Mastering the art of mixing your music is nearly as crucial as creating your initial melody: Newcomers to the mixing process, start your journey here.
In the realm of music production, mixing a track is a crucial step in bringing your ideas to life. The process involves a delicate balance of adjusting volumes, using compression, EQ, and panning to ensure all instruments, melodies, vocals, and beats can be heard without hindering each other.
To start mixing, it's essential to set all fader levels at 0dB and adjust levels to hear every track. Using panning, you can spread instruments and vocals across a stereo soundstage, keeping clashing instruments away from each other and offering a wide experience for the listener.
Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) come with a variety of mixing features. Faders allow you to adjust volumes, while mix effects like EQ and compressors help shape the sound. Panning options let you position sounds left, right, or centre.
Low frequency instruments like the kick drum and bass guitar usually stay central, while other instruments can be panned to the left or right as desired. The bass range (60Hz to around 250Hz) covers your bass guitar, some male vocals, and parts of your kick drum. The lower mid frequency range (250Hz to 500Hz) takes in guitars, vocals, and some bass guitar elements. The mid frequency range (500Hz to 2kHz) deals with a lot of vocals, some percussion, and keyboards. The upper-mid range (2kHz to 4kHz) takes account of female vocals, snares, and strings. Higher frequencies (4kHz and upwards) deal with very high percussive frequencies like cymbals.
Compressors are used in mixing to keep levels even, especially for vocals, guitar, bass, and acoustic drums. They lower signals above a set threshold and boost quieter signals to make them more of a match for the louder ones. When mixing a live instrument/band-based piece of music, it can be helpful to picture the band on stage and pan the instruments in a way that reflects their relative positions.
Sub bass (20-60Hz) is often difficult to hear without a subwoofer but is particularly important in bass heavy dance music. Being restrained in mixing yields benefits, and small tweaks can result in big improvements.
When mixing, it's good to have an EQ and compressor on every channel. Some mix engineers advocate cutting the low frequencies on every channels bar the bass synth, bass guitar, and kick drum. Identifying unknown mix plugins in DAWs can be done by listening carefully to their effect on the sound, using visual analysis tools within the plugin (such as spectrum analyzers or resonance detectors), testing preset functions like "Calculate Targets" for frequency suppression, and by experimenting with the plugin's controls to understand its purpose and behavior in the mix environment.
The goal of mixing is to put the musical idea on show and avoid burying it with a bad mix. Mixing involves ensuring tracks aren't too quiet or too loud, letting instrument tracks breathe, avoiding clipping, and considering volume, compression, EQ, and panning. With these tips in mind, you're well on your way to creating professional-sounding mixes that truly showcase your musical ideas.
