Audio Masterclass

Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

How To Mix
Is mixing difficult? Yes it is. Otherwise, why would record labels
pay a top mix engineer $2000 a day to mix just one track? Why
would some radio stations insist on tracks being mixed by name
mix engineers?
To become on of the top few mix engineers in the world, you will have
to mix day-in, day-out for years to gain the necessary experience.
You will have to mix a wide variety of tracks in different styles. You
will need extraordinary listening skills and perception. You will need
access to an acoustically treated studio with first-class equipment.
So its impossible then?
No, its not impossible. Being able to mix to a fully professional
standard is perfectly possible. And you can do it in your own home
recording studio with inexpensive software and equipment.
Realistically, you may not achieve the $2000 a day standard. But
the quality of your work can potentially come so close that few
listeners would notice the difference. It is absolutely possible to mix
to a professional standard in your own home studio.
Preparation 1: Acoustics
This is not a text on studio acoustics, so this advice is brief and
basic. It is good advice though, and it will get you a long way on the
path to acoustic perfection.
Here are the important points...
a) Hard flat surfaces make strong reflections that will confuse your
judgment. You must use acoustic absorption, and provide irregular
surfaces to lessen the strength of the reflections and break them up
into many weak reflections spreading out in different directions.
b) Soft materials only absorb high and high-mid frequencies. Carpet
is a good, cheap absorber. But by itself it will only absorb high and
high-mid frequencies. But if you space it away from the wall with
wooden battens, and completely seal the space behind the carpet,
it will absorb low frequencies too. If you cover about half of the wall
space in this way, with varying thicknesses of carpet and varying
spaces between the carpet and the wall, you will achieve a significant
improvement.
c) Preferably the rest of the wall space should be made irregular.
Bookshelves would be a very good solution as the irregularity of the
books would break up the reflections.

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Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

d) Your room should be as symmetrical as possible. This includes

speaker positioning and acoustic treatment.
e) The speakers and your head should form an equilateral triangle.
The speakers should be just beyond the reach of your fingertips.
This is known as near-field monitoring. Having the speakers this
close means that you hear more direct sound than reflections from
the room. Any remaining acoustic problems in the room will be
counteracted by near-field monitoring.
f) It is useful to have some absorption on the ceiling midway between
the speakers and your head. It is also useful to have absorption on
the side walls midway too.
The above advice will get you a long way towards perfect acoustics.
Clearly, it isnt the same as paying to have an acoustic consultant
come round. But it will be an excellent start and the quality of your
mixes will not be held back by your acoustics.
Preparation 2: Equipment and software
Choice of monitor loudspeakers is less important than you think.
That is clearly demonstrated by the wide range of preferences
shown by professional mix engineers. If it were so important, then
they would all gravitate towards whatever is the best loudspeaker in
this application. But there is no one best. And of course, everyones
listening systems are different so the mix engineer never really
knows how his or her mix will be heard.
There are some key points...
a) The monitor loudspeakers must be capable of revealing any
defects in the recording or mix.
b) The monitor loudspeakers must not flatter the mix engineers
work. So if you compared three pairs of speakers, the one with the
most wow factor would probably be the worst for mixing. The mix
engineer has to supply the wow.
c) The monitor loudspeakers must be reasonably typical of a
domestic listening system, faults and all. But with average faults
and no predominant problem areas.
d) Manufacturers that sell into the pro audio market generally know
what they are doing. You wont come to any harm by buying a pair of
monitors from a respected range.
e) It helps if the monitors incorporate their own power amplifiers. If
not, use a power amplifier with a rating around twice the rating of
the speakers. This is so it has power to spare and it is coasting

