How to get better at mixing?

I am relatively new to mixing. I actually have about a year and some change worth of mixing experience in me. That’s not too much experience compared to the fact that a lot of professional mixing engineers have 20 plus years of experience. But to someone who is just starting out, I know a few things that will make you a better mixing engineer. From using EQ properly to compressing vocals, let’s talk about this.

The four food groups and deserts

            They say that all mixing can be done with just a few components in your mix: EQ, Compression, delay, and reverb. The 5^th thing that a lot of people recommend that you do is called saturation. However, it’s been debated as to the actual usage of saturation. So for the sake of this blog post, I’m only going to talk about the first four that I mentioned.

Let’s talk a little more about each of these and see how we can learn to listen for these things and become better mixing engineers.

EQ

            Eq is dealing with the frequencies that we listen to. EQ stands for equalization.

            The reason why we use EQ is for a few things. The main reason why we use EQ is to carve out space for different instruments or even and especially the vocals. When we use EQ, as a beginner, it’s best to think of small cuts and boosts that’s going to dramatically do some big changes to your music. Boosting means to increase the volume of the frequency and cuts means to reduce.

            You can also use EQ to clear mud in the mix. When dealing with the lows, you almost always want to cut the sub bass out. Unless of course you have a sub bassy song. And even still you will want to cut some of the sub bass because it just sound too overbearing.

            The mids is where we hear a sort of boxy sound to it. When EQing vocals, be careful not to take out too much of the mids because or else it just sounds too thin. Cut the frequencies that you need and keep it rolling.

            Usually in the highs is where you will see a lot of brightness and sibilance.

Compression

            Think of compression as an automatic tool that lets you to reduce or boost the overall sound of a particular track. Not song, but track.

            Say for example this, if you have a guitar track, you also have a vocal track, if you don’t know what this means, then you should go look up how to use a DAW.

            But an acoustic track that has vocals or guitar usually has some minor flaws in it that can be fixed by compression.

            Think of compression as this, it squishes the sound so that it stays at a consistent volume throughout the piece. Be careful when using too much compression though because or else your music can sound not stale but dynamically challenged. As you know a song is supposed to be dynamically diverse or else there is practically no emotion to it.

Delay

            I love using delay in  my songs. I think that it adds a certain level of character to my songs. I use an analog delay in a few of my songs because I think that a beat delay is a little too strong. But the analog delay sounds just right.

            Think of delay as this, have you ever seen how the Grinch stole Christmas? You know that scene where the Grinch shouts into his cave and he says You’re an idiot! and it shouts back You’re an idiot! well that’s delay!

            Again, you have to be careful when using delay because not all songs need delay.

Reverb

            Reverb is another space tool. It can help shape how much space you want the song to sound like. If you use a lot of delay and reverb, it sounds like you’re in a big stadium. If you use less, it sounds like you’re in an intimate setting.

            Again, be careful when you hear the reverb in a song, because sometimes you are going for that whole intimate setting type vibe and you don’t want to use reverb.

Mixing is an art

            In order to become good mixing engineers, you have to spend a lot of time listening to music in the realm that you want to mix in. If you’re in your bedroom, you want to practice mixing in your bedroom.

            So dust off those old records that you have and start listening.

Broadcast

            I thank you all for listening in on this blog post. If you want to learn more about God, if you want to get closer to God, if you want God in your life. Then pray to him and he will answer you in the way that is the most appropriate.

            Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. I hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time. German Gonzalez, signing out!