10 Tips to Improve Your Mixing Skills

Hi Charlie, nice list, I'd like to add something about the subtractive EQ you said.

While I agree 100% about it, if your source is recorded properly you might not need to cut anything (or small 1-2db cuts should be applied).
Same goes for boosts too.

I disliked the "EQ: Don’t Turn up the Frequencies That You Like" sentence, cause it gives the impression that subtractive EQ is the only way of EQing and boosting is no-no,
while usually subtractive goes first and additive goes 2nd.

Can you please send us a portfolio of your mixes, so readers here can listen to your work before implementing anything?

Don't mean to offend you of course, it's just since someone is teaching, he should always provide the readers the results of his teachings so he can decide
if he wants to follow his advice or not :)
 
I am not sure i agree with #10 at all. I am not going to mix on crappy speakers. I will reference on crappy speakers for a reference. But i am not going to detail my mix on speakers from a dollar store. Your mixes on the genelecs were probably garbage because your bedroom studio wasn't treated properly. Or with anything. Which, i might point out no where in those 10 posts did you mention the listening environment?

Some food in there for thought but some of those talking points are very misleading.
 
How's it going mate? Thanks for your feedback. When posting I try not to be too dogmatic, so I try to throw in terms like "generally" or "usually", as there are always exceptions. Coming from an analog background, a lot of those old school eq's are noisier when boosted and can cause a lot of phase shift, so I generally use subtractive eq as a rule. Now that most people are using plug ins, the added noise is almost zero, so boosting is ok. I plan to do a more detailed article about the ins and outs of EQ at a later date to supplement my point. There are times when I use 12 dB of boost, but that's another topic all together. One mistake I see noob engineers do all the time, is they add all this insane amount of boost, but they never try to cut anything.

As far as posting up mixes that I've done, I have to look into that. I don't own the intellectual property rights to anything I'v worked on, so posting that stuff up could get me into some legal hot water.

Hope you enjoyed the article nonetheless

Peace
 
Hi there,

Thanks for your feedback. I knew that #10 would stir up some controversy, so that's why I kind of piggybacked it onto #9 where I mention using multiple speakers. I also mentioned that switching to the NS-10's put my mixes back on a more even keel. I didn't make any changes to my room, just swapped out the loudspeakers.
 
I am not sure i agree with #10 at all. I am not going to mix on crappy speakers. I will reference on crappy speakers for a reference. But i am not going to detail my mix on speakers from a dollar store. Your mixes on the genelecs were probably garbage because your bedroom studio wasn't treated properly. Or with anything. Which, i might point out no where in those 10 posts did you mention the listening environment?

Some food in there for thought but some of those talking points are very misleading.

I must say, I've read/heard time and again from top mixing engineers, like Chris Lord Alge for example, that, although they have multiple sets of speakers (in their case, anything they want, obviously), they predominantly use shitty (and I mean shitty) speakers for most of the mixing. In fact, Chris has a small, crappy cassette stereo (couldn't even be called a "boom box" really) that sits on a rack behind him, and he said that he usually ends up listening to that for about 80% of his mixing work.

Obviously, no one is suggesting that great monitors aren't useful, but the more I read about pro mixing engineers (and I mean world-class ones), the more I learn that most of them (in my experience) actually spend much less time on the nice speakers than they do on crappy ones. I've started to mess around with this idea just a bit, using the crappy Logitech 2.1 system that I have on my office computer, and I must say that, whenever I've made adjustments to the mix that sound better on those crappy speakers, it usually ends up sounding better through my monitors as well. Actually, not usually---it always has.
 
You guys need to be careful with your second-hand advice. Some idiot is going to think that junky monitoring is better.
 
You guys need to be careful with your second-hand advice. Some idiot is going to think that junky monitoring is better.

I'm just quoting words that I heard come out of Chris Lord Alge's mouth. And I can't imagine the maker of that crappy cassette deck is loading his pockets full of cash to say that---especially when he didn't even mention the brand or model of it.

But one thing I'll say is that you hear a lot of snobbish crap from some people that tends to frighten others from even trying to make/record any music. Things like:

"Oh, you have XXX monitors? Well ... good luck! You may as well be using a land line phone to monitor with. Call me when you get some real speakers."

"Oh, you're mixing in a bedroom? It's that small? To be honest, it really doesn't matter what you're using; it's going to sound like shit anyway."

Yet you have Grammy-winning engineers saying things like, "In general, I do most of my mixing on a crappy little boom box," and for some reason that information is completely invalid.

I'm no mixing expert to be sure, but it seems to me---also backed up by what I've heard and read repeatedly---that when it comes to mixing, experience trumps gear (as it usually the case in my experience), meaning that the most important thing to do is to get familiar with the room, your speakers, etc. and learn how to mix on them. If you look at famous mixing rooms of the past, many of them hardly come close to the stereotypical minimum-requirement setup you often hear about here and on other forums.

I've seen the old Stax control room where all those hits were mixed (at the museum in Atlanta), and it was a tiny room (smaller than a typical bedroom) with no proper acoustic treatment whatsoever.

The mixing room at Abbey Road, where almost all the Beatles stuff was mixed, was tiny as well with not much in the way of acoustic treatment, yet they managed to mix the hits of the most enduring band the world has ever seen.

My point is that there's an "if I only had this piece of gear" mentality to this site (and other places) lots of times, and that doesn't usually end up helping anyone.
 
I agree with you, except for the lame studio name dropping. Does anyone want to sound like a Stax or Beatles record anymore?

