Mixing 4 - Step by Step: Mix As You Go vs. Mix at The End? (Do Both!)

Mixing 4 - Step by Step
By Elliot Cole
Now that we’ve covered the basic tools in depth — (see past
classes on EQ, Compression, and Reverb) – we can zoom out
and look at the process as a whole.
Mix as you go vs. mix at the end? (do both!)
It used to be that mixing was always at the end of the recording

process. You write the song, you record all the parts, the
engineer mixes it.
Now that we’re all our own engineers, it’s more common to mix
as you go. This is particularly true with music that involves lots
of sound design, where shaping sound is part of the creative
process and not just the polishing finish at the end.
The downside of this approach is the temptation to make every

sound perfect before you move on. This can freeze your writing
process to absolute zero. It’s a joke about engineers, that when
they start writing a song the first thing they do is EQ a kick
drum for five hours.
I’ve written a lot of notated music, and it’s the opposite world:
notation software offers terrible instrument sounds and little way
to shape them, so you have to do a lot of imagining, like “wow
this cello line sounds terrible but I can picture a good cellist
doing something beautiful with it.” It requires some optimism:
“this sounds bad, but it can sound good.”
I recommend you do some of both. Think about sound all the
time. If something sounds wrong, fix it. If you can anticipate a
problem (like two instruments competing for the same frequency
range), get ahead of it. If you have an idea, try it.
But don’t get hung up on perfection until the whole track is

written.
When I work, I dial in a sound for each instrument right away —

a quick EQ and maybe compression to get the sound roughly
where I want it. I also play with effects early in the process.
But when I catch myself falling down a rabbit hole, I try to catch
myself and get back to writing rather than polishing material.
Mix as you go AND mix at the end. Just do it with two different
attitudes — first, quick & unfussy, later, precise.
Mixing: Step by Step
Big picture: we’re going to start by working on smaller units

(individual regions and tracks) and then work on larger and
larger units until we reach the master track.
[A note about volume automation: if you already have done

some volume automation, I recommend you get rid of it. This
way you can balance your basic levels without them being
moving targets. You’ll add it again later in the process.]
1. Get organized
• Name your tracks clearly and consistently.
• Sort your tracks in a consistent way. I like high sounds at the
top, low sounds in the middle, drums at the bottom. Put similar
tracks next to each other.
• Clean up your audio and MIDI regions.
⁃ If you have tracks with tons of edits and little details, commit to
the edits and simplify your visual field by selecting time and
Consolidating (command-J).
⁃ Remove unnecessary regions.
⁃ Trim regions so they start when their contents start.
⁃ Some tracks may need more tidying up than others - for
example, vocal tracks may have silences in them that aren’t
really silent but have breathing, mouth noises, room tone, etc.
Cut these.
• Use markers to label the sections of your piece.
• Color code your tracks in a consistent way.
• This step is easy to cut corners on but it is very important!
2. Organize your signal flow with Groups.
• Group similar tracks. For example, if you have 5 tracks that are
different layers of background vocals, group them. Group your
drums, group your synths, etc.
• In Live 10 we can now make GROUPS OF GROUPS! Build a
hierarchy of sounds. If you have 5 synth pad layers, group them
into Pads. Then group them with the leads and arps into a
supergroup Synths. At the highest level you want only a few
groups — maybe Drums, Basses, Synths, Vocals, FX. Or maybe
Drums, Voice, Everything Else.
3. Find a reference track or two.

• A reference is a piece of music that you would love your track to
sound like. Refer to it often to answer your questions as you
mix, like:
⁃ “How wide should I pan my instruments?”
⁃ “How much louder should I put the foreground than the
background?”
⁃ “How much reverb should I use?”
• The answer is always: check your reference.
4. Work through your tracks one by one. For each, think

about:
• Color.
⁃ Is the vibe right? Does it sound warm enough? Cool enough?
Clean or dirty enough? Weird enough?
⁃ All of your effects are fair game here. Ones I reach for most
often are:
Saturation (makes digital sounds warmer & dirtier)
Tape emulation (“Crap Cassette” is a great free Max 4 Live
plugin)
Amp emulation (if you’re working with guitars or basses
recorded directly in)
Delay/Echo
• Clarity.
⁃ Remember our 4 EQ techniques. We’ll use 3 of them now:
Bracketing (low-cut and high-cut to trim parts of the sound you
don’t need)
Tone shaping (gentle, wide boosts and cuts to emphasize
attractive & de-emphasize unattractive parts of the sound)
Search & Destroy (narrow notches to cut annoying & aggressive
frequencies)
• Presence.
⁃ Does this track have a wide dynamic range, with big peaks and
valleys? It would probably benefit from compression.
⁃ Step one of balancing volumes is making sure the regions are
each set to roughly the right level (with the Gain slider on clip
view). If some of your regions are really loud and some are soft
on the same track, it will be hard to balance that track with
others, and hard to get the right compression setting.
• Space.
⁃ Where should this sound be placed in space?
Is it the star of the show (center) or a more supporting role (off-
center or farther back?)
Is it a bass or a kick drum? (center)
Is it a clearly defined instrument (narrower width) or more of an
ambiance (wider)?
⁃ Distance can be created with
reverb
volume
filtering (darker sounds are more distant, brighter sounds feel
closer)
delay
transient shaping (these are plug-ins that accentuate or suppress
the initial attacks of sounds. Less aggressive transients ->
background.
⁃ Width is created with the Utility tool, stereo delay, or Width
plug-ins (a free one is Wider by Infected Mushroom).
• Headroom / Gain staging.
⁃ Gain is the amount of signal flowing through — roughly,
volume. Gain staging is managing the amount of signal at each
stage (Clip -> Track -> Group -> Master) so that you have
enough but not too much signal.
⁃ Zero is the maximum volume a sound can be before it starts
“going into the red” - clipping / distorting.
Zero is also the maximum volume your master track can handle
(without hurting the sound).
When sounds are combined they are summed. That means that
if you have two tracks that both peak at 0 (full volume), and you
play them at the same time, they’ll go over 0 in your master.
⁃ Therefore all sounds need to be less than full volume, so that
when they are combined they don’t overflow the
⁃ TLDR; all of your track volumes should stay well below 0.
Set your volume slider to -6dB as a baseline and adjust from
there.
Now that we’ve crafted & cared for each track, we bubble up to
the group level:
5. Work through the groups one by one.
• Are there effects that make more sense on the group instead of
each individual track?
• Solo the group and get the volume balance between each track
within the group correct.
• A little more compression on the group can help glue the layers
together (remember, you’ve already compressed each part of it,
so you don’t need much)
• Another gentle EQ pass on the group is recommend.
6. Balance the relative volumes of the groups.
• Remember to use your reference track as a guide.

