The best and ultimate way to develop your ears to mix like a pro with a set of bad headphones

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all how to mix great songs with a pair of horrible headphones.

Let’s get into it.

So it’s all a practice 

So when you mix with great monitors, the process in learning how to mix with those monitors is the same as if you were mixing with horrible speakers or headphones. 

You literally have to listen to a whole bunch of reference tracks. 

And when I say you have to listen to a whole bunch of reference tracks.

You literally have to spend some time doing a few different types of listening with those songs that you listen to. 

You have to spend some time passive listening and active listening.

passive listening is when you just listen to the music just to listen to it through those set of speakers in order to get a feel of how they are. 

And active listening and listening to the songs but with intent. 

When you’re doing active listening, you are paying attention to how the EQ is set up on all of the instruments. You are also practicing listening to how the compression sounds like on the voices and the drums and guitars. 

It’s literally the same process as if you were listening to a new set of monitors. 

And it’s even a practice with mixing engineers that if you want to mix in a new studio with new monitors, then you need to spend a whole lot of time listening to different professionally produced and mixed tracks through those speakers first before you attempt to mix a song. 

So, the process hasn’t changed, you need to listen to a whole bunch of songs through the environment in which you’re going to be mixing first and then after you’ve spent about a few months listening through that environment, then you are ready to actually mix through that environment. 

So here are some of the tips that I have for you when listening to these different environments. 

Let’s get into it.

Listen to the type of music you are going to mix

So say for example if you’re a hip-hop mixing engineer, then you need to listen to a whole lot of hip-hop through that mixing environment. 

If you are mixing rock, then listen to a whole bunch of rock through those speakers or headphones. 

If you do a little bit of everything then you need to listen to a whole lot of music from every genre. 

Listen to music from your genre that is relatively new

What happens is that mixing techniques improve throughout time. The way that we mix improves and has significantly improved since the first mixing engineers. 

Now I know that you might like the way that, that 60s song sounded, but in all reality, if you try and apply 60s mixing techniques to a new song, then the song is just going to sound really old. 

Even if it’s within the same genre, it’s going to sound old and not well-polished.

So try and listen to stuff that’s within the past 20 to 30 years with newer songs being the prefferred method. 

Here is a tip for when you’re actually mixing

A good practice to get into when actually mixing is to do short bursts of listening to the reference track and then mixing your song. 

So say for example if you are mixing an acoustic song and you want to make it sound like I could sing of your love forever by Delirious, then what you would do is listen to I could sing of your love forever for like 30 seconds or shorter, and then immediately compare that song to your song and try and get your song to sound more like Delirious’s song. 

All in all, it’s going to take time to get good at mixing regardless of whether it’s a brand new set of JBL’s or your old Yamaha’s 

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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!