8 Mixing Tips for Music Producers That Actually Make a Difference

Over the years, I've picked up bits of mixing advice that stayed with me.

A line in a book.

Something a producer said.

A moment in an interview.

Sometimes one sentence changes the way you listen.

These are eight I've kept coming back to.

Things I still think about when I'm mixing.

1. To Hear a Sound Clearly, Stop Listening to It

This came from  Progressions: Success in the Music Industry

And it stuck with me.

If I'm trying to judge a sound in a mix, I stop listening to it.

I listen to everything around it.

The kick.

The bass.

The synths.

The space.

I already know what the sound is doing.

I want to hear what it's doing to everything else.

Sometimes the best way to hear a sound is to stop listening to it.

2. Switch to Stereo Pan

I picked this up from Bobby Owsinski.

In Logic, switch a stereo channel from Balance to Stereo Pan.

Don't touch anything else.

Just listen.

I often hear the sound become a little more solid.

I've done it ever since.

Stereo Pan also gives you proper control over the left and right sides of the signal.

But the first thing I do is switch it on and listen.

3. A Compressor Can Wreck a Mix

I've always mixed by ear.

Turn the dials.

Listen to what happened.

That's how I learnt compression.

All by sound.

Then I started learning the textbook side of it.

Attack.

Release.

Ratios.

Gain reduction.

It fried my head.

Suddenly I realised there were ways to set compressors.

Ways to control the transient.

Change the movement.

Add density.

I'd been finding these things by ear.

Now I was learning why they happened.

Then I heard something on Pensado's Place.

A badly set compressor can wreck a mix.

That stayed with me.

Because once you understand what a compressor can change, you realise how much damage it can do too.

4. The Same Goes for Limiters

The same thing happened with limiters.

For years, I pushed into them.

Listened.

Pulled back.

Listened again.

I learnt what they did by hearing them.

A limiter can make a track feel bigger.

Denser.

More glued together.

Especially with peak-energy dance music.

Those tracks need pressure.

But push the wrong limiter in the wrong way and the kick can disappear.

The low end starts moving strangely.

The whole mix gets smaller.

That's what I listen for.

I'm not scared of pushing a limiter.

I just need to hear what it's doing.

5. Try the XL Saturation on bx_limiter

I picked this up from Steve Mac.

The bx_limiter has an XL dial.

Turn it up.

I tried it.

And heard it immediately.

It fills something in.

A little more weight.

A little more density.

A little more glue.

Not obvious distortion.

The track just feels more finished.

I've used it ever since.

6. A Q of 9 Is Roughly a Tone Wide

This is another from Pensado's Place.

Set the Q on an EQ to around 9.

That's roughly the width of a whole tone.

That changed the way I looked at narrow EQ moves.

I wasn't just looking at frequencies anymore.

I could think about notes.

Tones.

Harmonics.

7. Take Something Important Away

I picked this up from The House of Kush.

Mute something important.

The drums.

The music.

The bass.

Then listen to what's left.

Drums and vocals.

Music and vocals.

Bass and drums.

The whole relationship changes.

And suddenly you hear things you couldn't hear before.

Something is masking something.

A part isn't carrying its weight.

There's a hole you hadn't noticed.

Sometimes taking the biggest thing away makes the problem obvious.

8. The Pad Is the Carpet

And one more from Pensado's Place.

The pad is the carpet.

I loved that.

You don't always notice a carpet when you walk into a room.

Take it away and you do.

Pads can work like that.

They're not always there to be heard.

They're underneath everything.

Filling the space.

Holding things together.

Sometimes I mute the pad and the whole track suddenly feels cold.

The carpet's gone.