<center><h1>ESSENTIAL POINTERS TO A BETTER MIXING EXPERIENCE</h1></center>

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Mixing have been more common these days with the ease of software and technology becoming more reachable than how the whole process used to be. A lot of individuals, whether musically inclined or not are getting into home studio productions as a result of interest and hobby. Most, it not all of them are beginning without formal education or training and most likely spent hours and hours on the internet trying to get a hold of the learning curve. And allow me to appreciate your effort in doing so. You deserve the acknowledgement and a tap on the shoulder for the determination. 
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However, if you're just beginning, or quite new to the field of mixing, chances are great that you're making  common mistakes. But that's just how learning process works in mixing or any other audio production tasks. **You make plenty of mistakes, produce bad music and eventually learn from it**. This is how every well-know, top audio engineers became who they are now. *(In fact, even the pros still do the mistakes. We're all human after all.)* I'm going to share my personal take on the common mistakes I've done and seen new engineers do. Make a cup of coffee and chill back. **Your mixes will be very grateful for this.**

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## 1. Bad Recording / Audio Material Source

>  If the recorded material *(live recorded or sampled production)* is not good or done right to begin with, there's only that much you can do in the mixing stage to fix it. It applies to the whole production process. ***What's done wrong in the recording/production stage can't be fixed in the mixing stage and what's done wrong in the mixing stage can't be fixed in the mastering stage***. Or at least, you will ended up spending more time than usual fixing instead of mixing. Practice yourself to get the production done right before heading into mixing.
> * For live recordings, learn some basic microphone placement techniques *(which can be used as an early EQ process too)*.
> * Don't record too loud or "hot". Make sure to have a healthy level going into your [DAW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation). 
> * Make sure your samples are not in bad quality and not clipping. 
> * Check for phasing issues. 
> * Get the sound you want as close as possible in the recording and production stage to help you work faster and efficiently in the mixing stage.

## 2. Not Having A Mixing Direction and Intention

>  This is a mistake I had to deal with first. Mixing is like an open ocean. There's no right or wrong to the approach of it. Extremely subjective depending on the project and the engineers themselves. What makes a great engineer is knowing what he/she wants before they start mixing. You should have an image in your mind to what will make the project you're working on sound great. Have a list of objectives and set a target to what you want to achieve in the mix and then you're ready to go! 
>
> If you're working for a client, your job is to bring what he/she had in his/her mind for that particular production to life. They had an intention to it. If you're mixing for yourself, you had an intention to the production. So the mix has to fall on the same page as well. As much as a mix can develop along the mixing process, it's best to always have a direction to it. Listen to the raw materials in arrangement, listen to the demo, lean back, dive into the song, get the info you need, list them down somewhere, get the path right, get a plan for it, set the early moves, take a day off just listening to it, once you know what you need to do, then, get to mixing! 

## 3. Too Genre-focused

> This is something I had to fight for. As a beginner, I had this insecurities to trust my instincts in mixing. I always thought I have to abide by the sound of a genre and follow exactly to it. You have to be more bold and forward thinking when it comes to mixing. Trust what you feel is right. You can always go beyond the conventional way of mixing a genre and end up with something cool. Get experimental. Learn to develop your feelings as a skill to tell you what might and might not work. 
>
> *Don't get it twisted though! You should always understand the basic outline of a genre and respect the nature and culture of it to have the right knowledge at the back of your mind. Let it remind you that every genre has a history and it sounds the way it does for a reason that derived from its culture. Understand that every genre has listeners who appreciates the musicality of it. So if you choose to avoid the conventions, understand how the listeners will be affected by it. This is crucial.*  

## 4. Lack of Proper Gain Staging and Structure

> Perhaps one of the most important to pay attention to and also the part most beginners are not aware of. People who don't know anything about this would always slam all the audio files into their DAW session and straight away add plugins, effects and start mixing. *(Hold your horses!!)*. You will never get a clean, beautiful mix without enough headroom in your mix. 
>
> * Once you have a session loaded up, make sure none of your individual tracks are peaking above 0dB with all the faders set to nominal level. Keep these levels at least a couple of dB lower than 0. *(Don't move the faders but adjust the clips' level itself. In Pro Tools its called Clip Gain. In Cubase, you can bring down the waveform' level directly on the audio clips.)* 
> * Check your master fader *(mix bus)* where all the tracks in the session meet as one stereo track. Most likely you will find the level are clipping because of the accumulation of levels from all of the individual tracks. 
> * Start to balance your mix *(move the faders)*. I like to keep my individual tracks to have their meters bouncing around 50% to 70% of the way up. This ensure a healthy headroom. Again, always check the master fader and balance accordingly. 
> * Remember all your plugins and effects react differently according to the levels that you feed them with. Meaning, you might have brought down the fader of track to being the "volume" of it down, but the track itself is loud as it goes through your plugins. So remember the 1st point above. Having a healthy level feeding into your DAW will makes sure you get the best results out of your plugins and effects, especially with analog modeled plugins.
>*  ALWAYS have a Peak and a RMS meter loaded. One to monitor your initial peaks of the mix and another to monitor the overall perceived loudness of the whole mix and keep your overall peaks from clipping, and your overall loudness at a sweet level where it's not destroying the dynamics. *(-20dB to -18dB RMS is where I keep my mix level at)*. 