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Audio Masterclass

Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

rather than struggling. Bear in mind that it could easily destroy your
speakers and stay well in control of the level.
Regarding software, it is possible to achieve professional results
with any of the digital audio workstation softwares sold into the pro
audio market.
Regarding plug-ins, it is often promoted in recording magazines that
you need expensive plug-ins or exotic hardware to achieve a good
result. This is absolutely untrue. You can make a professional mix
using the standard equalization and compression plug-ins that come
free with your DAW software. It is useful however to have a quality
reverb plug-in. This definitely does make a difference.
Preparation 3: Have a plan of how to mix
Multitrack recordings can conveniently be divided into two types...
Where the instruments were played live together, perhaps with
additional overdubs. For convenience, this will be referred to as an
acoustic recording.
Where the sounds are electronically generated or sampled and
microphones were not used, apart from the vocals. For convenience,
this will be referred to as an electronic recording.
When you are mixing an acoustic recording, your main problem will
be that the track is thick and congested and you are trying to create
some kind of clarity.
With an electronic recording, you will find that the mix naturally
sounds sparse and thin, and you are working to give it body and
fullness.
We will concentrate on acoustic recordings because generally they
are more difficult.
Within a multitrack recording of a song using a conventional rock
band instrumentation, background vocals and vocals, there are
three classes of tracks...

The instruments

The background vocals

The lead vocal

In the mixing process you should mix the instruments so that they
all sound good together. You should then process the vocal so that it
sounds strong and full. You should then mix the background vocals
so that they blend well together.

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Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

Now you have three stems, to borrow a convenient word from film
sound.
If you now balance the stems in level, you should have a good overall
mix. You might need to do some blending to optimize the result.
This system works well. You could try and mix everything at the
same time with no overall plan. Some people do. But it is definitely
a more difficult way to work, unless you are massively experienced
and can work almost by instinct.
We can now start mixing...
Step 1: Explore the song
Load up the song into your DAW and organize the tracks into a
logical structure. Put the lead vocal at the top of the screen as it is
the most important track in the song. Follow it with kick drum, snare
drum, hihat, toms, overheads, bass guitar, other guitars, keyboards,
other instruments then background vocals. As you develop your
skills, you may find your own reasons to use different layouts, but
this one is a good start.
Now, play with the faders. Get a feeling for the sounds and textures
you have available. Does anything sound really nice? Does anything
sound really bad? Dont try to achieve anything yet - just play. Play
the song ten times or more so you get to know it well.
When you feel comfortable, you can start mixing.
Step 2: Choose the most important part of the song
Ask yourself, when someone decided to buy this song (as they will
after you have mixed it!), what did they buy it for? Which part of the
song is the part they liked best? You should isolate this part of the
song and mix just this part, then move on to the rest later. Typically
it could be the chorus after the final verse because that will probably
have the most instrumentation. Set your locator points so that you
can listen to just this section over and over.
Step 3: Mix the drums
The drum set is one instrument. Yet all of the drums are normally
recorded onto separate tracks, plus overhead mics to capture the
cymbals. This results in a completely unnatural sound that you will
have to work hard at to bring together as a convincing whole.
Think first about the context of the track. Are the drums driving the
track, as in heavy rock music? Or are they there to support it, as
in a country ballad? These styles of music are useful extremes to

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How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

consider.
If its a heavy rock track you will need to make the kick drum and
the snare full, heavy and attacking. Use EQ to fatten them up.
Use compression with a slow attack (100 milliseconds or so, but
experiment) to make them more attacking.
If its a country ballad, then you can probably leave the kick and
snare pretty much as they are, possibly EQing out any frequencies
that dont sound particularly pleasant.
Generally the kick and snare should be at around the same level in
the mix. Conventionally they are both panned centrally.
Now add the hihat. The hihat produces quite a lot of low-frequency
energy which you should probably EQ out. You may also want to EQ
out any problem frequencies that make it sound harsh rather than
smooth, as it should be. Sometimes the hihat is panned centrally.
More often it is panned to correspond with its real position in the
drum set. Balance the level the way you feel you would like to hear
it.
Now add the overhead mics. These should be panned hard left
and hard right, unless you have some particular reason not to do
so. You probably will not need a great deal of level, just enough to
make the drum set sound real, rather than individual disembodied
instruments.
Since the toms are most often used for accents, you can leave them
until last. If there are three toms, pan them half-left, center and halfright. Adjust the levels so that they are well-balanced compared to
each other, and at an appropriate level compared to the rest of the
kit.
After doing all of this, and some fine-tuning, your drums should
sound like a set of drums. For preference, you should mix the
drums to a stereo bus, then bring this back onto a single stereo
fader. Consult your software manual to find out how to do this. This
technique is called subgrouping. It is far easier to adjust the level of
the drum set as a whole using a single fader than to adjust all the
levels individually.
Final touches - You might consider putting a reverb on the snare.
Start with a plate reverb setting, and set the reverb time so that the
reverb has died away before the next snare or kick drum beat. You
might also consider compressing the drum set as a whole. This can
make the drums more exciting, but bear in mind that it isnt always
necessary.

