Have you spent hours and hours learning about mixing,
but your mixes still don't sound anywhere near as good as
your favorite producers?
They're not as clear, not as crisp,
not as separated, not as loud as your favorite producers.
And you're getting frustrated and overwhelmed because
there's a million different tips out there. Well,
if that sounds like you then keep watching,
because today I've got 25 mixing tips for you that are
absolutely essential,
and I guarantee if you're not doing every one of these 25
things, then your mixes are not sounding
as good as they could.
My name's Will from EDM Tips,
and over the last few years
I've helped millions of bedroom producers -
just like you - get their music from sounding completely
amateur to sounding professional...
And many of my students are even being released on their
favorite labels and some of them are making a full-time
living from their music.
I'm also a mixing and mastering engineer myself.
And today I want to share with you the 25 tips that I've
learnt over the years that are really going to get your
mixes sounding professional and ready for release.
You can also download my mixing guide completely free
below this video.
There's a link below or somewhere on this video now. Okay.
Let's dig right in!
So tip number one is choosing or recording the right sounds
that are going to sound good together. For instance,
if you're making a house track,
you already know the kind of sounds that you want in there,
like a kick drum, the clap, the bassline.
And if you spend the time getting sounds that work
really well together, frequency wise,
then your mixing is going to be so much easier.
Think of it this way:
If you're creating a meal and you use bad ingredients,
no matter how you put them together,
that meal is never gonna taste good.
Whereas if you use really quality ingredients
that work together,
that is the recipe for a really good meal...and mix.
But it's important that sounds work together well.
And this goes onto mixing tip number two.
Mixing tip number two is using a reference track.
And while selecting the right sounds,
isn't technically mixing,
using a reference track in the same genre that you are
trying to produce in,
is going to give you an idea about the kinds of sounds
that you should be using in your production. For instance,
if you are producing a techno track,
you're not going to use a kick drum from a rock track.
And if you're producing a chill out track,
you're probably not gonna use a kick drum, deep house track.
So referencing is key in both sound selection and design,
and also in the mixing stage.
Which takes us on to essential mixing tip number three.
When you're mixing,
if you solo the track first to make sure it's sounding good.
So you've crafted it with EQ and compression,
which we're going to get to very soon,
then make sure that you mix it in context
with everything else.
Because it doesn't matter if it sounds good on its own.
The only thing that matters is if it sounds good in the mix,
and if it's enhancing what you're trying to create.
But where do you start?
That can be a really confusing process,
especially if you've got 50, 60 or 70 tracks in your mix.
Well, this takes us to mixing tip number four.
This is what I call my top down mixing approach.
And it works like this.
If you think of mixing like a hierarchy of importance,
you've got the most important elements in your mix that
would usually be the kick drum, the snare, the baseline,
and then your main top vocals.
And if you start with the kick and the base,
getting them sounding really good together and bring in the
clap or the main snare and bring in the main vocals or the
lead synth and you mix in that order,
everything else just comes in and rounds
the main elements and you always make sure
that the mix sounds good going from
that top down process.
So you don't need to worry about mixing in these tiny little
sound effects yet, that comes way later in the mix.
And if you can't get it sounding good with the first three,
four or five elements,
then I'd probably go back to the composition stage,
start tweaking the sounds a bit. Okay.
Mixing tip number five.
A mix is about getting the balance of frequencies and
volumes working well together and dynamics too.
But 80% of that mix is just getting the
volume levels balanced.
So if 80% of a good track is choosing the right sounds and
composing them well together, and 20% is the mixing stage.
80% of the mixing stage is about the volume balance and the
relative levels. So how do you balance those levels?
You use my top-down mixing approach.
That's the easiest thing to do, or you can use,
what's known as the pink noise technique,
and I'm going to link a video to that there or there,
but spend the time at first,
getting those relative levels balanced before you even touch
the EQ, compression or any of the other effects that you
might use when mixing and that's going to take you 80% of
where you need to be. Okay.
What next? Tip number six,
loop the loudest part of the track and just work on that.
So if you loop your eight bar loop on the drop,
for instance, or your chorus,
work on getting that sounding good first,
and then you can worry about the
other parts of the track after,
and the chances are most of the rest of your track is going
to sound good if you get that part right.
And getting that loudest part sounding right,
is what I call the static mix,
which takes us onto the next tip,
which is giving life and interest to your mix.
And what's known as the dynamic mix.
Now it almost never happens where your mix can just be
set once. And then it sounds great for the whole track.
So this is where automation is your friend.
You might have some volume automation might have a little
bit of reverb automation,
but volume automation is probably your biggest friend.
And this is where you can do little things to give your
mix more interest and more life.
