If you’re new to mixing music, the mixing process may seem complicated and overwhelming. But when you take it step by step, you can explore the nuances of mixing music in a recording studio or home studio.
What is Mixing Music?
Mixing music is creating a piece of music by combining multiple instrument tracks and vocals with a digital audio workstation (DAW). While most professional music production is performed by a professional mix engineer, anyone can mix audio with a bit of practice and the right equipment.
We’ll help demystify the mixing basics by first presenting the important fundamentals and terms in music mixing.
Organize Your Tracks
Before you start the mixing process, organize all of your individual tracks by instrument. Give them specific labels so it’s easy to keep track of them and make a good mix.
Perform gain staging for each track before you move on to the next step. Ideally none of your channels will peak above -6dBFS or below -30dBFS. Set the gain levels to fall somewhere within that range.
Level or Volume
Setting volume levels for each audio component of your track is very important. The last thing you want is a track with very quiet drums and really loud vocals! To create a better mix, individually set levels for each instrument so they can complement and support each other.
Kick drums are usually the first track you’ll want to set in your workflow. If you have multiple drum tracks, make sure they’re well-balanced. It’s possible you’ll need to set volume automation adjustments at various points in the track so they stay in balance.
Once you’re happy with the drums, you can move on to rhythm instruments, then other instruments like brass, strings, and finally vocals.
Panning
The location of each sound makes a big difference in music production. When every instrument has the same sound location, the tracks will sound garbled and hard to distinguish. You need to give them some physical space to improve the clarity of the mix.
Panning takes advantage of left and right speaker locations in the stereo field to create a more room-filling sound. By sending individual tracks to different speaker locations, you can create a great mix where you can hear each instrument track individually. Panning is especially important for separating lead vocals from background singers and harmonies.
Adding Reverb
The same way panning adds width to your track across the stereo field, adding reverb will add depth to your sound. Reverb brings individual tracks to the forefront and sends other tracks to the background. The result of successful reverb is a finished piece that sounds like it was recorded and performed in three dimensions.
Reverb will tweak the impact of each of your tracks. The more reverb you add, the farther away the individual instrument will sound.
Using Dynamics Processors
Each individual track generally has a wide dynamic range, or a wide range between the loudest level and the quietest level. Wide ranges are difficult to accommodate in the mixing process, so most mix engineers perform dynamic processing to adjust the dynamic range of each track.
Common dynamics processing types include compressors, limiters, expanders, and noise gates. If you want to know how to use each of these processors, it’s a good idea to pick a track and play with each one to see how the sound of your audio changes.
Using the Equalizer
EQing is another one of the most important steps as you mix sounds. EQing can be relatively complicated and take a lot of practice, but in general the goal is to adjust the volume of high frequencies and low frequencies for a more pleasing audio mix.
Through EQing, you can tweak the sound of an instrument to adjust its overall tone or timbre. If a certain frequency sounds muddy, unpleasant, or shrill, you can adjust the equalizer to cut the sound at that frequency. It’s a handy tool to know how to use.
Bringing it All Together
Now that we’ve given you a bit of background on each of these key steps in mixing music, the next part of the process is to practice with whatever software you have available. Whether you use GarageBand, Pro Tools, or another piece of software, import a few instrumental tracks and start playing with the settings we’ve discussed. You’ll be mixing great tracks in no time!
