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!
38
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
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