5 Instant Mixdown Tips
Improving you music production skills and sound doesn't have to involve new purchases, better monitors, acoustic treatment or costly courses. Here's 5 free tips from the pros that you can start implementing right now.
- Volumes - Do not mix with your monitors at high volume. You should be able to hear and feel your song at low volume, if your track only sounds good loud - then something is wrong.
- Making The Cut - Think about cutting before boosting. If you're boosting by large amounts then it's highly likely there is something fundermentally wrong with your sound and instead try replacing the sound with something more suitable. Secondly boosting introduces phase issues which can aversely effect the timbre and create problems at mix down. Finally it also eats into available headroom which again has down the line issues with mixing and mastering.
- Automation - Automate everything. Sound is life, it is the breathing in and out, up and down, back to front. Automation is key to sustaining this sonic life and interest and snagging the listeners ear from start to finish.
- Stereo Confusion - When using headphones, mix in mono to avoid phase problems which you won’t otherwise pickup or notice. This will infinitely help your mix downs too.
- Reverberations - Low cut (600hz) and high cut (10k) the signal into your reverbs. Everything will sit much better in the mix and, and it avoids mud and that hyper bright reverb tail that’s a telltale giveaway to an amateur mix.