How To Mix A Song: 6 Steps to Mixing Music for Beginners

 What is Audio Mixing : First of all let’s clarify this particular term, what is Mixing? I have seen many beginners who are confused and they don’t have a clear idea about how to Mix a Song.

Audio Mixing is a process of audio production in which we process raw tracks/stems with help of various tools like Eq, Compression, gain staging and many other effects such as reverb, delay to make each sound or instrument blend and compliment each other in a single audio file. This process is used in all types of audio production like Music, Film Production and Live shows.

1- Preparation before mixing of multiple tracks : Before jumping directly to mixing and applying some crazy plugins, the first important step is Gain Staging.
We need to maintain a decent headroom in tracks so that we have good headroom left for mixing. Gain level of all the channels should be somewhere around – 6 db to -12 db, this is considered good headroom left to process a track in the mixing stage.

So if some tracks are already clipping around 0 db, just put a gain plugin and reduce the gain around -6 db. If a track level is below – 12 db , again apply a gain plugin and increase the gain by 4- 5 db.

2 – Panning and Balance: Placing a sound at different places in a sonic field is called panning.Panning helps to differentiate between different instruments by moving one sound away from another which adds to clarity of each sound.

There are three main areas in a mix where we place sounds
i) Center
ii) Hard right
iii) Hard Left

Making a good volume balance between all tracks is a great start to have a good mix. Volume balance is an important step. Many begineers engineers and music producers do this mistake more often. They don’t pay much attention to have a good volume balance.

A good idea is to start with a reference track. Yes, reference tracks are best guide to understand the basic volume balance of your track but make sure that genre of reference track is the same as of your song. For eg. If your track is a rock song than choose an industry standard song of your favorite artist and pay attention to things like how loud is their kick, guitars and all other instruments playing.

3 – Equalization (Eq) : Eq is a process of treating sound where we can cut or boost a particular frequency to shape the tone of an instrument.

It is used to make all elements fit together by putting each instrument in its given area, which helps the instrument sound clear and more defined. Eq is the most important tool used in mixing audio. It helps to make an instrument sound larger than life.

We all know that the human ear can detect frequencies from 20 hz to 20 khz. The audio band can effectively be broken into five different parts –

Sub bass             20 – 60 Hz

Bass                    60-250 Hz

Low mids       250- 2 Khz

High mids            2 – 8 Khz

Highs                   8 – 20 Khz

Bass frequency spectrum are covered by instruments like Bass Guitar, Kick Drum .In electronic music production sounds like 808s and synth bass, sub bass covers bass frequency region.

Mid frequency spectrum is covered mainly  by vocals, guitars, piano, synth pad sounds and percussion instruments like snare drum and toms. This frequency area  is present in almost all sounds and instruments so it’s very important to mix this spectrum correctly and give all the instruments its particular frequency area. Lots of cuts and boosts will be used in the mid region.

High frequency spectrum is covered mainly by shakers, high-hats, cymbals and ride.
This region controls the brilliance and clarity of voices and many instruments.

There are different shelves and filters which help to cut, boost or just high pass or low pass a frequency region. For e.g just apply high pass filter around 100 hz to get rid of all unnecessary lows in the sound which makes a mix muddy.

4 – Compression : 

We can define compression as the process of taking an audio source signal with a large dynamic range and making it smaller. It is achieved by lowering the loudest part down and increasing the lowest ones so the level is  more constant.

It is the most important tool to control the dynamics of a track. They reduce the difference between loudest and quietest levels of audio.

Types of compressor :

There are four different building blocks that is used to build a compressor –

i) Optical compressor

ii) FET compressor
iii) VCA compressor

iv) Vari- gain compressor

All types of compressor have some typical parameters controls which are used to get the desired sound we want.

Parameters of compressor

i) Threshold – The threshold control determines the point in the signal level where the unit will begin to compress. For e.g. if the threshold is set to – 10 db, it means the compressor will start reacting to the input level when the signal touches – 10 db.

ii) Ratio – It sets the amount of gain reduction happening to the input signal. The higher the ratio is set, the compressor will react more extremely and as a result it attenuates the signal more. For example if the ratio is set to 2:1 , it means for every 2 db signal rises over threshold, the compressor will increase the output by 1 db.

iii) Attack –  It determines how fast the compressor will react to the beginning of the audio track. For example if the value is set to 20 ms it means compressor will attenuate the signal after 20 ms.

iv) Release – It is the time taken by the compressor to return the signal in a non – compressong stage. But in the beginning, this attack and release settings can be tricky to understand so in many compressors there is auto release and attack setting according to the dynamic of input signal.

v) Knee – Knee in compressors determines how fast or slow it compresses the signal once input level crosses threshold. A low value means the compressor will begin instantly at threshold. This is called a hard knee. Higher value will gradually ease in the compression. This is called a soft knee.

vi) Make-up gain – Compressors reduce the dynamic level of a signal so to compensate for this reduction, there is a make-up gain knob.It allows the signal to be boosted back to its original level or beyond.

5 – Reverb : Reverb or reverbnation is the reflection produced when sound hits any surface.It is thousands and thousands of repetition occurring in a few milliseconds. It adds dimension to a track. 

Dimensions or we can call it ambience can be captured at recording time, but it’s usually created or added during mixing a track or song.

Reverb is a great tool to add aural space, excitement and to make a sound larger than life. We can’t imagine a song without the use of reverb, be it vocal channel, guitars or even drums.It helps to create a space in the mix.Using short reverb makes things sound bigger.

6 – Delay : After reverb, delay is the most important effect used in audio processing techniques.In simpler word delay is the repetition of an input signal.
It works by sending input signal back to the output signal which generates a feedback that results in an echo.Time gap between main input signal and the echoed signal is calculated as delay time.It is calculated in milliseconds or second.

Correct use of delay makes a track bigger, wider and deeper.It adds excitement to a simple sound. Number of delay repeats is determined by feedback control, higher the feedback – more the repeats.

Short delays make things sound bigger, whereas longer delay settings push a sound further away if the level of the effect is loud enough.

Conclusion 

One of the toughest tasks while mixing your song or any audio is to decide when the mix is finished. Mixing is not a one time process, sometimes it needs many revisions and small tweaks that are needed to make some final adjustments in your track. 

So if you have plenty of time a mix can drag you forever.

when a mix is considered finished?

It’s not an easy question to answer but first of all you need to trust your ears. Try comparing your track to the reference track and decide is it sounding close enough?

Guidelines that helps to decide a mix is ready are –

• The groove of the song is solid.Elements that are the pulse of the song like kick and bass are strong.It shows that the mix has punch which is very important.

• You can hear all the elements of your track clearly. Your vocals are clear enough to hear. Each line, every lyric or each phrase of guitar solo can be heard clearly.

• The mix has contrast. A song has its own journey and the idea of mixing is just simple – make that journey beautiful. So even after throwing a lot of plugins and effects, if the track has no depth it’s clearly  not a good mix. If the mix has same energy throughout the song it can sound boring to audiences. You need to give contrast between differents elements like from dry to wet, from going less intense to high intense as from verses to chorus.This all add depth in the mix.