you know are good and want to emulate. Doing this will help no end in getting your mixes to translate well to other sound systems outside of the studio.

Ok so If you’ve already gained staged your mix (read my mixing tip 2 if you’re not sure what that is) don’t do anything, and I mean anything i.e. no adding plugins, no eq’ing, no panning of mono channels (apart from stereo drum over heads, paired stereo mics etc), no compression, no fancy delays or reverbs, no nothing! (Ok I know some people like mixing into plugins on their stereo master bus (as do I) so if you know what you’re doing here and know what sound you’re trying to sculpt in the overall mix by all means leave your Neve 33609 on your stereo out… but if in doubt just leave it out!)

Now just sit back and listen to your mix and simply adjust the faders to sculpt what you’re hearing into a balanced overall musical space.

Whilst you’re doing this and I can’t stress this enough DON’T SOLO ANYTHING (you can thank me later).

Finely adjust the faders until you have as close to a balanced sound without doing anything else. This will help you find areas of your mix that are problematic and need some adjustment or in some cases TLC.

Now see if you can solve the problem areas with panning. Find the pocket the instrument/vocal best sits in on the stereo field.

Sometimes the subtle panning of an instrument will help it carve out it’s own space in the mix more than throwing a load of eq or compression on it.

(As a note here I like to initially approach my mixes by mixing in mono, even though I’m a fan of wide stereo mixes and having instruments panned quite hard. Using this technique is a good way of knowing if you’ve thrown something too far and also to identify any phasing issues that might be prevalent in your mix…added bonus is you’ll love what you hear when you throw it back into stereo!)

Now whilst still listening to everything (and still not soloing anything!) see if you can solve more of those problematic areas with additive or subtractive eq on the instruments/ vocals you’re hearing the problems on and nowhere else.

If the problem is occurring because of coalescing frequencies between instruments be brave and make a choice on boosting one and cutting another at that frequency or even cutting both and seeing what happens. The number one rule again TRUST YOUR EARS if it sounds better it probably is better.

Once you’ve exhausted those areas that can’t be solved with volume adjusting, panning or eq move on to dynamics like compression, gating, expansion and see what they can do for you. Areas that generally benefit from compression would be bass instruments, vocals and drums. Try some parallel compression on drums before compressing individual drums or drum groups (I’ll discuss some compression techniques in my Mixing Tip 5).

Finally it’s time to get creative! Pull out those eq’s, delays, modulators, tape saturators and all those things that will bring what is now a good mix to a great mix!

Of course there are thousands of techniques that can be learned in all genres of mixing to get the mix you’re after but trusting what your ears hear is probably one of the most important skills to develop first.

Enjoy listening and don’t solo tracks…well unless you really have to

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing Tip 4 – EQ to cut or to boost?

EQ is a very personal thing. I don’t know how many engineers I heard tell of their preferred way to do things only to have another engineer claim that it’s all wrong. Once again it comes back to trusting your ears and what sounds good on the monitor system you’ve trained your ears to.

A lot of engineers like to make EQ decisions at a low overall volume and then check briefly at a high volume to check for coalescing frequencies. But if you can get used to listening to all the work you do at one volume level it’s going to translate into better results in your mixing. I’ll go into further detail on this in my Mixing Tips on Metering.

One tip I would give now is not to make critical EQ decisions over headphones. It is good to reference them for pan balance and to ensure that your mix translates well to headphones, as that is the way most people consume music these days, but I would advise against trying to EQ on headphones.

However if you feel that the bass drum is too low, the bass guitar is too big, the vocals too quite or the guitar is too lost, take notes, take the headphones off and make adjustments on your speakers referring back to your headphones until you are happy.

There are some good room modelling plugins if you are determined to do some mixing on headphones which will help lower listening fatigue and will give a more accurate representation of your EQ adjustments. One such plugin is Abbey Road 3 by Waves. It’s worth spending the few quid on to have in your reference arsenal. Ultimately mixing over studio monitors in a well treated and tuned room is the only option for making good critical decisions when it comes to EQ.

First thing I would recommend to a novice engineer and even to seasoned engineers is to refresh their knowledge by having a look at an EQ chart to see where on the frequency spectrum certain types of instruments sit. Here’s one from Audio Issues but there are plenty others online

As you will see from this chart many instruments have areas where they overlap and this can be the cause of those problem areas in a mix that we need to carve out. If you haven’t solved it by adjusting levels, panning or arrangement it’s probably time for EQ.
If an instrument has been recorded well hopefully there aren’t problems in your frequency spectrum that need adjustment but even so getting an instrument that is lost in the mix inevitably will have you reaching for EQ if moving your faders hasn’t worked already.
So to Cut or to boost? Well to get you started try both and see how it sounds!