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How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

Step 4: Mix the instruments with the drums

It is important to mix the bass so that it blends in with the drums,
while remaining clearly audible. Imagine the bass player standing
next to the drummer. What would they sound like? Use EQ to make
it like that. It is often beneficial to compress the bass. If the notes
vary in level, then this will be important as some notes might stick
out while others disappear. Dont over compress - just enough to
even out the level.
Next, you will probably want to tackle guitars. Generally there will be
a pad guitar with strumming that fills out the harmonies. Often there
will be two guitars in this role, which you can pan left and right, as far
out as you feel is appropriate.
Often you will find that electric guitars tend to clash with each other
and fight for space in the frequency spectrum. You should hone
each guitar using EQ into its own space in the frequency spectrum.
Try and avoid boosting at 3 to 3.5 kHz, since this is the region where
the vocal will be strong. This applies to other instruments too.
Since guitars are not bass instruments and you have a bass guitar in
the mix, then you should EQ out the low frequencies of the guitars.
They dont contribute anything useful and they are adding to the
clutter in the mix. Of course, if it is an unusual instrumentation and
there is no bass, this might not apply.
As a general rule it is useful to cut the low frequencies of any
instruments that are not bass instruments.
With the guitars in place, mix in all of the other instruments so that
you have a good balance of levels, and an even spread from left to
right. Imagine the band on stage. Thats what it should sound like.
Remember that not all instruments should be up front. Allow some
instruments to fall into the background by pulling down their level
and reducing the high-frequency EQ.
Final touch - instruments that are recorded with a very close mic
can sound very dry, and are difficult to mix. Try a short reverb, at a
level that is just perceptible. But dont ever use reverb just because
it is there. Only use it when you can tell yourself exactly why it is
necessary. And always err on the side of less rather than more!
Step 5: Enhance the vocal and add it to the mix
If the singer is really good, and the recording was made with a fatsounding tube microphone, you may have to do no more processing
than a little EQ. But the chances are that you will want to thicken up
the vocal and make it fuller, and perhaps bigger.

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Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

Vocals generally sound better with compression. So, solo the vocal
and apply a compression plug-in, with a fast attack, a ratio of around
3:1 or 4:1 to start with, and a release time of around 100 milliseconds.
Adjust the threshold control so that you see the gain reduction meter
moving and hitting around the 10 dB point at maximum. Now play.
Listen carefully to the effect of each control and place it in its optimum
position to get the best sound, the way you like it. When you have
optimized all of the controls in this way, go through them again and
get the sound even better.
Next, insert an EQ plug-in after the compressor and experiment
so that you get the sound you want to hear. There are no rules.
It is absolutely up to you. Compression and EQ do interact to an
extent, so you may find yourself going back to tweak a control on the
compressor, then coming back to the EQ.
When you have done that and you feel that the vocal is as good as
it can be, add it to the mix. Experiment with the level. Generally you
will need a level where every word is clearly audible, but not so loud
that it compromises the impact of the rest of the band.
At this point, you might possibly consider that the vocal is too full.
In this case, cut back on the low-frequency, and perhaps add a little
around 3 to 3.5 kHz. You may be able to bring down the level without
compromising intelligibility.
Alternatively, the vocal might not be full enough. In this case you
can add a delay plug-in to provide repeat echoes. Use a plug-in that
gives mono echoes that sit behind the vocal. You can experiment
with stereo echoes when you are more experienced.
Keep experimenting and fine-tuning until you feel that the vocal is
as good as you can get it, and its blend with the band is as good as
you can get it.
Now ask yourself - would the vocal benefit from reverb?
It probably will - but it is so easy to overuse reverb. Overusing reverb
will hold back your progress. Always get the sound as good as you
possibly can and then apply a little reverb to make it better. And ask
yourself is it actually any better? Generally, start with a plate reverb
setting with a reverb time of around 1.5 seconds. Experiment from
that point.
Step 6: Mix the background vocals
Background vocals are generally easy to mix because they all have
the same sonic texture. Subgroup them so that they all come up on
one stereo fader. Place them into the mix, making sure that they

