Best advice for getting better at production/mixing/mastering?

[Thedude4774]

Hi everybody! I've been writing songs forever and recording but I don't seem to get better at production/mixing/mastering. Last year I took two online courses on music production and this year I've been reading books, bought some proper monitors, etc. but I don't seem to be getting any better. Just frustrated and hitting a wall and wondering if any of you would be willing to share any good advice for getting better at production/mixing/mastering? Anything that triggered an "aha!" moment for you or really made it click or any good trick that you learned that you'd be willing to share(no problem, can be super general if you don't want to give away specific secrets!), or a book or video or software or anything like that. Honestly, any words of advice would really help. I've hit a point of major frustration and really wishing I could get over the hump and make a big jump towards being able to make more professional level versions of my songs. Thank you so much for any and all advice, I really appreciate it!

[Telefunkin]

Here's a few thoughts, but nothing earth shattering....

- Put down the books and shut off the videos.
- Get your room and monitoring sorted.
- Listen to LOTS of music like you want to make, not passively but analytically so you form a picture of whats going on.
- Listen to that music on your monitoring system in your mixing room, so you get used to the sound of well produced music.
- Make LOTS of music and keep trying all the things you read about.
- Get great sounds at source, so they're easier to mix and need little 'fixing'.
- Grab some free well-recorded tracks to practice mixing (eg from Warren Huart), and amaze yourself how easy it becomes.
- Choose to record sounds for what they will bring to the mix, not because you happen to have them.
- Avoid too many sonic conflicts, eg don't put bass guitar, double bass and bass synth in the same mix.
- Try gain staging if it makes sense to you.
- Make moves because you want a specific result, not because you read that you should but aren't sure why.
- Use as few plugins as possible to do what you need.
- Aim for balance in everything, levels, pan, frequency ranges, etc.
- Use simple mastering to start with, you can get fancy later when you need something extra.
- ALWAYS use a reference track like the one you're trying to make - pull it into your DAW and keep focused on getting that sound.
- Get a mentor who's skills are ahead of yours.
- Book a recording session in a local studio, watch what they do and how they do it, and ask tons of questions.
- Seek peer review on your work, everybody has an opinion so respect them all even if you don't necessarily agree.
- Listen back at your older work and see how far you've come.
- When you think a mix is great you could be wrong, but if you think a mix is poor you're probably right!
- Keep going - you WILL get better.
- Revisit the books and videos every now and again with new-found experience, and they'll mean more to you.
- Have fun with it!

[cosmicdolphin]

Graham seems to have covered everything ! My own list is similar...just shorter.

1. If you can't hear it you can't mix it , so appropriate monitors in a well treated room and/or Sonarworks etc type correction will mean your mix will sound similar once they leave your studio.

2. The only real way to get better is practice practice practice. Mixing is like learning an instrument. Repetition is your friend. Maybe offer to mix others songs on a music collab type board - It will give you lots of different mix problems to try and solve. By the time you've mixed 100 songs you'll be a better mixer.

3. Reference constantly - Pull pro mixes into the DAW and A/B as you mix. LIsten to the differences and try to bring yours in line.

4. Do No Harm - like the Doctor's motto we should adopt the same. I used to think mixing was going to every track and tweaking something to make it sound how I thought it should. It's not. Many times it's better to do nothing or very little to end up with a better mix. Or at least very small amounts of things.

5. Arrangement is everything. Try thinking in terms of Low / Middle / High...a lot of people pile too much 'stuff' into the midrange and then try to carve each track up like a jigsaw to fit. It's better just to arrange things so they fit together with no mixing at all. They just speak in the right range. Listening in mono is a great way to nail this as you don't have the 'cheat' of panning stuff away from each other. You have to get your separation by having the parts play in the right register. Then the mix is easy.

6. Try the topdown mixing approach. This is where you get the vibe of the mix by starting at the Master Bus so you're doing very broad big picture things first like the overall bus compression, limiting and EQ.

Mark

[Thedude4774]

Hi Graham and Mark! I really can't thank you both enough. I really appreciate both of you taking the time to give me such good advice. I will be referring back to both of your posts a lot over the next few weeks to try and digest all that you gave me to learn and to think about. Both of you gave me excellent new approaches to try and new ways to be thinking about it and that is amazing because I was really getting sick of the whole "trying the same sorts of things over and over and hoping for different results" cycle that I have been stuck in. Thank you both so much. I really really appreciate your help.

Sam

[Telefunkin]

By the way, this guy makes a lot of sense to me. I stumbled across him today for the first time, but you could do worse than follow his advice. Even the free video content on this page is worth a watch. I have no idea about his courses, so I'm not suggesting you drop the cash on those, but all that he says here resonates loudly and clearly with me.
https://www.produceracceleratorcourse.com/
In the end though, all the great advice in the world will only get you so far, and you have to jump in the water if you want to learn to swim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZRZ4oxUUs0

[RickElliott]

I took his course many years ago. I still use topdown mixing.