I would suggest cutting narrow and boosting wide as a general rule of thumb. If you don’t understand what I mean by that let me explain.

Nearly every EQ filter has 3 settings, frequency, gain and bandwidth. Bandwidth is the one we’re referring to when we talk about a narrow or a wide band. In a narrow band fewer frequencies are selected to adjust whilst in a wide band a larger amount of frequencies are selected to adjust. Narrow is steep and wide is shallow.

Personally I’m a fan of the cutting and boosting principal when applying EQ. If I’m finding certain instruments are clashing over certain frequencies but I really like the arrangement of both instruments I’ll find where on the spectrum the clash is occurring and try cutting that area in one of the instruments. On the same instrument I will also find an area of the EQ that is doing something really nice for the instrument and boost that a little to compensate for what energy I may have removed in the cut and then adjust the fader until I find it’s sitting just right. Often I’ll also cut the other instrument in the frequency I gave the other the boost in. Always remembering to cut narrow and boost wide.

This method works really well for rhythm guitars you have panned hard left and right to really give them their own space but works equally well on brass, vocals or making room for bass guitar and bass synth instruments to co-exist together in the mix.

Fabfilter has some great tools to do this with and I highly recommend it as an EQ every engineer should have in their arsenal.

Which brings me onto the issue of filtering… If you don’t know what high pass and loss pass filters are here’s a simple explanation.

High pass filtering is where you basically cut out any frequency below the selected frequency and low pass filtering is where you cut out any frequency above the selected frequency.

As such High pass filtering refers to adjustments made to low end frequencies and Low pass filtering refers to adjustments made to high end frequencies.

There’s a lot of debate between engineers whether low pass and high pass filtering is a good thing or a bad thing. Personally I don’t like using that much low or high pass filtering unless it is really to sort out some excessive problem in the mix. There is also the issue of phase when introducing a filter to a sound source but that’s a whole other discussion but worthwhile if you fancy going off on a google tangent into linear phase!

Over the years I have been guilty of using both high and low pass filters in an attempt mainly to carve out space for the low end by using a high pass filter. However I came to the conclusion that this was removing so much energy from my tracks that it was more destructive then beneficial. Now if I have a problem with my low end I’ll use a shelving EQ over a high pass filter any day of the week. As a result my guitars and keys get to keep a lot of that low end energy that separates a full mix from a weak and thin mix.

I find subtle changes in EQ to be the most effective rather than huge sweeps and massive decibel boosts of particular EQ. but don’t let that deter you from trying them, once again if it sounds good and works…well it just works!…some things I have done probably break every rule in the EQ book but if they were the difference of making the track be the best it could or not risk taking a chance, I’ll take the chance, sit on it for a while and if it’s still working for me the crazy EQ stays.

So really there are no real “rules” to EQ just methodologies, research as many of them as you can and start playing around with different things in your mix and see where it leads you.

So in summary

To cut or to boost that is still the question…only you can answer it!

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing tip 5 – How much compression is too much compression?

There’s no actual correct answer to this unless you have completely ruined your mix with compression. Then you know the answer already… it’s obviously too much. But where, when and how much compression to use on a source is something all engineers hum and haw over during a mix. Is it for stylistic purposes? Technical reasons? Or out of absolute frustration trying to get the mix to pump, compression has so many subtle and not so subtle uses.

Sometimes you know exactly what works and other times you can find that you’re double guessing yourself. Paul Thomas a platinum selling engineer I have worked with had a very simple tip to share with me which I use to this day.

“Don’t use a compressor use a fader but when you do compress, compress a little but use a lot of compressors”

So simple but yet so effective.

Using this technique and experimenting with different types of compressors on different sound sources I have figured out great signal chains that work for me.

For instance on a bass guitar try using 2 or three compressors, the first one set it to a fast attack and fast release to catch the transients but only have it reducing the gain by about 2 dB something like a Urie 1176 works great for this.

On the the 2nd bass compressor I’ll use a slow attack and set the release as close to the decay rate of the bass note also looking at about 2db of gain reduction. I love using an LA 2 A for this purpose mainly because of it’s smooth attack and also because of it’s natural sounding release, also there’s just two knobs so you can dial in what you want very quickly with just the threshold and monitoring the gain reduction on it’s VU

For a third compressor I’ll use a tape plugin, yep a tape plugin, the original compressor! (well I could be wrong there)… however it’s great for subtle harmonic distortion and is a fantastic natural sounding compression our ears like hearing without you having to reach for attack, release and threshold settings.