## 5. Lazy To Edit and Automate

> I consider myself an "audio criminal" for doing this. There are several scenarios to this. The common ones are to allow plugins to do less work, add movement to your mix and have a cleaner session. 
>
> Recording engineers that are aware of this would usually control the dynamics *(levels or loudness)* of instruments and vocals in the recording stage itself. This allows the mixing engineer focus and spend more time on getting the right sonic sound rather than spending time leveling the dynamics of each tracks. If you get tracks from clients that are not recorded in such way or if you yourself didn't record in such way, spend the extra time to automate the levels of your tracks to even them out as best you can. Don't rely on your compressors alone to do this trick because pushing your compressors too hard to work would not result a better outcome. Trust me, I've learned it the hard way. Having level automated tracks will make sure your plugins react as best as they can to the proper dynamics too. 
>
> Next, use automation to add movement to your song. Add a dB or two before the chorus drops, ride it up along the pre-chorus. This creates a rise in volume giving the impression the song is about to drop into something big and grand. Have instruments coming in and out in different sections of the song. Create a sense of active movement in the song rather than keeping everything static which can lead to a boring song. 
>
> Edits! Edit your tracks! Clean up the empty sections. Remove overly exaggerated and extended breaths on vocals. Tighten up the layered tracks like overdubs, harmonies, adlibs, drums tracks, layered guitars etc. This is where most of the engineer get lazy. Take the time to edit your song. You will be amazed on how much you can achieve just by edits and automations. 

## 6. Mixing In Stereo 100%

> I'm sure your asking, *"But why? Don't we all listen to stereo tracks at the end?"*. Yes, you're not wrong. But mixing in stereo a 100% of the time is actually a mistake. Practice yourself to mix in mono *(do the panning in stereo then fold  to mono to mix)*. You will find yourself paying more attention to the details of your song because everything is folded right down the middle. You will have to be be more critical in listening. Once you get a solid mix in mono, making sure everything is audible, nothing is lost in the mix, switch it back to stereo, you will realize how magic feels like. Your song will sound bigger and wider. In fact, if you mix in stereo from beginning to end, even if you got a killer mix, the reality is, the majority of people will not be hearing to the awesome mix you just made because most people are using laptop speakers and phone speakers. So, have a great mix in mono, it's guaranteed your mix will sound amazing in stereo! 
>
> Besides, one crucial thing I learned mixing in mono is finding phase issues. Sometimes, instruments layered drums tracks tend to sound fine in stereo. When folded into mono, they got thin, clear indication of phasing issues. This can also be applied to stereo guitars. So, as an extra, use mono to fix phase cancellations providing a heavenly stereo mix! 

## 7. Adding Too Many Plugins

> This is straight forwards. I did this a lot. Why? Simply because I thought I needed to and I felt cool having all the crazy analog modeled plugins and I had the urge to use them thinking they will magically make my mix sound amazing. The truth is, a little goes a long way. Trains yourself to use only the processing you need. Narrow down to knowing what you need and pick the right tools for it. Have a small plugins closet. Having too many plugins would eventually have you sitting there choosing plugins to use rather than just reaching out to one and start tweaking what you want. Have a set of go-to plugins and effects that you understand the most. You will have better results. 

## 8. Solo 

> The dreaded solo button! I suffered more than 2 years with this. As a newbie, you will find yourself soloing the tracks one by one and processing them to perfection from beginning all the way to the end. You can have the most award-winning kick, snare, guitars, piano sound when soloed but here's the slap of reality. One, nobody listens to your song in solo. Two, none of that matters if they don't sound great all together as a whole in the full context of the mix. What sound great in solo most the times won't sound as great together with rest of the context of the song. This is because of the sonic blend of the frequencies that live under the same stage, the song. They all share the same stage with their own spots doing their best to sound great all together, not alone. It's your job to achieve this. 
>
> What I do is, instead of soloing the track I want to process, I bring down the rest of the tracks, not all the way, but to a point they are not getting in my way too much. For example, if I want to start with the "Kick" track, I would bring down the rest and let them play while I mix the "Kick". This way, I'm not in solo with the "Kick", but I'm hearing to the "Kick" with the other tracks still playing at a lower level. Allowing me to tweak the "Kick" and make sure it sound great along with all the other tracks. I then bring up the tracks one by one the same way and mix them towards the end creating balance in levels and sonic quality. The only time I use solo is when I really hear something which I need to narrow down to know what it is. Usually to fix a problem. Please get yourself away from the solo button as much as you can, you will be a better engineer much faster. This also train your ears into critical listening which is a crucial skill an engineer should have. *(This is also a trick I learned from engineer [Irko](http://www.irko.it).)* 
>
> *Extra: If you're mixing an album, EP/LP, making sure all the tracks in the album sounds cohesive all together is a great way of ensuring a pleasurable listening experience to the listeners and psychologically engraving a stamp that the tracks belong to the same album.*  