Such as taking the kick drum down
by about two decibels in the verse sections,
and then putting it back to zero DB on the drop.
That's an example of creating a dynamic mix,
but you should only be done after that initial static mix is
sounding really good. Okay.
Tip number eight is have an intention before you make a
mixing move. And this is a mistake I see so many times,
where producers will just throw on different effects
onto their channels and expect something good
to come out of it. Now, if you know what you're
trying to achieve, first. What vibe you're trying to achieve
whether this thing needs more low end or more high end or
less low end or less high end.
That is the first key before you choose
which plugin to put up.
You want to have it an intention of what it is that you want
to achieve before you reach for the appropriate tool. Okay.
Tip number nine.
So when you're putting plugins onto your mix channels,
how do you know if it's going to sound better or worse than
it did before? Sure, you could just bypass it
and see. But quite often, plugins,
especially things like saturation or compression are
actually changing the volume as well.
This is where a gain staging and AB testing is super
important. And this is how you do it.
If you've got a plugin, that's making your track louder,
make sure that you have a utility plugin or a gain plug in
afterwards to take it down by the same amount of volume,
then group those two plugins together and then bypass both
plugins at the same time.
And then your ears aren't getting distracted by the increase
in volume, just the effects you've actually applied
to the channel because your ears
will generally think that louder things sound better.
And that can trick you into thinking that you've done
something good. And actually it's detracting from the mix.
Okay. Tip number 10.
This is using a spectrum analyzer to reference your track
against your reference track and make sure that the curves
look pretty even. Now, this is important because
sometimes your ears can be deceived.
And especially if you've been mixing for a while
and they get tired.
So it's good to double-check things with
a spectrum analyzer. Don't rely on it, of course.
Your ears are the most important things,
but it does help to check you're kind of
on the right track. Now,
if you're using a reference track,
which you definitely should be,
then it's important to take the volume of that down a bit
because your track hasn't been mastered yet.
But the reference track probably has, so make sure that the
reference track is taken down by about 12 DB or whatever it
is to get to a roughly same average level as your track.
And then when you use the spectrum analyzer,
you should get a fair picture of how yours is compared to
the reference track. Speaking of levels,
what levels should you be mixing at?
This takes us on to mixing tip number 11,
the starting fader levels.
So if you set the loudest instrument in your track,
which is probably going to be the kick drum,
at about minus 12 DB on the fader,
and when you bring everything else up around that,
you're not going to be clipping on the master channel,
or it's not likely that you're going to be clipping
from the master channel.
And this is super important because
we don't want to be adding clipping into our mix
because it's going to make it sound worse.
Essential mixing tip number 12 is work fast,
your ears do get fatigued.
And they do get tired after a couple of hours of mixing.
So it's important to work quickly
if you follow my top-down mixing approach,
then you're going to be mixing in the most efficient
and effective way. And again,
if you do want more tips on mixing,
don't forget to download the free guide below this video.
And that takes us onto mixing tips, 13, 14, and 15.
The first of which is take breaks regularly.
If your ears are getting fatigued,
take your break every couple of hours,
and that's going to allow your ears to reset, and better
still leave it till the next day for your mixing session,
if you've just finished producing.
Or if you've been mixing for more than three or four hours,
because that's going to give you more perspective,
which is going to result in better decisions
and a better mix. Quick tip number 15,
is mix in the morning, as well. Because your ears
do get tired throughout the day. So if you can get to a mix
first thing in the morning,
you're probably going to be making better decisions, right?
Let's get back to the technical stuff of mixing
now we've dealt with the listening. Essential mixing tip
number 16. And this is one of the most important.
If you check your mixes in mono,
you're going to make it so much easier for your ears to
determine what's happening in the frequency fields.
What's happening with reverb, without your ears
being distracted by the stereo field. Now,
the way you do that is you put a plugin on your master
channel. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to.
That's just going to make the signal mono. For instance,
if you're using Ableton Live,
that would be utility plugin that you can then assign
a keyboard shortcut to the mono switch on that plugin.
I recommend doing most of your mixing in mono
for that reason. If your sounds sound really good together
in mono, when you set it to stereo,
and start working in the stereo field,
your mix is only going to sound even better.
Mixing tip number 17 is cut most of your instruments
below 120 Hertz. Now there's a caveat to that.
If you cut everything at that,
apart from the kick and the bass, sometimes a mix can sound
a little bit tinny, a little bit weak.
So do be careful with that.
But mostly you want just the kick and the baseline
happening below 120 Hertz.
And that's going to clear up so much space in your mix.
So things like claps, hi-hats, pianos, synthesizes,
try rolling them off about 120 Hertz and see the difference
that it makes to your mix. Okay.