• Here’s where to think about how all the parts fit together in the
frequency spectrum.
• Our 4th EQ technique, Mirror EQ, is our primary tool here.
⁃ Fit the kick and the bass together. There’s always conflict
between the kick and the bass. Use sidechain compression to
get the bass out of the way of the kick, but also think about
slotting them into different parts of the frequency spectrum. Do
you want to bring out the low sub tone of the bass? Emphasize
it below 120hz and de-emphasize the same range of the kick
drum. Do you want to bring out the buzzy, punchier part of the
bass? Emphasize it over 120hz and de-emphasize that part of
the kick.
⁃ The same thinking applies to any layers that are competing for
the same frequency range. Give a little boost in one layer and
the mirror image cut in the other to give them space to play nice.
7. Add volume automation
• Does the volume of a track need to change at any point in the

song?
⁃ An example might be a guitar part that is accompanying vocals
most of the time, but when it takes a solo it should be put more
in the foreground.
• Don’t automate the track volume! Automate Gain on a
Utility plug-in instead.
⁃ Trust me, this is the better way. Say you automate track volume
and then later decide you wish the whole track was just a little
bit louder. You can’t just turn up the track volume anymore,
because it’s automated — you have to go in and adjust all of
your automation lines.
⁃ Use a Utility plug-in and automate the Gain knob. You can
think of these adjustments as “relative” adjustments rather than
“absolute” ones. This leaves the track volume free for later
adjustments.
Now that we’ve crafted & cared for each group, we bubble up to
the Master track:
8. Mastering: shape the sound as a whole
• Effects you’re likely to use on a Master track include:

⁃ Some compressor
Multiband compressor (for EDM styles, use small amounts of
the OTT preset).
Regular compressor (can be very gentle here, you’ve already
tamed everything once or twice)
⁃ Maybe some saturation / tape emulation type plug in to give the
whole thing warmth / vibe
⁃ EQ — a must.
⁃ Limiter — to boost and cap the volume.
⁃ Multimeter – another way to visualize the frequency spectrum.
• For more info about mastering with Ableton’s built-in effects,
check out this tutorial & download their rack:
https://www.productionmusiclive.com/blogs/news/basic-yet-
powerful-mastering-chain-with-ableton-built-in-audio-effects-
free-download
• iZotope Ozone Elements is a cheap and excellent mastering
plug-in.
• Master to a reference track
⁃ Put a Multimeter on the reference track and your own track.
Compare the relative shapes you see to guide your decisions
about EQ and loudness.
If you want to release your track professionally, I recommend
having it mastered by a pro.
Your mixes will sound better if you can hear clearly.
Things that help you hear clearly that cost money (in order of
increasing expensiveness):
Better headphones (Sennheiser HD 600: $399)
Better speakers
Treated room (so you hear the sound, not the sound as its
bouncing around in your room)
Things that help you hear clearly that don’t cost anything:
Rested ears! Don’t listen to loud stuff too long. Take
breaks.
Listen to your mix on several kinds of speakers —
monitors, car, headphones, laptop…
Experienced ears. Practice practice practice!

Mixing 4 - Step by Step: Mix As You Go vs. Mix at The End? (Do Both!)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Mixing 4 - Step by Step: Mix As You Go vs. Mix at The End? (Do Both!)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Mixing 4 - Step by Step: Mix As You Go vs. Mix at The End? (Do Both!)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Mixing 4 - Step by Step

Mix as you go vs. mix at the end? (do both!)

It used to be that mixing was always at the end of the recording

The downside of this approach is the temptation to make every

But don’t get hung up on perfection until the whole track is

When I work, I dial in a sound for each instrument right away —

Mixing: Step by Step

Big picture: we’re going to start by working on smaller units

[A note about volume automation: if you already have done

2. Organize your signal flow with Groups.

3. Find a reference track or two.

4. Work through your tracks one by one. For each, think

5. Work through the groups one by one.

6. Balance the relative volumes of the groups.

• Remember to use your reference track as a guide.

7. Add volume automation

• Does the volume of a track need to change at any point in the

8. Mastering: shape the sound as a whole

• Effects you’re likely to use on a Master track include:

Your mixes will sound better if you can hear clearly.

You might also like