8 Things You Should Know Before You Start Mixing: Part II

In Part I, I discussed 4 things I think are important to always keep in mind as a bedroom producer. Here are 4 more things you should know before you start mixing:

Workflow

Here’s another topic I’ve written a whole blog post about. As you go through a mix, it’s important to think about the order in which you complete particular tasks, as some of those tasks will affect others. The last thing you want is to get most of the way through a mix and realize you forgot to do something that could now nullify all of your prior decisions.

There is no “right” way to organize your mix, and from time to time you’ll run into an issue that requires you to do things “out of order,” but you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by planning out your workflow before you start mixing.

Plug-in order

Order matters not only on the macro level, but also when it comes to the use of multiple plug-ins on an individual track. Plug-ins will affect the sound of a track in whatever order you’ve placed them on that track, so you can end up with quite different sounds by simply rearranging the order of those plug-ins.

It's a good idea to think about the goal of each plug-in and to consider what kind of effects precede whatever new plug-in you want to add to a track. A compressor placed after an EQ, for instance, will compress the tone that results from the EQ, while an EQ placed after a compressor will change the tone of the compressed sound.

An example that better highlights the difference might be as follows:

Imagine you’ve used a tremolo plug-in on a track. A tremolo is basically an automatic volume fader that turns the volume of a track down and back up again, over and over, at a particular rate. The result is a choppy, rhythmic sound.

Now imagine you add a reverb to the same track after the tremolo. Since the tremolo comes first, the reverb will affect the sound that the tremolo has generated, which means it will wash it out and counter that choppy sound you were able to achieve with the tremolo.

On the other hand, if you add the reverb before the tremolo, the track will retain its choppy sound because the tremolo is being applied to the washy sound that the reverb has generated.

Neither of these results is necessarily "wrong," but one of them will be better suited to the mix as a whole, so I always take the order of my plug-ins into consideration when building a track.

Headphones/monitor placement

It can be tempting to mix on headphones, especially when you're on a budget, but a decent set of studio monitors will best represent the frequency spectrum and foster a good mix.

The laws of physics dictate that higher frequencies attenuate more over distance. This means that the further you get from a sound source, the higher the ratio will be of lower frequencies to higher frequencies. If you’ve ever been to a concert and spent time both close to the stage and at the back of the room, you’ve probably noticed that the bass is more distinct at further distances than the treble. Keep this in mind as you mix.

The problem with headphones is that the speakers are as close to your ears as they could possibly be. This means that you’re hearing more high end than you would if you were sitting in front of studio monitors, all other things being equal.

Of course, some listeners will be even further away from their speakers, so you’ll never be able to give every listener exactly the same mix, but by hearing the most accurate representation possible of your mix in the bedroom studio, you can balance the frequency spectrum in such a way that it translates to the greatest number of speaker types.

I find that the best position for my ears is exactly the same distance from each monitor as the monitors are from each other, so that an equilateral triangle is formed by my head and the speakers. This is what most mix engineers recommend if you want to hear the most accurate representation of your mix.

Here is a great explanation of monitor placement.

Translation

I don’t want to completely disregard headphone mixing. You might know for a fact that your fans are primarily people who listen to your music on headphones. If this is the case, it might make perfect sense to do most of your mixing on headphones.

You might even find it helpful to mix on a variety of speakers. Since every speaker has its own "flavor," each one has the potential to expose its own unique set of problems with the mix, problems you might not have noticed if you always use the same set of bedroom studio monitors.

Even if you choose to mix on only one set of studio monitors or headphones, it’s a good idea to at least review your mix on a variety of speakers. Before I settle on a final mix, I always listen to the song on my car's stereo system, a set of headphones, and a portable bluetooth speaker, in addition to my studio monitors. This is a surefire way to be certain your mix will "translate" to whatever speakers your fans are using to listen to your music.

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These are the most important things to keep in mind as you begin your journey into music production if you want to avoid some of the same mistakes I made when I was getting started.

Stay tuned for a series on the basics of mixing, where I'll describe all the major types of plug-ins and how to use them properly in a mix.