Why I Listen to Every Track Against the Metronome Before Mixing

Before I call a track finished, I want to hear every channel from start to finish.

Soloed.

With the metronome on.

Every kick.

Every hi-hat.

Every bass note.

Every synth.

I clean things up as I go.

But ideally, before I start mixing, every channel has had this check.

If I had an engineer working with me, that's exactly what I'd ask them to do.

Start at the beginning.

Listen all the way through.

Against the metronome.

No skipping.

That's where you find things.

What I'm Listening For

Against the metronome, things become obvious.

A kick that's slightly late.

A percussion hit that's drifted.

A bad edit.

A click.

A pop.

A tail that ends strangely.

Noise between sections.

Some of these things might be tough to hear when the whole track is playing.

But they're still there.

Still going into the compressor.

The saturation.

The limiter.

They're still affecting the finished sound.

Solo the channel and suddenly you hear them.

That's why I want them gone.

I listen to the whole channel.

Not just the parts I think might have a problem.

Because the things I'm looking for are usually the things I don't know are there.

That's why I listen all the way through.

Check the Waveform

I also look at the waveform.

Is it sitting around the centre line?

Or is the whole thing shifted up or down?

That's DC offset.

You might not hear it.

But it can eat into the available headroom.

And edits around a shifted waveform can create clicks.

I've seen it with hardware.

I've seen it working completely in the box.

If something looks wrong, I check it.

And if there's DC offset, I remove it.

Then move on.

Hardware Makes This Even More Important

I've used a lot of hardware over the years.

And hardware moves.

Tiny timing drifts.

Noise.

Clicks.

Glitches.

A take that starts perfectly and slowly moves away from the grid.

Against the whole track, you might not notice it.

Solo the channel against the metronome and you hear it.

But I do the same with tracks made completely in the box.

Bad edits still happen.

Clicks still happen.

Things still move.

I don't assume a track is clean because it never left the computer.

Ideally, This Is an Engineer's Job

If I had an engineer working with me, this is one of the jobs I'd give them.

Every channel.

Start to finish.

Check the edits.

Check the timing.

Check the noise.

Check the tails.

Hand me a clean session.

But I don't have an engineer sitting next to me.

So I do it myself.

Mostly as I go.

Then I check again.

It's not the exciting part of making a record.

But when I start mixing, I want to trust what's in front of me.

Trust the Tracks

That's really what this is about.

When I start mixing, I don't want to be chasing clicks.

Fixing edits.

Wondering if a hit is late.

I want to mix.

The cleaner the session is before I start, the more I can trust what I'm hearing.

And the more I can concentrate on the track.