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Audio Masterclass

Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

are subjectively smaller than the lead vocal. You can EQ the mix of
background vocals to achieve this if you need. You probably will find
yourself adding a little reverb to the background vocals. You might
want to compress them individually if the levels are uneven.
Step 7: Save your mix!
Hopefully you have been saving your work all along, in case of the
computer crash that will one day catch you out.
But at this point you need to save your mix permanently. This is your
base camp mix. You will experiment and refine further, but you may
find that you head out in the wrong direction and need to come back
to base camp and start again. So save this mix under a different
name and make a back-up copy. At lot of work went into this mix and
you dont want to lose it.
When you have done that, take a break overnight and come back
fresh the next day.
By the way, remember that were still concentrating on just the one
most important part of the song.
Step 8: Refine your mix
Separating the tracks into instruments, background vocals and lead
vocals as described is a good plan. But you will almost certainly want
to make further refinements. You might want to bring out the snare
a bit more perhaps, or maybe a guitar line is getting hidden. So
spend a while on this. Save your work so that you can keep it when
youre done. You may want to compare it with your base camp mix
to make sure you are making improvements and not going in the
other direction.
Step 9: Mix the whole song
The settings you have made for the most important part of the song
will probably mostly work for the rest of the song too. However,
there will be sections where you have to make adjustments. For
instance...
The introduction of many songs has a sparser instrumentation
and is therefore quieter in level. In this case, you could consider
creating new tracks and moving the intro section over. This allows
you to keep the main part of your mix as it is, while mixing the intro
separately. You could use automation to achieve the same thing, but
its generally more work to do that.
You might find that the level of the vocal that is perfect for the
choruses is too quiet or too loud for the verses. Once again, the

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Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

easy way to deal with this is to create a new track and move the
verse vocals over (and copy the plug-ins, and reverb sends too).
Your next set of problems to be dealt with will be the details. If anything
seems to pop out too loud at any point, use fader automation to pull
it back, then bring it back to its normal level.
Step 10: Refine, refine, refine
At this point you are well into the details. Use the Save as... command
often so that you keep each significantly different version.
At some point you will arrive at one of two conclusions...

The mix is perfect. Job done!

No matter what you do, you cant get the sound you
want.

If the latter is the case, its time to give up. Youve been heading in
the wrong direction for a long time and you are unlikely to reach the
perfect mix you seek. Put the track away, backup all the mixes you
have done and rest for a week. Dont even think about the track.
When you come back and start from scratch, your subconscious will
have done a wonderful job of assimilating all that you have learned
about the track, and your new mix will progress much faster and
easier than before.
Remember the old saying that a work of art is never finished, merely
abandoned.
When you feel that you have done your best work, write Finished! on
it and let go. There are new mixes to be done, starting tomorrow.
In a years time youll come back to this mix. Youll know straight away
that you can do it better now, but it wont sound bad. You had a plan
and you followed it. You did everything in a professional and correct
way, and you achieved a good mix. And you will remember with a
smile the days before that when it all seemed such a puzzle...

