Welcome to Sage Audio. Today we’re covering How to Mix Music.
But first, if you have a mix that you need mastered send it to us at SageAudio.com to
receive a free mastered sample of it.
Pick a Sampling Rate
When mixing, ideally you can use the same sampling rate that was used when the session
was recorded - for example, if the session is recorded at 96kHz, you’d choose the same.
Unfortunately, it may be too difficult for your computer to handle this sampling rate
and all of the processing.
If this is the case, 48kHz is the minimum you should use.
Organize your Session
When I mix I like to color code groups of similar instruments like drums, guitars, etc,
and set the output of these grouped instruments to busses. The output of these busses is the
main output - this lets me affect all instruments in a group, mute them if needed, and more.
I’ll label all of the auxiliary tracks accordingly, and color code these as well. Then I’ll
make some pans and get a general feel for the level with the faders.
Inverse and Subtractive EQ
The next thing I want to do is make competing tracks have some separation - my favorite
way to do this is with inverse EQ. We’ll explain this in detail in another video next
week, but in short, you match the two competing signals and then invert the band’s gain.
This works well for kick and bass. Additionally, I’m going to remove any aspects of the other
track’s frequencies that I don’t enjoy or don’t want to amplify - I’ll use subtractive
EQ for this.
I’ll tag an older video in the description which details how to set up inverse equalization.
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Compress and Saturate
Next, I want to control my dynamics and add some harmonic distortion. I may use compression
and saturation separately, or just use saturation to perform both forms of processing - this
depends on the instrument. For something like a background synth, only saturation is typically
fine, but for vocals more is needed.
For this reason, I’ll combine compression and saturation on my more important instruments.
Avoid Conflicting Processing
At this point let’s talk about one of the biggest problems when mixing - conflicting
processing. In short, when we overprocess a signal, we’re often using multiple effects
that are having the opposite or conflicting effects, in turn causing more processing to
remedy the issue - which just exacerbates the problem.
I typically find that less is more, and it definitely helps to know how a processor affects
the frequency response, harmonic content, stereo image, and other aspects of the sound
before using it.
Start On Busses
After we’ve paid some attention to our individual tracks, let’s affect the busses with whatever
processing is needed - but avoid adding temporal effects like delay or reverb just yet. So
maybe some collective saturation or analog emulation, or maybe mid-side equalization
to affect the response and image.
Here is where you can glue groups together more and create a sense of uniformity amongst
the instrumentation.
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Introduce Temporal Effects
I like to create temporal effects from my instrument groups - I’ll use busses from
these auxiliary tracks and place the reverb or delay on these new auxiliary tracks. I’ll
set the send to unity, decide on the reverb or delay settings, and then blend these in
using the channel fader.
This way my temporal effects affect the groups of instruments - creating a more cohesive
sound. It’s best to send each group to its own reverb or delay send, for reasons I’ll
explain in
a minute.
Automate Effects and Finalize Track Balance
Now is a great time to automate some of the effects to get a more unique sound - for example,
maybe I’ll automate the vocal bus’s delay in one section, or drive saturation on an
individual instrument for a cool effect. Now all my processing is done.
At this point, I’ll reassess the levels and adjust some individual tracks, and then
finally the level of the busses until I get the exact balance I want.
Export Multiple Versions
Lastly, I’ll export my mix - what’s great about this setup is that I can solo each instrument
bus and export it, or maybe create a drumless version, etc. Additionally, we didn’t use
any processing on the mix bus, and we gave each bus its own reverb or delay send.
What this means is that when we solo each bus and its sends, the processing is exactly
the same as it was when playing the full mix.
If say we had used a compressor on the mix bus, this compressor would behave differently
when processing the full mix versus just one bus.
Because we processed everything the way we did, any bus stems stay true to the full mix
and can be recombined to perfectly recreate the full mix.
If you have a mix that you need mastered send it to us at SageAudio.com to receive a free
mastered sample of it.
Also, Join the channel for exclusive advanced content, and additional future perks - thanks
for watching!