There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to mixing or any part of the music production chain for that matter. Everything mentioned in this series is meant to be a guideline or a suggestion, and absolutely not the only way to do things. This is will series will follow the basic flow that I go through when a dig in to mix a track. It is also worth pointing out that what I consider mixing is the process of blending the sounds that are to be used in the song together, therefore I typically will have all tracks recorded, all overdubs and BV’s tracked, and all editing done. It doesn’t always work out like this, but I find that if I can take care of as many of those things as possible before I sit down to mix the whole process of mixing is more streamlined and inspired. I will also assume that this mixing session is to be conducted in the box on a computer as this will apply to most people reading this post. (There are some significant differences when mixing on an analog console from a media such as tape.)

Gain structure
The first thing that I do when mixing is set up the gain structure. In the digital world ideally this would have been taken into consideration when tracking. When tracking digitally and mixing in the box there is a significant chunk of the typical signal flow missing from the signal chain. It is the preamp from the tape machine back into the mixing desk. This is not available when mixing in the box. You are very much at the mercy of you record levels. Getting good signal to noise ratios is important (both in the digital and analog realms), but when mixing digitally you don’t want to record too hot either. Firstly, because digital clipping sounds awful, and secondly, you don’t have that extra preamp when setting the gain structure. When tracking digitally I try to get the sustained levels of each track to be around -3dB. This will give me (and eventually the mastering engineer) a little more head-room to work with. Notice I said each track it is always tempting to mix a little bit with the record levels when tracking, but would suggest trying to level the playing (volume) field for all tracks when tracking.


I know I said you don’t start mixing until everything else is done, but good and consistent record levels really are the first step of mixing, you need a foundation on which to build. Setting a gain structure was typically done with the missing preamp in the digital audio chain, which is why I mentioned getting good record levels. Try and get all the tracks to equal volume (this most likely will not sound good). The reason I stressed record levels is because normalize and gain plug-ins are the bullies of digital audio (especially the ones that re-render wave files) an have a very high potential of mangling your pristinely recorded tracks. If you didn’t record at all equal volume I would suggest using the next step to make up any gain on any track that you are missing.

Filtering
The next step when setting up a mix is filtering. During this process I toggle solo on the tracks often so becoming familiar with this function would be a good idea. I work my way through the tracks filtering out the top and bottom of each track so that it contains only the sounds that I want from the track. For instance an electric guitar an amp rarely produce any musical content below 80 Hz so I will set a high pass filter around 80 Hz on all the guitar tracks. People often ask “how come I can’t get my track as loud as all the others out there, even when I limit and compress the hell out of it.” Often times they have not taken the time to take out the noise that resides at the top end and bottom end of every track. We can’t even hear this noise sometimes, but electronically or digitally it is eating up our head-room, so take the time to knock it out, you’ll thank yourself when you enter the “loudness wars.” Another thing to think about when doing this is exactly what sound am I trying to get out of this track. For example often time the drum kit comes in on several tracks and suppose there is a close mic on the hi-hat as well as a mic on the snare and some overhead and or room mics. That hi-hat track can often be pared way down in the frequency spectrum as you will be able to collect the missing parts of the signal from the rest of the mics. Another rule of thumb, if you can’t figure out what sound you are trying to get out of a track, don’t use it, it is just eating up space in your mix.

Signal Routing
Once I have the gain structure and filtering under control I move on the signal routing. In Pro Tools I will set up all the sends for my send effects, I will set up my virtual stereo master bus, and any other sends or auxiliaries that I plan to use. I will set up a big or long reverb send, a medium one, and a short one as well as a plate (four different sends). I will also setup at least a couple of delays: one short and one long, and any other time based effects like chorus or flanging effects with their own send. This may look like you are adding a lot of tracks, but by setting them up as sends you can share the effect across many of your recorded tracks, which will actually save you computer power in the long run. I also often like to parallel compress the close mics of the drum kit so I will setup a send for them as well. Remember that sends can be taken pre fader or post fader. A pre-fader will send the signal straight from the recorded signal with no effects applied, a post fader send will send the signal after it has been processed by any effects in the channel.

At this point I am ready to set up my basic mix, I will pass through the faders and get a good balance between the tracks making sure to leave about 5 dB or head-room for when I return my send signals back to the master stereo bus and to leave some room for the mastering engineer to work with. (Continued in Basic Mixing part 2)