You pull up the overheads, and they are either a harsh wash of cymbals slicing your ears off, or a muddy blanket of kick and snare bleed with no shimmer at all. So you high-pass and boost the highs for sparkle, the harshness gets worse, and the kit somehow loses its weight. The overheads are … Read more
You open the session, and the vocal is a mess before you have touched a single fader. Eight takes scattered across eight tracks. Clicks between phrases. One line that drifts flat. A breath right before the hook that is louder than half the words around it. So you spend 20 minutes cleaning instead of mixing, … Read more
Today I’ll be answering one of the most frequently asked questions by most musicians, which is; should you mix your own music?I believe that since you’re the one who knows exactly what the final mix and master should sound like then you’re the best person for the job. This way you’ll get the music to … Read more
You bought the beat, it came as a single loud WAV, and now you are trying to fit your vocal on top of it. The problem is obvious the moment you hit play. The beat is already slammed to commercial loudness, there is no headroom left, and your vocal either sits buried behind it or … Read more
You finish balancing the kit. The kick lands. The snare cracks. Then you reach for the pan knobs and freeze. The kick is obviously center. But what about the snare? The hats? The toms? Should the overheads spread hard left and right or sit narrower? And what about the drum bus itself, mono or stereo? … Read more
The best places to download free multitracks for mixing practice, including libraries covering rock, hip-hop, folk, gospel, and live sessions. Also covers how to get maximum value from each practice session.
You recorded the vocal, dropped it in the mix, and it just sits there, sounding small. Thin. A little brittle. Next to a thick, warm reference track, it feels like a demo, like the singer is two rooms away from a great microphone. So you reach for a low-mid boost, then a chorus, then a … Read more
Mixing music is not as hard as it seems, but the speed of improvement depends on how you practice. This post covers how to learn, how long it takes, and what separates engineers who improve fast from those who plateau.
You spent an afternoon stacking harmonies. Thirds, fifths, a high part on the chorus, the works. In your head it was going to sound like a choir wrapping around the lead. Instead, the mix turned into a cluttered mush. You can hear every singer as a separate, slightly out-of-tune person, the midrange is a swamp, … Read more
You import 40 stems into a fresh session. Every track is named “Audio 27.wav” or “vox_FINAL_v3.wav.” Three are clipping. Two are silent. The drummer’s takes are spread across nine playlists with no clear winner. The vocal stack is in alphabetical order, not section order. You open the EQ on track 14 to start mixing and … Read more