## 9. Not Having A Reference Track

> You need a reference track. When you're beginning as an engineer, you don't have the right skills to know what you want entirely yet. You haven't developed your own style. You haven't got a hold of the mixing techniques yet. The best way to make sure you're on the right track alongside to nailing down mistake **Number 2** above is get one or two reference tracks. Get a song that you want your mix to sound like. Not exactly, but close. Try to get a clean quality version of the reference song that is professionally mixed. Not a super compressed and lifeless song. Pull it into your session. Level match it to the same level of your mix. Analyze the song. Listen to how the engineer mixed that song. Analyze in sections. Listen to how he/she placed the instruments in the stereo field. Pay attention to the frequency range. How does the highs, mids and lows sound. Use a frequency analyzer to help you see the frequency response of the song. 
>
> Now you have a reference to listen to that is mixed professionally in the industry. Try to get your mix as close as you can to it. Not exactly the same because every song is different sonically, but you get the idea. This can also help engineers who mix on monitor headphones or even an ordinary headphone. This is because headphones can't really produce what monitor speakers can. With a professionally mixed song as reference, you can switch back and forth to understand how the frequencies sound like in the reference song and in your mix. This help you to make better decisions in your mixing. 

## 10. Not Taking A Break

> Last but not least, TAKE A BREAK! It's easy to get carried away when mixing and trust me, time flies when you're on the desk. There will be a point when you're mixing, you might find it that you're not noticing the changes you're doing to the song as much. You might feel like you're missing something more often than you did in the beginning. In most cases, you would feel the mix is good already and it's amazing! The chances are slim. Try listening to the mix after a few minutes break or the next day. You might say, *"How the hell did I miss that? This is awful!"*. Yeap, our ears gets tired over an extended hours of critical listening. Once they're beat up with all the listening and tweaking, it will literally say *"Yeap! It's all good! Enough!"*. It depends on the person. Some can go for hours before they hit the limit, some go for minutes than they would need breaks. Whichever category you fall into, take the break. Don't end up mixing for hours, thinking it's amazing, printing it. Then, finding out the next day, it sounds like trash. Very demotivating! 
>
> The way I did it in the beginning, I would setup the session. Have it all loaded up.  Do the early edits. Get a feel for the song. Get the gain staging and balancing right. Have a few minutes listening. If a client has a reference song, I would listen to that as well. Get an idea for the mix. Transfer the early edits and pre-mix to my phone and have a few listening on bed before I go to sleep and take down some points. The next day, ears are fresh. I get to mixing. I practiced this and eventually, I was able to make decisions and mix songs much faster. 

## Extra Pointers
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>* We humans have this natural perception that *louder is better*. So remember to always bypass any processing that you do to make sure it's not tricking you with increase in loudness making you think you just made it better but in reality it might've done nothing but only increased the loudness. *(Compressors and EQ is one to watch out for)*.
>* Avoid having loud mixes. As much as you want to compete to the ***[Loudness War](https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war)***, you are destroying the life and dynamics of your beautifully crafted song. Keep the mix level healthy. Allow more headroom for the mastering engineer. If you're mastering yourself, try to keep you overall loudness less than -9dB of RMS as a rule of thumb *(perceived loudness)* as the final master. This also depends on clients' request and genre. ***Preserve your dynamics over loudness.***  
>*  Always listen to your mix on multiple playback systems. Earplugs, headphones, TV speakers, Hi-Fi systems, laptops speakers, car audio system *(one of the best source to test)* and everywhere you possibly can. Making sure your mixes translate the same as possible across all playbacks system is an important factor to cover.
>*  Make sure you're affecting the right track. I've done this silly mistake a lot. Adding the plugin on the "Kick" and expecting the "Snare" to be affected while tweaking the plugin. Pay attention to which track you're affecting. 
>*  If the volume is too low for you when you mix at safe levels, bring up the volume knob, don't increase the levels of your mix.          

Conclusion, don't do the mistakes I've done. I've taken the hit for you so you can speed up the learning curve now with these essential pointers. I really hope you learned something from my experience. Thank you for taking your time and reading. That shows your determination in learning to be better at audio production. That alone deserves a major respect and you've got mine. Until my next post, have a great day #Steemians! Happy mixing! 

Comment below if you want me to elaborate further on any of the 10 mistakes I've noted out.

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