The best way to get better at mixing Christian music!

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all the best way to to get better at mixing your songs.

Before we get into it, let’s have our moment of silence.

At this time, I would like all of us to take a moment of silence and pray to God to help us to become the person that he wants us to become. Take a minimum of 5 minutes and pray for this. 

Now back to the show

The best way to get better at mixing

So mixing has a lot of technical aspects revolving around it that you need to know first before you start mixing.

Keep in mind that I’m not going to get you to mix professional quality mixes within this blog post. 

However, I am going to go over the basics of mixing and also how to make more advanced mixes.

Keep in mind again that it takes years of practice before you can make great mixes.

With that being said, Let’s talk about the basics.

The basics

So the first thing that you should know is that mixing is an art. There is no right way to do it, there is no wrong way to do it. 

If you feel like you need to boost the bass up all the way because you think it will sound good, then by all means do it.

However, it’s not advisable to do it in all occasions.

So keep in mind that mixing is an art with technicalities. 

The first technicality that you should know about is the reference track.

A reference track is a song that is professionally mixed and mastered that you can listen to in order to see how you want your song to sound like.

Of course each song is different, therefore, you will want the general idea of the reference track to be fresh in your head while still making changes to your song depending on how the song goes. 

That’s the first technicality, now let’s talk about the 4 tools that you can complete with 90% of all the mixes that you’re going to ever do: reverb, compression, equalization, and delay.

*Keep in mind that there are some people out there that believe that you need one more tool for 90% of your mixes, which is saturation, but I’m only going to go over the first four because I use them all the time, and a lot of people out there believe that saturation isn’t needed a lot of times. 

Reverb

Reverb is an echo of a sort. It’s not an echo exactly. But here’s what I want you to do in order to completely hear Reverb.

Go to your bathroom. 

If your bathroom is empty and doesn’t have any rugs or things that soak up noise is better. 

What I want you to do is to make a big clap.

You’re going to hear something like Claapp… the short dots are the end of the clap, it’s a kind of echo.

Keep in mind it’s not exactly echo but it’s reverb. 

That is reverb.

When you’re listening to your favorite songs, you’ll notice that the voices and guitars and drums all have that kind of sound to it in a way. Some songs have it more than others some songs have it less. It depends.

If you’re trying to make a really intimate song, you will want to use less reverb. If you want to make a song for a club, you might want to use more. 

It really all depends on what you want. 

Delay

Delay is another sort of echo. 

Again I say, it’s not echo exactly, it’s delay. 

Imagine being in a canyon. And you shout out , HELLO!! You’re going to hear that same HELLO!!! A few moments later except maybe a little bit faded. And then another Hello a few moments later and this time even more faded. 

That’s delay. 

Everyone uses delay, whether it’s hip-hop, or rock, country, or pop, everyone uses it. 

However, I might add a word of caution to this. Sometimes it’s better to not use delay at all. Usually if you want to make it sound really intimate, you  can still use delay but it will be in soft subtle moments. 

If you’re looking for a club banger, you might use it more. But even still if it’s a club banger, it can still not need any delay, it really all depends on your reference track and how you want the song to sound like.   

I know what you’re thinking, “German everyone says that Echo is the exact example of what you just described above. What do you mean that’s not echo?” 

Well are most people savvy in music and sound technology?

I’m not going to talk about echo in this blog post because we’re talking about basics, but all I’m going to say is that echo is a TYPE of delay. 

So it’s very similar but not exactly. 

Compression

Compression refers to squishing your volume together so that it’s not all over the place. 

What happens is that when you are recording an acoustic guitar or a voice or other instruments that move, you’ll  notice in your recordings that there are a lot of places where the sound kind of dips and then rises again and then dips again. 

The volume essentially is diminishing and augmenting all over the place because the instrument or voice is moving to and from the microphone. 

So there is a tool to fix that problem. 

It’s compression.

Compression makes it sound like it’s loud and clear and that there’s no major dips in volume all over the place. 

Keep in mind that sometimes you want the dynamics in the song so you have to know where exactly you want the compression to act or not act. 

Equalization

Equalization is probably my favorite part of the mix. 

It’s the part where everyone needs critical listening skills.

In every recording that you do with acoustic instruments and voices, you’ll need to use microphones and sound treated rooms in order to make the best recording you can get. 

However, there is no such thing as the perfect room. 

Even recording studios don’t have the perfect room all the time and the fact that you’re even in the room recording your voice, makes it a bad room to be in, so no one could ever get the perfect recording. 

This is where equalization comes in. 

Equalization, or EQ, can CUT or BOOST certain frequencies in your soundwaves.

You all know that sound comes in frequencies right? Therefore, you can actually get rid of the frequencies that you don’t want.

The frequencies that you don’t want aren’t your fault. 

What happens is that every microphone is different, every room is different, every pop filter, stand, voice, mixing skills and styles are different. 

So you use EQ to boost the frequencies that you want and cut the frequencies that you don’t want. 

Last words about this.

The last thing that I’m going to say about this is that in order to listen to and fully understand how to mix the song to the best of your abilities, you’re going to have to listen to a whole lot of songs in your genre and in your mixing sphere. 

If you have a home studio that you mix in and you are going to have to listen to the music that you want to mix in your speakers that you use for mixing. 

It helps with picking out the frequencies and hearing how you want the compression adn reverbs.

But you’re going to have to listen to a lot of songs.

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to 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. 

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!