10 Mixing Reminders

1. Listen to a part of a commercial track before you start mixing….wav, mp3 or spotifiy is fine. not the whole song…just a piece to calibrate your ears

2. Take a 5 minute break for every 45 minutes of mixing….literally stand up and walk around or stretch….leave the room if possible
Don’t turn the volume up and down. Set a comfortable fixed level and leave it there for hours at a time.

3. Work on the kick and make a really good kick sound before proceeding. Build the mix to a good kick sound…even if it changes over the course of the mix.

4. Try to have three mix projects in rotation. Jump between them, rather than sentencing yourself to listening to the same track over and over and over again. Don’t work on the same track for over 4 hours in one session.

5. Add the mix buss limiter only after most of the dynamics have been set on the individual channels. Your mix should look good naked, before the steroids.

6. The mute tool is often more powerful than any EQ. There are problems that arise that cannot be solved with traditional mixing tools and techniques….and in that case mute the trouble makers and make a bigger deal out of what’s left.

7. Big reverbs with short decay times can create a big sound without sloppiness.

8. Multiband sidechaing and mid-side sidechaining can manage frequency traffic in ways that static EQ cannot. Create as many “Tango” dances as you need to get the mix dancing.

10. When you are moving balances by 1 dB or less — and you can’t seem to make it better…you are done!

ULTIMATE MIXING AND MASTERING PROGRAM