CYBERMIDI MUSIC and MIDI Blog

Hey guys! Today I'm going to show you 5 mixing tips that will help you clean up your mixes almost instantaneously. You will have probably heard them in some form or another before as these are quite common solutions (because they WORK) but I hope to perhaps shed a little more light on them than others in the past. Have a read and let me know how they work for you!

1.) Getting To Know Your High Pass Filter

One of the hardest concepts to grasp as a beginning mixer is the power of an EQ and when to use it. EQs can alter the tone and color of a sound by either boosting or cutting wide or narrow margins of a frequency. Every DAW out there, no matter what you use, will have some sort of built in EQ plugin. Look for the Lo-cut/High-Pass filter, or if your DAW has a parametric EQ, you can pull that up as well. The purpose of the lo-cut filter is to get rid of unwanted frequencies/noise in sounds that have no business occupying that space.

Now what you might not know is that certain sounds can occupy frequency space your ears won't pick up. If your EQ has an analyzer function go ahead and enable it and watch where your audio is spiking. Notice that hi-hat sample? Unless it has already been printed with a hi-pass filter, you'll see that there is energy in the mids to low mids. If you cut those while listening, you'll notice they don't contribute any significant tonal colors. However, if you do not cut them, they will still be occupying that space in the mix. Now if you have a sparse mix with few instruments, you might be fine leaving the sample untouched, however in dense mixes, such as 75+ track pop tunes, you absolutely cannot afford to have instruments occupying a frequency range they will not contribute to.

In short? Go through your tracks and LISTEN to what can be hi-passed. Don't go blindly cutting everything. Your general aim will be to cut everything below 125 hz (again use your EARS). For example, some engineers (in thick mixes mind you) will cut acoustic guitars up to 250hz! However doing this in a singer/song-writer setting would be silly as a majority of the guitars body and color would be cut out. Arrangement, arrangement, arrangement people! Let the arrangement dictate your mixing decisions - this was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn (even as a composer..whoops).

2.) Use A Spectrum Analyzer

This second tip lines up with the first as we are still dealing with frequencies. Remember your parametric EQ that has that fancy "analyzer" button? Slap that bad boy on your master out (if you do not have one, there are several great FREE spectrum analyzers out there, Google it!) You can now go down your track list and make note of where certain sounds are occupying the most energy or frequency space. This will be especially helpful for containing your low end where the space gets a lot tighter. Think kick drum and bass. You can solo your kick drum track, look at the analyzer, and SEE that it is spiking at 86 hz. You can now go into your bass track (or anything else rumbling around that low) and CUT a couple of db at 86hz. This will let the kick drum sneak through the mix a little easier and give it some breathing room. You can do this with any two or more instruments that are within similar frequency ranges. This helps avoid what is called "masking" and will help your mixes achieve clarity. Again, use your EARS, and always listen to your changes in context of the entire mix. No one will be listening to your kick drum by itself - unless you're producing some kind of exotic eastern euro drum n' bass track that is. To each his own!

3.) Organize!

Now I know this isn't a technical tip but I cannot stress how important this is. You will waste SO much time if you do not organize your mixes properly. I still catch myself having to pause and spend a good chunk of time reorganizing my project - this is time that could have been spent mixing! Investigate your own DAWs capabilities. Mine, Logic X, has the ability to group, color code, organize by folders, etc. Most do, read the manual or search forums for tips in this area.

It is also very important to organize within the mixer itself. This means properly sub-grouping and cleaning up your routing so it's easy to navigate and make changes quickly. Nothing sucks more than trying to figure out where a track is playing from when it isn't playing in the subgroup you expected it to be in. Fun times!

4.) Say NO To The Compressor (At Least Sometimes)

One of the first things you probably experimented with once you opened your DAW for the first time is the compressor. 'Compressor' is one of the first words in anyone's mouth when they think of mixing. It has sort of a ubiquitous connotation of making things better, no matter what! The truth is, that is far from the truth. The point of a compressor, generally speaking, is to control dynamic range. Think of it as an automated fader (although it is much more than this - more later). When the signal passes the set threshold, it will automatically TURN DOWN the signal based upon a set ratio. A ratio of 4:1 means that if input level is 4db over the threshold, the output signal level will be 1dB over the threshold. The gain (level) has been reduced by 3dB.

Try to only compress tracks that absolutely call for it. Again, use your ears. Consequently, compressing sucks the life out of performances if you are not careful as it flattens the dynamic range. However this can be a desired effect if you want the track to sit more consistently in the mix (this is the primary reason to compress in the first place!).

BE AWARE: If it makes things LOUDER, it must be better. Right? A lot of default DAW compressors will bump the gain up a few dbs by default which I will never understand. This confuses so many beginners and confused myself as well. In the early days I would reach for the compressor just to make things louder because that's what it did! It bumped the gain up 4db. I wouldn't even care if I was compressing the signal even a little bit. To me it was LOUD and that was cool.

In Short: Don't compress everything to the max. You will have a boring, lifeless mix.

5.) Check In Mono

The last essential quick tip I have is to constantly check your mixes in MONO. Lots of DAWs will have a mono/stereo button on the master buss you can flip back and forth. I say this as a lot of those super cool delays, spreads, pans, FX you've used have a good chance of disappearing in mono. While mono-summed systems are getting rarer these days (minus club systems) it's still good to check that your mix will sound great everywhere. Mono checking will also allow you to peek in to see if any phase cancellation is occurring on your tracks. This is helpful with multi-miked drums/guitars that might be panned strangely/out of alignment and thus out of phase.

If you implement these 5 tips effectively, you will be on your way to more dynamic, cleaner sounding mixes in no time. Just remember to USE YOUR EARS PEOPLE. We are musicians, right? Now get to mixing!

Ford Heacock has an M.M. in Music Theory & Composition from Florida State University and has been composing, producing, and mixing music for the last six years. Now in Nashville, TN Ford runs and operates FIREBREATHrecords, Red Dragon Music, and First Light House Shows promoting unique music and artists in Music City. http://firebreathrecords.com

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