Creating a Good Audio Mix for Mastering: Mixing Your Song Right the First Time

In some of my other articles posted on AC I briefly mention various audio recording practices and techniques. In this piece I want to get a little more specific about the last 2 steps of the overall recording process: mixing and mastering. However, the focus will be mainly on mixing. Many professionals believe this to be the most important phase of recording, as do I.

Anything you do in one phase of the production process greatly affects the next phase. However good, bad or ugly an audio mix turns out will determine what you can (or cannot) do with it in the mastering phase. Mastering can sometimes fix things in a bad mix, but no always. Therefore, great care must be taken when you’re mixing. Whether you will be at the controls or someone else will, if it’s your project you should be there during this phase.

Now let’s get to it. First of all, you’re going to create multiple mixes of your song. I’ll explain the reasons for this in a bit. Here is a brief description of each mix:

1. A full, complete mix with everything in it, exactly the way you think it should sound.
2. Same mix as the first, but with all the high frequency instruments’ (such as cymbal, crash, splash, hi hats, chymes, high strings) volumes lowered about 5dB.
3. Same mix as the first, but with the low frequency instruments’ (such as bass guitar, kick drum) volumes lowered about 5dB.
4. Same mix as the first, but with BOTH the low AND high frequency instruments’ volumes lowered about 5dB.

Also, for EACH of the 4 mixes listed above, you’ll need to do 2 more: One mix with all the vocals (or lead instruments, in the case of instrumental music, like jazz) RAISED about 3dB, and another mix with vocals (or lead instruments) LOWERED about 3dB.

So just to be clear, you’re going to end up with 12 total mixes of your song. Really? 12? Yes, 12. As promised, I’ll explain the reasons for this now:

• There are no two studio control rooms that sound exactly the same. There are just too many variables; brand and size of monitors (speakers), room size and condition, and so on. Therefore, what you THINK you’re hearing in YOUR studio will likely sound different in the mastering studio.

• During the mastering process the overall volume of you mix is boosted considerably. For some reason the frequencies that become the loudest are the lows and highs (ESPECIALLY the highs).

• It’s always best to have more than you need, than to need what you don’t have. A reputable mastering engineer will many times send you back to the mixing phase if you don’t give him something he can achieve a professional master with. Therefore, it obviously makes more sense to do as many mixes as you can while you have the mix setup; otherwise, you’ll have to do it all over again on a different day, which is frustrating and time consuming.

Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading my article… and happy tracking!