If you're just starting out or if you've hit a plateau and are looking to improve your mixing,
this video is going to break down some of the most fundamental and important
mixing tips and techniques that can be applied to your audio production.
Whether you're a sound designer or a composer, stick around.
These tips are gonna help you make a better mix.
[Mixing tips for beginners]
Hey everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here.
There are many ways to get better at mixing and simply doing it a lot can lead you to
discover some of the tips I'm going to mention.
But, to help you skip all of that trial and error, I put together these tips
so let's get into the first one.
There's more to mixing than just moving faders, which is just changing the volume of each track.
Now, you put everything into specific tracks so you can manage them independently.
But, you don't have to put everything in a separate track, like when using a mix bus.
This is when you route a few different tracks to a single track so you can apply one thing
that will affect multiple elements in your mix.
An important step to remember is to stop the original track from sending its output
directly to the master.
This should be exclusively to the mix bus.
This can really be for anything but for example, you might have the same effect with the same settings
on many tracks.
Using a mix bus, you can cut it down to one effect and save yourself a lot of time
and CPU usage too.
But like I said, a mix bus could be used for many things like panning, volume, automation, etc.
This leads me to the next tip which is parallel compression.
Now, pay attention because this can be applied to any effect, not just a compressor.
First, send the original track without the effect to an empty track
and this is where it's different from a mix bus, you'll have to make sure the original
is still going to the master track.
Then, apply a compressor to the track you just sent it to.
This lets you keep the original dynamics while adding in a thicker version of it that's been heavily compressed.
[Parallel compression example on a kick drum]
This will increase the decibel level since there are two outputs now, so lower the level
on both the original and the send track and mix it to how you want it to sound.
It doesn't have to be a balance of 50/50.
You can also send multiple tracks to the same compression track to affect a bunch of things at once,
kind of like a mix bus.
Be careful if you're going to do this though, sounds and instruments may need to be compressed
differently depending on the dynamic range each of them has.
Now, here's a bonus tip for how you can apply this technique to reverb too.
Since you will typically put a high pass filter on sounds that have a heavy reverb
to prevent the low end from getting muddy,
you can keep the low end of a sound by using parallel reverb.
Just like with parallel compression, send the original to a separate track that's empty
and apply your reverb to the send track (or mix bus).
Now to keep the low end of a sound while also keeping it more defined, you can either use
a separate EQ to get rid of the low end before it hits the reverb or simply use the reverb's
built-in filter if it has one.
Any equalization is to be done on the reverb bus so it doesn't affect the original signal.
The rest is up to you.
For example, you may choose to pan one to the right and the other to the left.
You may have noticed that you can either put multiple effects in the same bus
(including the compressor if you wanted to) or keep them separate.
Some important things to pay attention to are your effect chain
and how each plugin is interacting with each other
and the total decibel level from all of the parallel buses you're using.
To make a thicker sound, you can create two instances of the same sound
and pan each to an opposite value.
For example, this might be setting one at 50% left and the other 50% right.
The intensity of how far you pan each side is dependent on what kind of element it is.
This can be different for a lot of things as vocals and the kick drum are typically better when centered
while instruments and supporting vocals are better suited in between the middle and hard left or right.
[Soundtrack example of panning for thickness]
Tip number 4.
Spending a long time listening to something (especially when it's loud),
can give you a false sense of levels in the mix.
This is known as ear fatigue and can lead you to make poor mixing decisions.
Now, this isn't anything you should be freaking out over.
From what I understand, it's simply your ears naturally compressing sound
and the way to prevent this from happening is quite simple.
By mixing at a moderate volume and taking 15-minute breaks every two hours
you should be good.
But, there are other factors such as your environment.
It's said that if you're tempted to turn up the volume, take a break.
Now for the last tip.
The way effect plugins are ordered in the mixer can change the final sound of the track dramatically.
Take care in what you put before another and even switch things up if you're looking to experiment.
For example, reverb before delay will add echoes to the space.
[Reverb then Delay effect chain example]
Using delay before reverb will add space to the repeating echoes.
[Delay then Reverb effect chain example]
Essentially, the order determines what will be applied to what depending on what comes before it.
Maybe obvious, but sometimes overlooked and it really does make a difference.
It may be subtle with some effects and more noticeable with others.
[Distortion before & after reverb/delay in effect chain]
There you go, with those five tips you should be able to get more out of your mixing sessions.
If you found this helpful, give it a thumbs up and
subscribe if you want me to make more videos like this.
As always, thanks for watching. [Share this with someone!]