More Multi-Tracks Than You’ll Ever Be Able to Mix!

We talked a lot about mixing in yesterday’s post (catch it here if you missed it), but mixing tips are useless unless you have some multi-tracks to work with.

The thing is, it’s hard to start a home studio business is you don’t have any work to show to potential bands that might want to record with you.

And if you don’t have any audio on your website to showcase your work, it’s going to be harder to get started.

It’s a catch 22. You need to show musicians that you know what you’re doing but you need musicians in order to create your portfolio.

How to Create a Portfolio

Luckily, there are a couple of solutions to this predicament:

If you are a musician yourself you can always record your own music and use that as your first examples.
You can use the free multi-tracks available all over the web to create your first portfolio. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t produce the songs from inception to finished master, at least you’re able to show off your mixing skills.

Using the free multi-tracks you should be able to show off a strong portfolio, especially because you can select a few different genres to show your versatility. Having a portfolio that showcases your strengths as a mixing engineer also means that you don’t need to do free work to get exposure. Your portfolio already proves that you know what you’re doing.

For free multi-tracks I highly recommend Mike Senior’s site that has more multi-tracks than you’ll ever be able to mix, as well as some great guidelines and advice for almost every track. Plus, there’s also a discussion forum for each track where people submit their mixes for feedback in order to improve.

So if you’re struggling to get enough work as a mixing engineer because you don’t have any examples of your work, consider your problem solved.

Keep Learning, But Also DO!

A longtime subscriber, Callahan Burke, sent me this extremely relevant email this morning that applies to this situation:

Thank you, my friend! For all your amazing, accessible mentoring and music. All I have to do do now is keep reminding myself study is great, but when you actually DO something with it you engage the kinesthetic brain and learning becomes exponential!

Point is, you can read my articles all day and think you’re learning, but if you don’t do anything with the knowledge then you’re not accomplishing anything.

So go grab some multi-tracks in your preferred genre and use some of the mixing tips I talked about yesterday to build your portfolio.

P.S.

If you liked that really long mixing article I sent out yesterday, please take a minute and share it on Facebook or Twitter. I’d love for more interested engineers to see it.

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Keeping Track, Music Mixing

About Audio Issues and Björgvin Benediktsson

We help musicians transform their recordings into radio-ready and release-worthy records they’re proud to release.

We do this by offering simple and practical music production and success skills they can use immediately to level themselves up – while rejecting negativity and gear-shaming from the industry. A rising tide floats all boats and the ocean is big enough for all of us to surf the sound waves.

Björgvin’s step-by-step mixing process has helped thousands of musicians confidently mix their music from their home studios. If you’d like to join them, check out the best-selling book Step By Step Mixing: How To Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins right here.