How do you weed through all the tips and tutorials and decide which one you should follow for your mix? Some advice given isn’t necessarily what you need, since a specific tutorial or trick doesn’t give you the context in which it works.
If you don’t know that a lush 2.3 s hall reverb should be used for slow vocals and decide to try it out for your bass guitar part you are instantly rewarded with a horrible sounding and muddy mix. Not at all what you wanted nor intended when you decided to follow said advice.
That said, here are some of the worst mixing advice you can get. Be sure to not do any of these things and you’ll instantly have a better mix on your hands.
1. Make Your Mix Uneven
All that panning is great isn’t it? You can pan all your drums to one side and they just come out of one speaker all lopsided and groovy. Be sure to have your mix uneven and unbalanced in your left and right master so that you feel like you’re tipping on one side. It’s a great feeling, especially when you’re listening in headphones.
2. Constantly Add More Volume
Add more and more volume to the tracks so that they’re hot and heavy and overloading the master fader. Ending up with a hot mix like this is sure to give your mastering engineer a run for his money as he tries to manage the crazy mix that you’ve made for him.
If your drums start drowning when you’ve added in the other instruments, just push them up and give ‘em more gain! I bet you it’s going to make your clients real happy to listen to a smokin’ hot mix such as this!
3. Use Your Effects to the Extreme
Who doesn’t want extreme effects on every channel. Pile on the chorus, flanger and phaser to make your tracks sound even more interesting.
Better yet, make sure you both add them as inserts and sends so that you can be sure to overload your boring tracks with some cool modulation, wobble and phase. The more effects you got, the better the song must become right?
4. When in Doubt, Add More Lower Mids!
You gotta have a fat mix! In order to compete in the modern mixing world you better start compensating by adding some lower mids to your mixes. Who wants even frequency distribution anyway?!
The best way to find out which mid to add is to scan the 150 – 250 Hz area with a big broad boost until your woofer start vibrating to the extreme. Back off the volume of the speakers a little bit, but be sure to keep your mid boosts as is because that will definitely rock out the dance floor of whatever club you’re bringing your mix to.
Conclusion
So you got these four mixing tips printed out and glued to the wall above your monitor? Because I’m sure, if you follow these tips then your mixes will not only sound insane to everybody who hears them, you might even gain notoriety for breaking the mold and going your own way. And that’s what’s important in the music industry, making waves and doing your own thing!