Mixing & Mastering – Audio Dairy

Fundamentals of Mixing Your Song

Mixing is a very Crucial part for Finishing your Song. Good Mixing can Brighten your sound, on the other hand Bad Mixing can completely Destroy your Song. So you have to be alert when Mixing your Song. It’s a matter of Taste, how the sound gonna taste like or how you want your sound to be. It’s like more of adding spices to your food while cooking. The more precisely you use the spices, the more tasty your food will be.

Some fundamental information you need to learn to spice up your final production before starting Mix.

Fundamental Tips for Mixing

Tip 1: Decision Making

You may wonder what kind of decision should me made for Mixing a Track. But here’s a very important thing, you know Mixing is all about Taste. So, you have to make your own decision that how’s gonna be your sound Taste like?

It’s a very important question.
To answer the question, you’ve to focus on the feel of the song that, is it a happy song? Or a Sad one? Or a different one like EDM? Obviously you can’t mix an EDM song like a Sad Pop Song. That will be a complete disaster. So, you can take a reference song that is similar to your song’s feel. Reference Track works as a measurement scale. You’ll able to find the difference between your song and the destination reference track. You’ll able to see your paths of failure clearly and the remaining distance from your destination. It will help you a lot in your Mixing Process.

Tip 2: Proper Balance

01.Organazing The Tracks

Before diving into the mixing process, it’s essential to have your tracks organized and labeled properly. Color coding and grouping similar tracks together will make the process much more manageable and efficient.

02.Gain Staging

Establishing the right levels for each track is crucial to prevent clipping and ensure a clean, well-balanced mix. A good rule of thumb is to aim for an average level of -18 dBFS (decibels relative to full scale) on each track.

Tip 3:Don’t touch that “Solo” button!(To Clean Mud from Mix)

You can touch it, but try not to rely on it for EQ-ing. The point of mixing is to get all the instruments and vocals to sit together, not necessarily to sound amazing by themselves. Mixing acoustic guitars in the context of a rock song is just one good example: if you solo the acoustic track and EQ it by itself, you’re liable to make it sound very full-bodied — which would seem desirable. However, with drums, bass, electric guitars etc. competing for space, you’ll probably want to thin out the acoustic a bit so that the instrument’s upper harmonics are emphasized. This way, the acoustic can sit lower in the mix, still be heard and it won’t contribute to the “mud factor.” Anyway, try to do your overall EQ-ing with all the faders up. Once you get used to EQ-ing this way, you’ll find your mixes go a lot faster.

Tip 4:Mix in Mono

EQ the mix initially in mono. It sounds easy, but it can be very tricky. During tracking it’s sometimes tempting to layer, layer, layer (hey, we all know it’s fun…) But too many elements in the mix can add up to audio claustrophobia. All too often we take the easy way out and pan similar-sounding instruments away from each other in order to give them their own sonic space. But it takes discipline, good judgement, and perky ears to be able to make sonic elements fit together in mono. You may need to emphasize or cut frequencies in a way that seems counter-intuitive. You may want to consider axing a part or two. It’s a studio hyper-cliche, but less sometimes is more. I’m not saying mix totally in mono (go for it, if you want…) I’m just saying if you can get the mix to sound halfway decent in mono as a starting point, it’ll be a breeze to make it sound great in stereo.