SOUND TOGETHER

Many people don’t take the time to get in the right mindset before they even open their mixing session. But having the right mindset can not only help you save a lot of time but also help you make better mixes.

• A Positive Approach.
• Use Reference Tracks? When? How?
• Fresh Ears And Longevity.
• Have A Large Chunk Of Time & Set Aside All Distractions.
• Go With A Goal, Go With A Mixing Mindset.

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Mixing Mindset: A Positive Approach.

Before you even open your session, ask yourself this question. What is your mixing mindset? What is your mood? Because if you are negative you shouldn’t mix. You’ll just make a bad mix and you’ll have wasted the day you had freed up to make it. Mixing should be exciting and fun, you should be looking forward to hear the track and improve it.

“Never be afraid to make mistakes.”

You should never have doubts about your skills, and you should never be afraid to make mistakes. Especially if you are making decisions that your ears have dictated to you.

When you’re mixing, do it as perfectly as you can. Don’t do things half-heartedly, but give it all you’ve got.

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Use Reference Tracks? When? How?

Personally, before starting a mix and even the day before if I can, I make a playlist of tunes close to the track I have to work on. Of course, you’ll have to be careful to take references that you like and that impress you with their audio quality. Then I listen to my playlist with the same monitors that I’m going to mix with to immerse my ears. And I take some notes, on what I think are good ideas.

Then I listen to the ruff mix if I have it. Otherwise I do a quick balance to get an overview of the track and I take notes at the same time of what could be problematic. I note my ideas of arrangements and effects. It gives me a guideline, a red thread and allows me to keep my first instinct.

“Doing A/B’s all the time, you’ll lose your personal vision for the track.”

I’m personally not a fan of importing references directly into the session and doing A/B’s all the time. You’ll lose your personal vision for the track. But once your vision of the mix is complete you can do it to adjust things.

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Fresh Ears And Longevity.

During the mixing stage the fact that your ear needs to focus both on the overall sound and on a single instrument drowned in the mix is very tiring. And you know how much you need to stay focused when changing subtle settings of a compressor or an EQ. And if you don’t take a break regularly your mix will suffer.

Indeed a tired ear gets accustomed to the sound. The defects begin not to jump to our ears and the qualities could also appear as defects. Take 15 minute breaks every hour to rest your ears, but also to come back to work with a fresh ear. During your break I advise you to read “Finish A Track: The Hidden Side Of DAWs.“, it may inspire you!

“If you change the level every 2 minutes you will lose your objectivity.”

Of course it goes without saying that you should not mix at high levels. Personally I mix at a conversational level and especially during the whole mix I force myself not to change the level of my monitors. Because if you change the level every 2 minutes you will lose your objectivity and you will spend your life saying to yourself uh wait my bass is too loud uh wait actually no.

It’s at the end of the mix that I start to check what it sounds like at high volume and obviously for a few minutes at most. A good tip is to use the DIM of your monitor controller but in the other direction. I explain. Activate the DIM, set your speakers to the volume you want. When you want to check at high volume deactivate the DIM. In this way by reactivating it you will be able to find exactly the same volume that you had to mix.

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Have A Large Chunk Of Time & Set Aside All Distractions.

“You don’t go into a mix if you don’t have the time.”

Obviously, you don’t go into a mix if you don’t have the time. You need to have enough time to let yourself experiment, take breaks and not feel pressured by time.

If you are going to do a mix over several days, then I suggest you bounce the song at the end of each sessions and duplicate the session by writing the date. This way, if you are not as good the next day (it happens), you will not only be able to realise that you were not good but you will be able to go back.

Another little tip that may seem normal to me but not to everyone is to cut yourself off from all distractions. By that I mean avoid answering your phone or getting Instagram notifications during the process.

And if you have the misfortune to have scheduled your session the day your neighbors decide to blow up their tiling, then personally I would abstain from mixing and work on something else.

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Go With A Goal, Go With A Mixing Mindset.

“Be careful not to fall into the trap of trying to make the song into something it is not, the result would surely be horrible.”

With all the notes you took while listening to your references and listening to the ruff mix you should now have a clear vision of where you want to take your song. Be careful not to fall into the trap of trying to make the song into something it is not, the result would surely be horrible.

But ask yourself these simple questions. What do I want to highlight? What will bring contrast? Emotion? It’s very easy to fall into a cerebral method when mixing. So having a clear goal in mind can keep you from turning in circles.

I know it sounds weird but I think a good sound engineer is also a good producer. What do I mean by that? Have an artistic vision of the song, what colors do you want to bring? What arrangements you can create to create more surprises, excitement? Don’t jump straight to the basic tools of a sound engineer.

Does a guitar sound too dark? Why not rework it by running it through an amplifier with a good choice of microphone. Anyway, if you have too many problems to fix during the mixing, you have gone a step too far and you should probably go back to the production stage.

Produce as if mixing didn’t exist, mix as if mastering didn’t exist.

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