MIX TIPS FOR GREAT PRODUCTION

Every time I get this frequent question in my Inbox about “How to get that Big Pro sound during mixing stage in my DAW?” There are countless videos on the internet and also blog to show you many methods the great engineers share about their huge techniques. But it purely depends on how and where you apply it in your DAW. This is the place many starters and upcoming home studio engineers get stuck during their mix. We always feel that the mix is not sounding great and does not have energy, punch or clarity like the popular mixes in the market. Everyone goes through this problem and I have found my own method to overcome this during mixing process. Trust me, this works for any genre! Instead of boring notes, let me break down into few points for your production to sound great.

MIXING TIPS

1. Instead of listening to the song with all the Faders set to Unity gain at 0db level and then adjusting by bringing down the faders, first bring down all the Post Faders to Infinity or -60db so that we don’t hear anything on our speakers.

2. Now bring the Faders one by one but not in SOLO mode! Then try to hear the song like a normal non-technical person.

3. Within 5 to 10 minutes, you will have a clean good balance of the song!

4. After you get this, then decide on the panning of each instruments or tracks which gives good separation on the imaging side of our audio content.

5. Spend good time using the HIGH PASS filter (HPF) on each track to remove the low-end rumble and clear up your muddy sound in your tracks, this gives more room for the Bass and Kick or low frequency instruments to sound awesome.

6. The most difficult thing is to make the Vocal sit on your mix. If it is not heard well, then try applying parallel compression or even serial compression in your session. This can give you a significant boost in your sound and also have compression applied in your track at the same time!

7. For using delays, generally I create separate track for the ending words in your song and then apply a delay effect on that so that it does not clutter up your mix in your session. If you apply in your vocal tracks be careful to adjust the delay time and the feedback time to just hear in your mix and not floating too much in your mix. Also I insert a High Pass filter before the Delay plug-in just to remove unwanted low-end sound entering the Delay plug-in.

8. Use Aux busses to route all your tracks so that it’s easy to handle large track counts when you receive from your clients and colour code them for faster navigation during mix.

9. Mixing in MONO, this is the best way to judge the session in the centre speaker to give you a good balance decision in your mixing process. If you don’t have a mono plug-in or a button in your hardware, try inserting a Stereo width plug-in and reduce the spread to 0.0 (zero) level. This brings all the panning to dead centre in your mix.

10. Finally, add an Aux master and insert a Master buss compression in your tracks for adding that analogue warmth and with a subtle compression reduction of -2db to 3 db of your whole song.

Trust me, these tips will surely work for any genre and gives your killer results in any DAW. Happy mixing!

Author: L. Baba Prasad. He is the owner and chief Sound/Mix and Mastering Engineer at Digi Sound Studio. He also teaches Sound Engineering and Music Production courses. For more details, visit www.digisoundacademy.com