Playing Chess isn’t complicated whereas playing Contract Bridge definitely is. But neither of them is easy to do well. Complexity and difficulty are related but not the same. In a similar way, while mixing can get complicated, fundamentally it’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy!
Beyond the standard advice which you’ll hear regularly such as sorting out your room acoustics and monitoring, using references, mixing fast and taking breaks, is there any simple advice which could help someone who is struggling with their mixes? Here are five suggestions which might help:
Listen
Stop ‘mixing’ and prioritise listening. Mixing is about knowing what needs doing and to know that you need to leave the gear alone for long enough to know that. Removing yourself from the computer is particularly useful because it obliges you to listen, rather than listen, hear something you want to change and move from ‘listening’ to ‘doing’. Pushing yourself back in your chair and concentrating might work but I know I can’t trust myself not to jump back onto the computer so why not consider something more deliberate to delineate listening from mixing.
Like many people, in my studio I have a sofa behind the mix position. When I want to make sure I’m listening the whole way through a track I’ll do it from the sofa. How many times do you stop playback and tweak something? I know I rarely make it through a track without wanting to try something. Listening start to finish, with a notepad if you think it will help stop you interrupting playback, is so valuable.
If you really have to, take your phone with you with the app for your particular DAW on it, and your interface if you like. Make sure it’s your phone though. If you take a tablet you’re much more likely to start mixing! I use Pro Tools so the Avid Control App is ideal for transport control and whereas I used to use the Focusrite RedNet Control App for remote control of my monitor level, the very clever Sonnox ListenHub has replaced this as it offers the opportunity to AB against a reference remotely.
You might worry that making decisions about your mix from outside the sweet spot of your monitors is a bad idea. I’d agree that never to sit in the sweet spot is a bad idea but the most fundamental part of mixing is balance and issues with that can make itself more apparent from further away.
One very important point to make here is about the behaviour of bass from a listening position next to a wall. If, like mine, your sofa is against a wall you’ll get a significant bass lift. Lean forward and you’ll hear it diminish. Don’t let the bass response next to a wall influence your mix decisions. You’re hearing the room.
Black Screen Trick
A related point is thinking about what you are looking at. The wealth of visual feedback offered by a DAW and modern plugins is amazing, but loads our expectation and influences how we hear. Listen to an awkward edit between two clips while watching the playhead pass that edit. Listen again without watching. Can you still hear the edit? Watch the gain reduction meter of a plugin while it’s in bypass. It’s difficult not to feel that gain reduction even though it’s not happening. This effect only gets worse with more detailed visual feedback and while it’s useful when you are in ‘action’ - getting hands on and dealing with an issue you’ve identified as needing attention, it’s possibly less helpful when trying to appraise a mix and identify what needs doing based on what it sounds like. How it appears on a meter, regardless of how sophisticated the meter is, isn’t really the point.
If you use a desktop computer with a separate monitor, switch it off and just listen. Identify what needs attention based on the sound and nothing else and switch it back on. If you use a MacBook Pro or an iMac then you don’t have a separate monitor power switch but there is a handy shortcut which can help. On older Macs with an Eject key press Shift+Control+Eject, or press Shift+Control+Power on newer Mac models. The built in screen, and any connected displays, will turn black. To wake your display just hit any key.
Setting Effects Levels - The 3dB Rule
When I started mixing in the mid 90s, digital reverb and multi-effects were finally affordable to pretty much everyone. My earliest experiments with an Alesis Quadraverb were utterly drenched in sizzling bright Plate reverb. Thankfully I no longer have a DAT machine on which to play those mixes…
This does illustrate an issue which novice mixers sometimes struggle with. How much of a particular effect is appropriate in the context of a mix. If you’re using reverb or delay you should be able to hear it - right? There are of course times when you absolutely want to be able to hear effects loud and proud but a useful rule of thumb with time-based effects is to start with the fader or mix control all the way down and to turn them up gradually until they become obvious and then back it off just a little. On a fader I’d recommend 3dB. You might be able to hear 1dB but I’ll bet your audience wouldn’t. Bring it back a little to tuck it in and you’ll be about right. The reverb isn’t prominent but you notice it straight away when you mute it.
Get Into Advanced Automation
Basic mixing is about getting a good, static balance. The difference between this and a great mix is largely the use of automation. While you can automate with the finest degree of control in any DAW. Drawing in mix automation with a mouse isn’t ideal so consider getting a control surface but failing that, write in your automation in real time from the faders. After all, you have to be hearing your mix to judge how loud or soft a particular track needs to be in relation to the rest of the mix.
Depending on which DAW you use will dictate exactly which automation features you have available beyond the basics of Read, Write, Touch and Latch but looking at Pro Tools Automation specifically, a tranche of features which previously were only available to Pro Tools Ultimate users are now available to users of the middle tier Pro Tools Studio product. If you want to know more about these check out our recent articles on features like Preview and Capture but if you feel you need an easy route into Advanced Automation which offers results without a learning curve then try using Trim Automation.
If you have volume automation active on a track then when in Automation Read mode the fader is controlled by the Automation playlist, meaning you can’t manually control the fader any more. To change the fade level you have to write new automation. If you’re happy with the level changes but just want to raise the overall level up by a couple of dB you might use the trim tool to raise the level of the automation data but a much more convenient method is to put all your faders into Trim Read mode. This gives you a new set of faders with which to tweak the levels and is a great way to introduce static offsets to automated mixes. If you want to commit these changes you can and of course if you use one of the Trim Write modes you can write whole new dynamic automation passes.
Play Your Mix To Somebody
If you’re mixing alone and you’re not sure about your mix this last tip is simple but disconcertingly effective. Invite someone into the studio and play the mix to them. Ideally you would invite a colleague or peer, a person who has a background in audio, but not necessarily because you’ll probably find that you know what’s wrong before they even speak. You’ll listen with a shifted perspective just because there is another sentient human in the room with you.
The takeaway here is that mixing is usually about getting the simple things right. That’s not usually complicated but, returning to my first point, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.