You don't need to have the best gear available. But you're talking about professionals that have been doing this for decades throwing out little tidbits of bad information for the n00b. For the home recording n00b dummy, he's better off with some moderately decent gear to get going. The learning curve is flattened and accelerated when someone has the basics settled - like decent monitoring and a decent mixing environment. When they get proficient with that, then they can experiment with stupid ideas from stupid pros. Hero worship is a slippery slope. So is pining for the way they did things 50 years ago. Mixing pros always talk about the stupid things they do and then people fall over each other trying to duplicate it. I think they talk shit on purpose just to throw off the sycophants. But then you guys just eat it up.
 
I'd say that the pros use shit because they know what good sounds like.
A noob has no reference point.

Exactly. That's what I'm trying to say, just not very well. It's not much different than say Slash ripping on some junky Squier and a solid state practice amp. He can make it sound good anyway. The rest of us sound like ass.
 
A young chap of my acquaintance who mixes and masters semi-professionally just bought some generic computer speakers to add to his mixing setup. He asked me to make up a special cable for him so he could do so. He told me that the first track of his that he played through them flagged up a rogue frequency in his vocal that hadn't shown up on his Adams and allowed him to notch it out. Let's not forget that most customers will listen to stuff on awful speakers like these, so you do need to check your mixes on them. You are not going to do the entirety of your mixing on shit speakers, that would be ludicrous, but they are an important tool to be used for a specific job. I mix on my Yamahas, I listen in the van, the car and on my 486-style beige computer speakers at work. They're all valuable in their own way.
 
I agree with you, except for the lame studio name dropping. Does anyone want to sound like a Stax or Beatles record anymore?

You don't need to have the best gear available. But you're talking about professionals that have been doing this for decades throwing out little tidbits of bad information for the n00b. For the home recording n00b dummy, he's better off with some moderately decent gear to get going. The learning curve is flattened and accelerated when someone has the basics settled - like decent monitoring and a decent mixing environment. When they get proficient with that, then they can experiment with stupid ideas from stupid pros. Hero worship is a slippery slope. So is pining for the way they did things 50 years ago. Mixing pros always talk about the stupid things they do and then people fall over each other trying to duplicate it. I think they talk shit on purpose just to throw off the sycophants. But then you guys just eat it up.

And I agree with all this except for the "Does anyone want to sound like a Stax or Beatles record anymore? " Umm ... that would be me! I love the way a lot of those albums sound. Obviously, not all of them. But I'm not mentioning it in the spirit of pining for the way they did 50 years ago. I'm saying that they were able to get world class sounds (for the time) with those setups.

But I think you're right with the idea that you kind of need to learn the rules before you break them. I just think people go too far with the "rules" lots of times.
 
But I think you're right with the idea that you kind of need to learn the rules before you break them. I just think people go too far with the "rules" lots of times.

Herein lies the problem with "top 10 mixing tips" lists (absolutely no disrespect meant). The intentions are well and good, but readers who are looking for this information lack the proper backdrop or ability to be discerning when it comes to much of this type of advice. I know because that was me a few years ago.

Incidentally, I am guessing that everyone responding to this thread would have a different "top 10 tips" list, and many would have directly opposing tips.

Case and point, there are tips in this list that I do not agree with and I think they will mislead noobs. You would think the same of my list, likely.
 
Not to comment on the validity or lack of regarding the 10 tips article, i'll just comment on the broader issue. We live in an age where anyone who knows how to type and use a keyboard, and navigate the net is an instant "expert".
Even when a pro offers advice there are a hundred guys to tear it down. It's kind of sad. Nowadays there is no respect for the people that have actually paid their dues and are successful.
There are a lot of folks out there who truly are experts in their chosen field. That advice freely given is precious.
 
Personally, I think we should go back the 10 post rule.

Nothing bothers me more than fly-by-night posters with 5, 6, or 7 posts, using "creative" ways to direct traffic to their site, under the guise of trying to educate a website full of people he knows nothing about. I'm betting the OP isn't even coming back.
 
Wow!

Glad to see this thread is stirring up some controversy. It's interesting to see everyone's opinion with respect to the speaker issue. In the day of Ipod and MP3 it almost seems like monitoring through quality speakers is a waste anyway, but I digress. One thing I noticed while riding the subway here in L.A., is that I saw so many people listening to music on 99 cent earbuds, which got me to thinking. "Maybe I should have a pair of those lying around the studio" As I monitor my mix on my various systems, I will now actually do some minor tweaks while listening through the earbuds. The first rule of marketing is "Know your target audience". If my target audience is listening through earbuds, I'd better make sure they sound good through them... Keep it up guys, good stuff...
 
I think everyone here needs to start a personal audio blog and post up their "tips"... :)

On the subject of using crappy speakers or multiple speakers....there is the opposite school of thought.
Use the best speakers you can so that they are not lying to you, and use one set so you are not chasing the mix across multiple speakers.


Why don't mastering engineers use crappy speakers... since they control the final sound of a mix, you would think they should too...???
Also...while Chris Lord Alge does well with crappy speakers.....there are many top mix engineers that use high quality speakers for all their mix decisions.

Hearing is believing...so why would you want to compromise what you hear and how you hear it?
If you can't get a good mix on a good set of speakers....crappy speakers will NOT help you get it...
...so don't go installing your car speakers in your studio. ;)
 
In respect to the speaker issue. In the day of Ipod and MP3 it almost seems like monitoring through quality speakers is a waste anyway....


Well then....why use quality mics or preamps...or worry about converters or the quality of plugins...or any of that shit...?
Just record everything with your iPhone while you monitor with your earbuds.
Done.
 
...so don't go installing your car speakers in your studio. ;)

Damn!!!! Miro, why did you have to go tell me that?!?!?!?!

Shit!! I just sold all my good speakers and set up some Kraco 6x9s in those carpet covered wedge cabinets. I got it all at Pep Boys, I figured it had to be better.:)
 
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