Advice on Monitoring
Even if your acoustics and monitoring system are perfect, they
wont tell you how your mix sounds to individual listeners. People
listen on home hi-fis, car stereos, portable stereos, MP3 players the possibilities are endless. And they generally take little care to
optimize their listening environment, so there will be very, very few
people who will ever listen to your work the way you would ideally
like them to.

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Audio Masterclass

Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

But people enjoy music in different ways, so it is your responsibility to

make sure that your mix is enjoyable in a variety of environments.
While you are mixing therefore you should periodically listen to your
mix in different ways. Even walking around the room can tell you
something about your mix that you didnt realize when you were sat
in the optimum position. You should certainly listen on a cheap hi-fi,
in the car and on an MP3 player.
Remember, your mix isnt finished until it sounds as good as it
possibly can on any kind of playback medium.

Mastering
Mastering is a specialized skill and you should not regard your
attempts at mastering as definitive. Many a recording has been
totally ruined in this way. By all means have a go, but make sure you
keep an unmastered version of the mix.
This is what you should do...

Do not insert any plug-ins into the master channel until

you have completed your mix and you are sure that it is
the best you can get it.

When you are sure you have reached that stage, load
up your stereo mix into a new session on your DAW.
Also load up a commercially released track in the same
genre as the one you are working on, and that you like
the sound of.

Adjust the levels of the tracks so that they are similar.

Very likely you will have to lower the level of the
reference track.

Adjust the EQ on your mix so that it has a similar

balance to the reference track. Make sure there are
no red lights, which indicate clipping and therefore
distortion. Pull down the fader if you need to.

Listen to your work, and your reference track, on a

variety of playback systems.

Optimize and refine.

Thats it! You now have your perfect mix!

Mixing Electronic Recordings

If the song you are working on was recorded electronically, only

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Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

using a microphone for the vocals, then the individual sounds will
probably be too clean and clear and very difficult to blend together.
You might consider that you want the mix to sound electronic. In
which case pretty much anything goes - there arent any rules. But
if it is, as is common, an electronic recording that is trying to sound
natural, you will have some tough challenges on your hands.
As before, you should start with the drum set, or the drum loops,
breakbeats, percussion loops - whatever you find that passes for
drums.
Even though you are working with samples and electronically
generated sounds, remember that they are all based on the sound
of an acoustic drum set. So try and make them more like that.
Listen to the electronic snare - its bigger, brighter and more brash
than any real snare. So tone it down with EQ. Do the same with the
other drum and percussion sounds. Only leave something big if you
feel that the mix will benefit from that.
The drums may still be clinically clean. Try adding a very short reverb,
compress the mix of the drums, perhaps even re-record the sound
of the drums coming from your monitor speakers, from a distance to
get some dirty room sound to add in. (Turn down the monitor level
of the track you are recording, or you will get howlround.)
Youll find the same with the other sounds. Electronic keyboards
produce big bright sounds. Much of the mixing process will involve
trying to create realism. Keep asking yourself, What would the real
instrument, miked up, sound like? Only keep something big if the
mix will benefit.
Try and imagine the background instruments as an ensemble
on stage. Let the minor instruments move to the back by pulling
down their level and reducing the high-frequency EQ. Make the
instrumental tracks sound as a convincing whole, rather than
individual instruments pulling in different directions. The better you
can achieve this, the better it will support the lead vocal.

Summary
To end with the one best piece of advice you could possibly take,
remember this...
If you have a DAW that is in common professional use, with standard
plug-ins plus a nice reverb.. If you have reasonable acoustics and
professional quality monitor loudspeakers that you use near field..

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Audio Masterclass

Course Code: 1010

How TO Mix - A Step-By-Step Guide

If you have all of that, and it isnt much, then the rest is up to you!
Mixing is not about having fancy plug-ins or equipment, its all down
to your skills. The more experience you gain, the faster you will
progress. What you have learned from this text is just the start. Its a
good start though, so get mixing!
Good luck!

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