Mixing often seems as a complicated process that revolves around gear, plugins, and secret tricks. But the truth is, mixing can be summed up to 3 key elements.
Today I'll show you what are they and how can you achieve them. If you understand these 3 key elements, you'll achieve a great sounding mix, guaranteed.
What makes a great mix?
Aside from a well written song and well recorded tracks. No, it's not analog gear or a fancy reverb plugin. These are just tools to get there. What I'm talking about is far more simple: Everything is BALANCED That's it.
Everything else is just a set of tools to achieve this balance. And if we take a closer look at what makes a mix balanced, we'll find 3 key elements.
Let's break it down one by one:
Volume Balance Balance is the most important word in mixing. Our job as mixing engineers is to balance all of the tracks together. Don't miss on that one, most of our work can be summed up to this, balancing tracks. We have to make sure every track is at the right volume level at any given moment of the song. We do that by moving the volume faders, and setting volume automation. We also do that by using compression, which lets us control the dynamic range of our tracks.
EQ Balance Not only volume we have to balance, but frequencies too.
Sometimes the volume faders are not enough to achieve the balance we're looking for, so we have to use another tool: EQ. We have to take care of overlapping frequencies between tracks ("masking"), to make sure every instrument can be distinguished and heard clearly. We also have to make sure that our mix has the right amount of low and and high end frequencies, and doesn't have any piercing high mid frequencies or muddy low mid frequencies. Obviously we do that by using an EQ plugin. Every EQ move we do is for achieving the bigger goal of making sure our mix is balanced.
Dynamics Balance Another tool which is used to achieve balance, is compression.
Compression lets us control the dynamic range of our tracks (and essentially our mix).
If certain tracks are too dynamic, and can't fit nicely in the mix, even with volume automation, we can use compression to control those dynamic (reduce the dynamic range) so the tracks will fit better in the mix, in a more balanced and consistent way.
We can also use compression to make our tracks sound more (or even less) punchy, which is very often used on drums and other percussive instruments.
Did you get that? Not only most of the mixing process can be summed up to 3 key elements, it can be also summed up to 3 tools: Volume, EQ, and Compression. That's amazing.
Once you truly understand that, your view of the mixing process will change completely. And it doesn't mean that you have to get super fancy and expensive versions of these simple tools. Your stock plugins do the job just fine. Sure, third party plugins or even outboard gear can add to the sound. But that doesn't mean that the plugins you already have are holding you back.
You already have all the tools you need to make an amazing mix
These 3 key elements are the core of every mix. They are the goals you should focus on when mixing. And if you achieve them, you'll get 80% percent of your mix done.
Do you mix with the concept of balance in mind?
Do you use volume, EQ, and compression to get that?
Let us know in the comments below!
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