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
You have watched the tutorials and you know roughly where to cut and boost, but the stock EQ feels like it is fighting you. The bands are clumsy, there is no dynamic option, and you keep wondering whether a real EQ plugin would finally make your vocals sound finished instead of just fine. The right … Read more
Today’s blog post will be a quick look at the most common vocal mixing mistakes that beginner and intermediate engineers make.The Mistakes That Show Up Most You could be making one of these mistakes without even being aware that it’s a mistake, so make sure you check out the entire list.By avoiding all these mistakes … Read more
You’ve dialed in a clean serial chain on the lead vocal. Two compressors at light gain reduction, 4–5 dB total, gain matched, sitting fine in the mix. The vocal is even. The problem is it’s also small. It needs weight, body, and the kind of thickness that makes a chorus feel like it’s two feet … Read more
You watch a tutorial where the engineer says “listen to how the snare gets tighter when I bring the threshold down.” You bypass the plugin. You enable it. You bypass it again. You still can’t tell what changed. Five years into mixing and the compressor still feels like the most invisible plugin in your chain. … Read more
The take is perfect. The pitch, the emotion, the timing, all there. Then you push the high end for a little air, and every “s” turns into a snake. The harder you brighten the vocal, the worse the hiss gets until the esses are the loudest thing in the chorus and you cannot unhear them. … Read more
In this blog post, I would like to share with you everything I wish I knew when I started mixing music.This list is going to help you make your learning curve much faster, save tons of money, and eliminate a lot of trial and error.I used to find mixing overwhelming and time consuming because I … Read more
Today I’ll answer the most frequently asked question by beginner and intermediate mixing engineers: how to make your mix sound great everywhere. When I was starting out, I used to have the same problem; I would mix a song, and it would sound great in the studio but fall flat when I tested it in … Read more
Your mix sounds great on the studio monitors. The kick punches, the bass is full, the low end feels solid. Then you check it on your phone and the bass disappears. You play it in the car and now it is one boomy mess. The earbuds make it sound thin. The Bluetooth speaker has no … Read more
You add reverb to your vocals, and they sound great soloed. Then you play the full mix, and the vocal is suddenly washed out, sitting behind the instruments in a cloud of mush. So you pull the reverb back until it disappears, and now the vocal sounds dry and disconnected, like it was glued on … Read more