Essential mixing tip number 18, using compression,
now if your using synth presets and sample packs.
The chances are,
most of those sounds have already been quite heavily
compressed and it's very easy to over compress things.
My general rule of thumb is use compression,
mostly for live instruments, things like vocals, guitars,
instruments that have been played in live.
They tend to be the ones that need a lot of compression.
So if in doubt,
compress less and the trouble with over compressing is that
you get compression applied in the mastering stage as well.
And sometimes if you've got too much compression on
everything through every stage of the mixing process,
your end result is sounding squashed.
The life's being taken out of it. So if in doubt,
my motto is compress less. Tip number 19.
This is again about losing objectivity.
What I recommend is that when you're mixing,
sometimes just turn your monitor off. For me,
closing my eyes doesn't really do it.
I need to have my eyes open,
but it allows you not to second guess what's coming
in your mix. It allows you to just listen to the music,
just staring at a blank screen,
and then your ears are going to pick up on
what you need to do next.
This is such an important tip and I recommend it to
everyone. Number 20 is check your mix on multiple stereos.
I cannot stress this enough.
How many times have you finished a mix?
It sounds great in your headphones or on your studio
monitors, but you take it into the car and you listen to it.
And you just want to start crying because it's lost all
the low end, or it's got way too much low end.
And this is because your mix has only been calibrated to the
one set of speakers that you've been using.
So check your mix on two,
three or four systems that you know,
that you listened to a lot of music on and that's going to
help you get the best overall mix.
That's going to sound great on any system.
So try it on your smartphone speakers,
listen to it in your car, listen to it on your home stereo.
And of course in your studio headphones as well and make
notes whilst you're listening to it on every system.
So you can jump back into the mix and make those changes.
Essential mixing tip number 21 is mix at lower volumes.
Your ears are going to get less fatigued.
You're not going to damage your ears.
And then every now and again,
test your mix at a louder level.
And this allows you to hear what's working at a loud level.
What's working at a quiet level and it really makes
a big difference. So test at multiple different levels,
but in general,
be mixing most of the time
at low levels to protect your ears.
Mixing tip number 22, don't mix with mastering plugins on
your master channel.
This is going to screw up what you think you're hearing.
Okay?
You might a limiter on there just to make it sound
a little bit louder. But even that,
I don't really recommend. The danger of doing that is
you can be masking a poor mix, by making up for it by
putting some nice effects on, on the master channel.
However, if you get your mix sounding really,
really good with nothing on the master channel,
when it comes to the mastering stage, wow,
it's going to sound insanely good.
So don't be tempted to kid yourself.
It's a very tempting thing to do to put a limiter on the
master channel, pump it up, so your music sounds
big and fat and wide,
but you could be hiding some mistakes in your mix. Okay.
Essential mixing tip number 23 is use auxiliary channels for
spatial effects such as reverb and delay. Now,
why would you do that?
It's because you can then EQ and process those reverb
signals completely separately from your dry signal,
which just gives you way more control. For instance,
if you want to take out everything in your reverb below
about 200 Hertz, to clear up the low end of your mix,
you've still got the lower end in your dry signal to give
you power, whilst allowing the reverb
to not clutter up that low end.
Which takes us to the last two essential mixing tips.
Tip number 24 is if you think that the plugins that you have
are the reasons that your mix doesn't sound good.
Then I have some news for you,
the plugins aren't the problem.
And that takes us to number 25.
My final essential mixing tip your stock plug-ins are good
enough to create radio ready, professional sounding music.
Okay. For the last five or 10%, a couple of premium
third party plugins are gonna make a difference.
But if you can't make a mix,
that sounds really, insanely good.
Just with the stock plugins.
Then I recommend spending a bit of time learning how they
work, learning them inside out, how to use them properly.
My mixing guide below is going to help with that.
And then when you get to the stage where you understand what
the plugins do, when you want to use that,
the situations that they should be used in and how to get
the very best from them, then yes,
by all means it can be worth investing in some premium
third-party plugins at that stage. But as I said,
you can be producing radio-ready music from your bedroom,
using just the stock plugins and the equipment
that you already own. Now,
if you want to get the maximum benefits from these tips
I shared with you today then you need
to be implementing them on a regular basis.
So I recommend downloading the free cheat sheet
below this video.
So you can just follow along and make sure when you're doing
your mix, that you're trying all of these tips out.
And if you liked this video, if you found it useful,
please consider subscribing to the channel and liking it and
sharing it with your friends. Now it's over to you.
Let me know, what is your one, biggest mixing tip
you can share with us today?
Let me know in the comments,
cause I may have missed it.
And I really want to hear from you. Thanks for watching.
And until next time, cheers and happy producing.
(energetic music)