(Funnily enough I’ll use a very similar technique on vocals as I use on bass)

On a drum kit sometimes I like to have a Teletronix LA 2A limiting amplifier compressing my grouped snare tracks (top mic, bottom mic and sometimes a snare room mic) by about 2 dB I find it’s slow attack smooths the snares transients without completely destroying them at this level.

I have an SSL G series bus compressor on my kick drum with a slow attack to maintain the transients (sometimes on the toms if they need to be kept in line with each other and leveling/automation hasn’t solved)

I then send all my drum channels through a parallel compressor something like a Fairchild 670, hammering the threshold, lots of gain reduction and getting loads of warm tube saturation to slam the drums and then fade up the compressed channel to a level where it’s giving me the overall desired punch.

Finally a touch of SSL G series compression just ever so slightly on the drum group to tame the remaining transients that poke out a little too much reducing them by 1 to 2 2db, almost using it like a soft knee leveler for the drum mix.

Now this is just one way of doing drums there are many more but always lots of compressors, compressing slightly (apart from the parallel which in a lot of instances I like to slam and blend, or in other instances like jazz not use at all) giving the overall effect of bigger drums.

Finally there’s my rear bus compressors and mix bus compressors.

For my Mix bus I love using the Neve 33609 set at 0db threshold, 100ms recovery, 2:1 ratio with a slow attack and adjust the gain by switching on and off bypass until the compressed signal is at parity with the uncompressed signal.

I tend to give my mixes lots of headroom before it reaches this compressor between 18-24db RMS so the compression that is occurring is often quite subtle and for smoothing purposes rather than taming anything drastically but you notice the difference when it’s turned off.

It’s great to mix into a compressor this way as long as you don’t over compress and leave plenty of headroom for the mastering engineer.

However, if you’re not comfortable with mix bus compression it’s best to let the mastering engineer work on that for you. In fact a lot of mastering engineers will request no compression at all on your mix bus so they can use their tools to sculpt the sound more but if you know what you’re doing and know what you like to hear you can add compression to your mix bus and chances are the mastering engineer won’t even notice (if you’ve done your job well that is).

A place I generally find myself experimenting a lot with compressors to find the right one for the job are as “rear bus compressors”. It’s a technique pioneered by Andrew Schepps but basically entails sending an aux signal of 0db post fader of every instrument to an FX channel I’ve assigned a particular compressor to.

So for instance I’ll have a “guitar channels rear bus compressor” that I’ll send signals of all guitars to, “All Vocals Rear bus Compressor”, I’ll send signals of all vocals to, “Brass Rear bus compressor” I send all the …you get the idea…… And finally an “Everything Rear Bus Compressor” where everything gets sent to.

I’ll experiment with a few compressors to see what fits with the song. It could be a LA3A for guitars as it seems to do something nice to the 300hz frequencies for me, an API 2500 for keys, brass and strings is great as it’s pretty clean and doesn’t trample their transients, and an LA 2A on the vocals is always a classic…It will vary track to track what compressor I use and what feel it brings to the song but for my “Everything Rear Bus Compressor” a lot of the time I usually find myself reaching for the SSL G series bus compressor.

Once again I recommend you check out this technique by Andrew Schepps and experiment with it. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials on it.

By the way all the classic gear I’m mentioning here are plugins and all these techniques are achievable, “in the box”. The tricky bit is deciding what compressors to use not how many of them as so many compressors have their own unique characteristics. If you’re new to mixing I’d recommend picking one or two compressors to begin with and learning them really well. Even the compressors that come free with DAW’s today ain’t too shabby and are a great place to start to learn the basics.

If you’re still keen on experimenting more but not sure what compressors to try, here’s an old but useful article by SOS from 2009 about classic compressors and where to use them.

Classic Compressors

And remember compress little but use lots of compressors!..unless of course you want to compress lots and use only one compressor… there are no rules once you know how to break them!

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing Tip 6 – Metering

Ok so I know all my other mixing tips have been asking you to use your ears well now it’s time to use your eyes, metering!

Out of all the fancy outboard and plugins I own I can still say that possibly one of the most important things I have in my arsenal to achieve well balanced mixes are my meters.

Generally I like to give my mastering engineer plenty of headroom and dynamic range to work with so I usually opt for the K-14 scale on the K-System for metering. The K system scale makes use RMS (root mean squared) metering for average signal strength, much like how a VU meter operates.

