Continue reading »]]> Setting up your Mix

Spending the time to set up your mix will save you so much time and frustration later. It will make you think about the direction you want to take your mix which will help you organize your mix to suit that direction.

So where do you start? Well start by opening your DAW and importing your tracks. Depending on your DAW this could be as simple as dragging and dropping your files into the arrange window. In Logic, which is the DAW that i use. Go to the ‘browser’ tab in the media inspector and locate the files you want to mix in your computers hard drive. Next, I highlight the files and hit the import button. A window will pop up and ask if you want to import onto new tracks or onto the existing tracks and you’ll want to import onto new tracks.

One of the most important tasks in setting up your mix is naming your tracks so you, the mix engineer, is going to understand them. Joe 6 is not a track name i am going to use in my mix, so listen to each track and name them appropriately, and at the same time you should take this opportunity make notes on what you dislike and like about the tracks sound and where you want each track to sit in you mix.

The colour wheel is your best friend in organizing your mix. Grouping all the drum tracks together and colour coding them to match will make your mix visually pleasing which will help you move through your mix with ease and colour coding the rest of the instruments and grouping them together with there similar track you’ll be on your way to a great mix.

Now that you have listened to the song a bunch of times setting markers will help you navigate thought the song without having to listen to the whole song over and over again. It will also allow you to make decisions on the vibe of the song automating panning and volume to give the track some life. Name each marker so you understand is all that is necessary. Verse 1, Hook, etc. keep it simple.

Routing your tracks and setting up effects should be the last thing you need to do before your ready to push up the faders and start mixing. I start to adding aux sends as buses for every instrument in the mix. Sending all drum parts to the drums bus allows me to rise or lower the complete drum mix if needed after mixing the rest of the instruments and like wise for the rest of the instruments in your mix.

After mixing a few songs you will start to see a pattern in your own mixing style and making templates will save you loads of time. I have a few different templates to start a mix from, mainly genre based. Templates are the closes thing to an assistant as a home studios operator is going to get.