Achieving a full-sounding mix can be a difficult task. Even if you have a well-arranged and professionally produced song, adding that depth and fullness we all love can seem impossible no matter how much you tweak your plug-ins and level your tracks. Sometimes it’s not about how well you level and process the tracks of...
Mixing is an art that goes beyond knowing what every button on your mixer or plug-in does, the theory behind compression, knowing what frequencies are usually problematic on various elements, or knowing what equalizing techniques are “the best” and so on. The stuff mentioned above is important, but it’s something anyone can learn with enough...
Reverb, or reverberation, refers to the persistence of a sound after it is produced. In other words, for how long you can hear a sound after it’s done playing. Whether you just started mixing or you’ve been doing it for a long time, reverb is one of your most powerful mixing and production tools. And...
Groovy drums are crucial to pretty much any song that has drums in it. While authentic groovy drumming only can be achieved by a real groovy drummer, there are certain things you can do in the mixing process to help shake things up a bit. Especially for programmed drums and samples, these techniques can be...
Delay as an audio effect, is the process of repeating a sound signal with a certain amount of time delay between the repetitions. The possibilities with delay are enormous and reach far beyond the simple echo in a big valley sound that most people relate to delay. Stereo sound, chorus effects, flanging, and more can...
Parallel processing is a common term in music production and is a technique commonly used to breathe more life into a track. But what is it really, and how does it work? The basic idea is that you duplicate a track, either by duplicating the actual audio track or by routing the audio to a...
A good mix flow is crucial to achieving a good mix and working more effectively. So instead of spending endless amounts of time trying to find a specific track you need to fix because you can’t really see where it’s at, getting frustrated by too many tracks and unorganized projects, there are a few simple...
Most producers and mixing engineers are familiar with mix translation concepts such as “the car test”, checking your mix in mono, mixing at low volumes, and so on. But what’s the deal with these concepts and why are they so important? There are many reasons why they’re important, but the key takeaway is they give...
What to do and when to do what can often be confusing when mixing. Equalizing, compression, reverb, automation, leveling, panning, editing, quantizing, and so on. The possibilities are endless. Categorizing different things and making some sort of system can be a great way to make mixing less confusing, more effective, and in many ways more...
Something that is common for all things successful, whether that be a chart topping artist or your neighborhood’s most popular bakery, is consistency. The magic of showing up every day, every week, or every year, and delivering what you promised to the people you promised it to, is often a bigger factor to success than...