The MIXING thread

[TNT]

@slujr

here are my general principles for mixing psytrance, applies to many other dance oriented genres as well, with some exceptions

You nailed it with your tips. I would claim that this fits to any genre.

Shortlist of my tips, which are “surprisingly” pretty much the same than yours:

1. Monoize everything below 200 Hz
2. LP everything above 10 KHz
3. HP everything except kick, bass and parts you want to keep bassy
4. Use compressors in every relevant track to tame peaks and/or to gain more punch
5. Minimize competition between the frequencies of your instruments (use filters, EQ, sidechain etc.)
6. Push relevant frequencies slightly for several instrument groups by EQ (1000 Hz in case of kick and bass, 4-8 KHz in case of synths/leads, 8-10 KHz in case of snare/percussions/pads etc.)
7. Mix in mono first, after that switch to stereo and do the finetuning
8. Mix at low volume first, then switch to mid and high volume, always compare
9. Always check your mix through several outputs (headphones, speakers, monitors)
10. Mix without maximizer, limiter or clipper first (= the foundation of your mix/sound), after that turn on the maximizer/limiter, push the volume and do your adjustments in terms of mixing
11. If you’re also doing parallel processing, make sure it’s active right from the beginning, otherwise your mix will suck
12. Take breaks of at least 24h while mixing

That’s the obvious stuff, right?!

Some of my personal rules:

1. Never put a reverb on a bass
2. Never reverb your song (to simulate being in a room), not even slightly
3. Only use high quality instrument sources (VSTs, samples)

@slujr

it’s much easier (for me) to focus on a solid mix from the beginning of composition and make improvements as I go, rather than separating out composition from mixing, Other people like to write first and mix later.

I’m somewhere in the middle. If the beat is mixed well right from the beginning, all the rest is a “piece of cake” and will be mixed mostly automatically the right way without thinking about it. So I check the beat first (or at least kick and bass), then I focus on composing (headphones all the way) and at the end I switch to speakers and start doing the whole mix by mono mixing first. But sometimes I start composing through headphones and do the mix afterwards when the song is finished. But in this case it could happen that the low and high ends completely suck through speakers. In my opinion mixing through headphones only is fucking impossible, no matter what all the pros like Andrew Scheps are saying. There’s a big difference between headphones and speakers.