K-system scales are linear rather than logarithmic scales. The advantage to this is that in a linear scale meter each db has the same width/height whereas on a logarithmic scale the db’s near thet op of the scale are larger than the ones at the bottom. As a result with a logarithmic scale meters the temptation is to slam your level near the top of the meter since that region appears to have more “free space”, using a linear scale meter can help you avoid this situation as everything displayed on the meter is even.

The K-system has three scales K-12, K-14 and K-20. Each scale refers to the amount of dynamic range your source music has. So for instance with something with little dynamic range you might use K-12, for rock, pop, dance and country you could use K-14 and for classical and jazz K-20

One great advantage of using the K-System scale is that it is integrated with your monitoring. This basically means that changes you see on your meters correspond to the sound pressure levels you hear over your speakers. For this to be effective you should calibrate your monitors with your RMS meter.

The K- system has a distinct advantage in that by working in a calibrated environment decisions you make over your levels are consistent with the levels you see on your meters and what you hear on your speakers will be mirrored on your meters, reinforcing one another.

Once you get used to this system it can be of great beneficial use in also helping you train your ears.

To calibrate your meters and speakers together you should follow this rule, 0db on your meter should correspond to 83dbspl (85dbspl for 2 channels) where dbspl refers to the decibel sound pressure level.

Bear in mind that this calibration must be done for each k-system scale you use so it will be different for k12, k14 and k20. I find myself using K-14 the most but do have markers on my control room monitor volume of where to move it if switching between different scales. Here’s a great in depth post from a few years ago on Gearslutz of how to calibrate your speakers for K-system scale

In-depth Bob Katz K-System Tutorial - Gearslutz

if that’s a bit too in depth for you to start with here’s a simpler explanation of what to do…
“To calibrate your monitors, choose a K-Scale and then play a single channel, full-spectrum pink noise signal at 0 db on that scale. From your listening position, use an SPL meter (with a C-weighted, slow response) to measure the loudness. Tweak your monitor gain until the SPL meter reads 83 dbSPL. Then, repeat the process for the other channel. Make a note of your calibrated monitor gain for future reference. Then if desired, repeat this process for the other K-Scales”

If you don’t have an SPL meter or it’s too expensive for you to buy there are apps for your phone that you can get but bear in mind they’re not going to give you the level of accuracy or detail a dedicated SPL meter will

Keeping all the above in mind this mixing tip could be more accurately titled ‘metering and monitoring’ and also assumes that you are working in a tuned room. If you’re using nearfield and midfield speakers they’ll have to be calibrated separately due to perception but if you’re just using Pirates you’ll only have one set to worry about!

Even if you don’t opt to use the K system scale I would still recommend using an RMS meter or VU meter rather than a peak meter and set a point below 0dbfs so you don’t end up clipping or squashing your audio.

Personally I like to Use a Dorrough meter and a VU meter (which is free from Waves) in tandem but some DAW’s like Cubase come with a K-system scale which you can select to use in your stereo bus metering section.

Referring to these during the course of my mixing insures that I’m getting the mixes just right level wise to send on to the mastering engineer. Using the K-14 scale I typically will aim to have my mixes averaging between -18 to -24db RMS which leaves a nice sizeable amount of headroom for the mastering engineer.

So get to know your meters and how they correspond to what you’re hearing and as a final metering tip I’ll give you this one…

Are you struggling with your levels between kick and bass guitar?

If you’ve never encountered this you either have just started audio engineering or you’ve been incredibly lucky. Anyway here’s how to use a VU meter to get a balanced kick and bass level for your track.

Solo your kick drum and adjust the kick fader until it’s signal on average is just hitting -3 db on your VU. Now solo your bass guitar along with your kick drum and adjust the bass guitars level until the combined signal of both is just touching 0db on your VU meter. And there you go your Kick and Bass guitar levels are balanced! Cool hey?

So get to know your meters and tip and tricks you can do with them (there’s plenty of them online).

And so ends my first 6 tips on mixing I’ve learned over the years, I’ll be posting more here as time allows. I hope you found some of them useful and can incorporate them into making your mixes better.

Also please post tips you have, mixing techniques you’ve discovered here. As a community we love to hear what other Pirate creatives have discovered or invented themselves.

You can never stop learning!

[Pirate_Gareth]

Mixing Tip 7 – Mix Quickly

Quicker!
Faster!!
Stronger!!!
Louder!!!

It’s almost like a Daft Punk Lyric but mixing quickly is something you really should practice. Making agile small moves and many of them is a sure fire way to getting your mixes to sound better in the shortest space of time.

