Mixing More Efficiently

JG96

JG96

Active member
I know this is a very broad question but what are some tips on saving time when mixing music. I consider myself fairly good at mixing but sometimes It takes me a while to get a good mix. I am mixing a 14 song album this next couple weeks I will be juggling being a full time student and mixing a 14 song EP. Could anyone shed some wisdom on how to save time when mixing?
 
I can't emphasise enough how important getting it right at the source is. Don't waste time polishing out of time, out of tune tirds, they can't be saved. Only mix music that is worth mixing
 
I honestly can't see a reason why you'd wanna save time on a mix, I really take my time with mixes till I make them right...
 
The biggest time saver has already been mentioned...get things right when you record.

However, I'll add a couple of others:

-Take the time to be organised. Label your tracks with what they are, use colour coding if your DAW supports it, make copious notes as you go along.

-Where appropriate, make clever use of buses on your DAW. Besides being a way to apply the same effect to multiple tracks, it can also be a time saver to, for example, set the balance of your drums once, then just have adjust one control (the Bus) to balance the whole thing into the mix.
 
Bobbsy said:
-Where appropriate, make clever use of buses on your DAW. Besides being a way to apply the same effect to multiple tracks, it can also be a time saver to, for example, set the balance of your drums once, then just have adjust one control (the Bus) to balance the whole thing into the mix.
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This has been a huge time saver for me. 16 drum tracks into one bus. Mix till I like it. Eight guitar tracks into one bus. Mix till I like it. Etc. till there's only five or six faders (drum, guitar, keys, bass, vocal, noises) to mix at the end. Also makes it to where you can easily apply EQ and comp to the entire bass sound, reverb to the entire drum kit, etc...and you can still go back to the sub-mixes and tweak if you don't think the acoustic guitar is loud enough or the piano is overbearing.
 
miroslav said:
Isn't that an oxymoron? :D
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D'oh. I havent mixed a full length in so long that I almost forgot they aren't called EP's. I always bus the drums but I'll try applying that to other tracks too. On this album I only engineered the drums and did a pretty good job I must say. The vocals sound pretty great too. Both of those are sounding great with minimal compression and EQ.
Some of the guitar tracks sound a little meh but hopefully I can tweak them. Organization is not my strong point so I will certainly try to stay on top of that.
 
Re-use tools as much as possible. e.g. Reaper lets you save track templates with volume, panning, routing, FX, etc. Get your basics right on one song; save some templates; and import those into the next project so you don't have to redo all that work.
 
I was just gonna bring up templates. Great time saver. I usually end up using the template and tweaking but the bulk is already done.

good luck man... ;)
 
Thats a good call on the templates. I could get basic levels, phase, EQ, etc on all the drums. Have a basic seting for vocal EQ, compression, and verb. The guitar tones are pretty varied from track to track so thats a but drums and vocals alone should cut down on time.
 
Efficiency comes with time invested. You can't cut corners with experience and expect to be exceptional. You want to be more efficient but not by overlooking important details. I'm speaking from an artist's point of view. Not a production engineer's point of view. If time restraints are imposed on you, you just have to pull your priorities to the forefront and work from there. You may not have the luxury of time and patients when you're mixing. [Solution] compartmentalize your "duties" within the time constraints you're allowed. Execute each one in the sequence of their importance. Before you know it, you'll be finished with the project with a minimum of frustration, doubt, and self criticism.
 
JG96 said:
I know this is a very broad question but what are some tips on saving time when mixing music. I consider myself fairly good at mixing but sometimes It takes me a while to get a good mix. I am mixing a 14 song album this next couple weeks I will be juggling being a full time student and mixing a 14 song EP. Could anyone shed some wisdom on how to save time when mixing?
Click to expand...

A time savor tip is to create templates depending on the genre so you can import the WAV faster.
For example, "metal template" , "EDM template" etc.

As Btyre2013 said, focus on the sources, being mics or samples. It's better to spend 10 min to find a great sample (if you need to work with samples)
rather than trying to fix a sh**ty wave/sound with EQ and post-process.

Edit: Everything has already been mentioned, pardon me, so take this as a huge +1 from me
 
Keep in mind that a "track template" in Reaper can actually a be any number of tracks, folders, whatever. It also lets you save project templates. Something I use fairly often is the fact that it lets you import whole projects (.RPPs) as though they were track templates. It's about the easiest way I've found to combine two projects if that ever becomes necessary.
 
Yup. Good call on shortcuts. You can save a lot of time if you learn the keyboard shortcuts (and practice using then) for all your most common commands.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Re-use tools as much as possible. e.g. Reaper lets you save track templates with volume, panning, routing, FX, etc. Get your basics right on one song; save some templates; and import those into the next project so you don't have to redo all that work.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. Get one song sounding great and save the channel settings. Import them into the rest of the songs and go from there. Yu might have to deviate from the imported settings, but if every song was recorded with similar instruments/performers/equipment/etc, then the same settings will get you close.

[Edit: Oh, now I read the rest of the thread and everyone else is agreeing. That makes it unanimous.]
 
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