Mix Argh!!

[ernstinen]

You'll discover that mixing is an art just like songwriting.

+1 on that ^ ^ ^ ! --- Although I like the recording process a lot, I LOVE mixing! It's so much fun, once you get the hang of it!

Ern

[mojobone]

Maybe someone has mentioned this, but an invaluable tip is to listen to a well-recorded CD in your style BEFORE you start mixing! Then, do a mix, listen again to the "pro" CD, take a walk, come back and do the above over and over. CDs are so cheap these days (after listening on a bunch of systems, different size speakers, boombox, car stereo, home stereo etc.), if your mix STILL sucks, toss it in the trash and try again tomorrow! A lot of times, after a long day of mixing, you'll think you have the perfect mix. But the next day, when your ears are fresh, you'll probably hear things you did wrong. If you've saved the previous day's mix, it's a lot easier to fix things the following day in maybe an hour! "Morning mixes" are usually superior to "Late Night mixes," in my experience!

Ern

The 'reference mix' is a great technique; you jes' wanna make sure that when you compare your mix to the reference mix that you do it through the same speakers and take care to match the average (RMS) levels. This can be tricky, since the reference CD/track has been to the mastering house and your mix hasn't, so it likely won't be near as loud; you need a way to bypass the mastering processes for your reference tracks. (it's also tricky because master bus compression will alter the peak to average ratio, and EQ affects levels as well as spectra, since you're adding/subtracting acoustic energy)

Some DAWs make this easier than others. In Tracktion, I jes' route all my tracks to a stereo pair of empty tracks, instead of the master outputs. Next pair below them is where I stick the reference mix. I place my mastering processors on my new aggregate tracks and have only a meter on the master bus, so I can match levels between the aggregate tracks and the reference mix-the meter's peak-hold function is very useful for this. (my meter has peak and average on the same scale, so activating peak-hold also engages avg-hold, heh) I use the track faders to get a balance, then switch back and forth using the track solo buttons. One last tricky detail; since Tracktion's layout is input, waveform, VSTs, from left to right, I can't visually compare the resulting waveform to the reference track until I render it (thru the mastering processors) and re-import it.