We’ve all been there before, obsessing for hours over a kick drum EQ, thinking we’ve nailed it only to come back to it on the next mix session and change it again! Seeking perfection in the minutiae may on face value seem to have its merits but in the grand scheme of things really can be a hindrance rather than a help.

When mixing you should take the big picture approach, i.e. listen to everything and not get bogged down in one element. This is why I suggest in an earlier mixing tip to avoid soloing as much as you can during a mix.

Mixing aggressively with bold statements in level and EQ is a fantastic way to speed up your mixing time.

What I mean by this is to try turning up a fader until you are really hearing that element in the mix and then immediately half the amount of decibels you used to get there. Same thing applies with EQ. Try sweeping through an EQ’s bandwidth and gain quickly to find the sweet spot you want to accentuate. Adjust that EQ’s gain till it really pops out of the mix and sounds about where you want it and then reduce that EQ gain by half.

Do this as quickly as you can for each track, not dwelling on your changes but let your gut instinct decide what is right in that moment and move on. Use bold and aggressive but quick and fluid moves through all your tracks.

Also say if the first track you’ve worked on is a Kick drum, rather than move straight onto the snare, which may seem the natural thing to do, instead run up the fader bank to a different instrument say a keyboard pad or rhythm guitar and make your next move there, then run back to the snare drum.

This helps refocus your ears though out the mixing process and can help reduce listening fatigue. As a tip if you ever reach that point where you can’t trust what your ears are hearing and you’re finding yourself going back to elements making big changes that previously you thought were fine, you’re probably suffering from listening fatigue.

*Pro tip…stand up, open the door, get out of the room and let your ears readjust to natural sounds. If you can get outside, go outside, listen to the wind, traffic noise, wildlife (if you’re lucky to be around some)…if you can’t get out even popping down to the kitchen and making a tea or a coffee can help reset your ears and give you some perspective when you get back into the studio to mix

Next thing is to try making small changes but many of them throughout your mix. Let your ears hone in on what it is you want to change do a small quick move and then go straight onto the next thing you feel needs adjustment.

Remember there’s nothing wrong with going back to the track you started with and making another change so long as you remember the rule - small, quick changes.

If you can, I would highly recommend investing in a control surface or if you can afford it some form of mixer to do this kind of work on.

Now you can do it inside a DAW but if you really want to be able to work fast and help train your ears and your reactions to EQ and volume levels there’s nothing better than being able to control a fader and an EQ knob at the same time.

For instance if you change an EQ chances are you’ll want to adjust the fader level up or down nearly immediately after. Likewise if you change the fader level then some EQ adjustment may well be needed also.

Getting into the more creative side of things being able to say adjust an AUX send knob and the feedback/mix level on a delay at the same time for instance can open up a whole new world of creativity for you if you haven’t tried it before.

So I’ll leave you with this exercise to try out and mess around with (I still do it myself from time to time).

The next time you’re starting a mix, once you’ve organised all the stems, gain staged etc. set yourself a timer and try to mix your track in 3 minutes…yep 3 minutes!

Sounds impossible I know but you’d be surprised what a bit of pressure can bring to your mix.

Your adrenaline will also kick in which will help you make decisions on a gut level and there’s probably some psychology behind how that could be attached to an emotional level too. Which let’s face it is where we’re trying to connect to in the listeners of our mixes.

Of course your 3 minute mixes won’t be polished as you’ll be making seat of your pants decisions but what you will be doing is relying on your ears and then in turn learning to trust them.

So Quicker, Faster, Stronger, Louder…try it out, see how you get on, let us know!

[danB_Pirate]

Would be great to add some “top-down” mixing techniques here Gareth! For a speedy quick mix to show a client if under time constraints!

[Pirate_Gareth]

@danB_Pirate Great idea! Will have a look at what I can write up on this. Although if you gather a bunch of engineers into a room and ask them about this techinique they’ll probably all have different plugins they like on their mix bus and sub groups and could debate endlessly on the pros and cons of each!

However the 80/20 rule (i.e 80% of our mix comes from 20% of our decisions) is a great mindset to get into for mixing quickly! Starting with balancing groups after setting up your mix bus is a great way to speed up the mixing process. Will definitely write something up on this later with some tips and tricks.

[DP49628901]

Fantastic write up. Been really looking onto mixing lately and this is confirming what I have been reading as of late. Gain staging is something I never spent a lot of time on but now I do it while writing tracks. Then when it comes to the mix down much of it has already been done. Will look into using more compressors in a chain now as you suggest! Thanks!