Achieving a balanced mix. It sounds simple but it can be frustratingly elusive, with mixes sometimes turning into the sonic equivalent of plate spinning, with a correction on one element causing an imbalance somewhere else ad infinitum.

So what can you do if you feel a mix is getting away from you? Here are some suggestions to keep you on the right road.

The best mixes happen quickly. The old maxim ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ definitely applies here and I know I’ve experienced the all too familiar downward curve from the first playback after a take, where all you heard were the good things, to the fourth or fifth when you’re starting on your mix and your focus has shifted to the increasing number of issues which will need sorting out! Great take usually equals great mix! A bit more time and scrutiny at the tracking stage is always time well spent.

But you have what you have, and assuming none of the issues are showstoppers, usually the best approach is to get in and out with your ears still fresh and your perspective still intact.

Preparation

To minimise the time spent mixing, try to get all the ‘non-mixing’ tasks done in advance. Prep sessions in advance and when doing so try not to listen to the track too much. You do of course have to listen, but I try to hold off listening to the big picture where possible at this stage. We always say don’t spend too long in solo when mixing but when preparing a session it’s a great way to dig into the detail without getting into mix mode. And most importantly, don’t ‘accidentally’ start mixing while you’re prepping unless you mean to. If you find yourself comparing reverbs while prepping vocals, did you mean to do that now?

Reduce The Number Of Things You Have To Control Using Folder Tracks And VCAs

The core of the problem I frequently encounter when a mix gets difficult is diving into the detail at the expense of the big picture. A great way to focus on the overall balance of the track, which after all is far more important than whatever you were doing fiddling with the compressor release time on that cabasa, is to reduce the number of faders you have to deal with and get the big picture right. Exactly how you choose to do that is up to you but I like using VCAs and memory locations.

Submixes made using bussing and Aux Inputs or Routing Folder Tracks can achieve much the same result but VCAs are more flexible, and can be used in combination with bussed submixes. The aim is to reduce your mix to a handful of faders. I favour fewer than 8 because I have a single S1 and that has 8 faders. Frequently I can achieve what I need to using around 5 VCAs.

Whichever DAW you use, you’ll have a way to achieve this. In Pro Tools I create Mix Groups of my major ‘food groups’ (drums, guitars, vocals, backing vocals, FX) create a VCA for each and hide all the other tracks. Save a memory location, recalling only track show/hide, of just the VCAs. Mix the track from this memory location and when balance adjustments need to be made within these food groups, go in and make them, and then return to the bird’s eye view of the mix from the ‘top level’ VCAs.

Automation

Getting a static mix which works isn’t usually hard, but finding a static mix which works the whole way through the song probably isn’t going to happen. If the music changes then chances are that the mix will have to as well. This is where automation comes in.

Although you can automate nearly everything in a session, never feel that that means you should be. The only parameter which is almost definitely going to need automation is volume and while plugin parameter automation can often be drawn in if you like working that way, the best approach for volume automation is to ride faders, whether virtual or physical. How else do you know when you’ve got the right level without listening in context.

Pro Tools Studio and Ultimate have some fantastic timesavers here. Preview mode gets a special mention. If you’ve ever found yourself disabling automation so you can regain control of the fader then you need to check it out. However some simpler features which can help you get your levels in place quickly are the write to beginning, end and selection buttons. Start you track, in Write or Latch, ride the fader up until you have what you feel is the right spot and hit write to beginning. Use the same technique having identified a change in the arrangement or the performance which you feel needs a level change and select the section, as I tend to create markers identifying the sections of the song I’ll usually do a first pass section by section in write mode with Write to Selection on Stop primed in the Automation window. With the large scale changes dialled in across the track I can then do a detailed pass on tracks which require it in Touch mode.

Turn Down As Well As Up

When finding the right level for an element in a mix I prefer to take the fader to zero and bring it back in from the bottom. Finding the right level feels easier that way. This is far easier and quicker using a physical fader on a control surface but is perfectly achievable using a mouse. If you prefer to mix levels from the track headers in the Edit Window (or it equivalent in your DAW of choice - Pro Tools user here…) then you might find you have a relatively short fader to play with which means less resolution. In Pro Tools you can use Command (Control on a PC) to get finer control of the small Edit Window faders or better still click the small fader icon next to the output tile in the IO section of the track header to open a full size floating fader - or just buy an S1!

However you adjust the volume of tracks when finding that elusive balance, keep in mind that if something doesn’t sound loud enough, its because something else is obscuring it. Do you need to turn it up or should you instead turn the other thing down? Very often you should be turning up but the cumulative effect of positive-only level changes will eventually be all your faders up at the end stops.

Individual Or Bus Processing

It’s not true that a fast mix is necessarily a good mix but in my experience slow mixes tend not the be the best ones. Something which can waste time, and distract from what’s really important, is too many plugins. It’s a classic rookie error to plaster a session in plugins, and to have the humbling experience of turning them off and hearing the mix improve - bypassing and checking throughout is crucial.

However, beyond profligate over-use of plugins, the more experienced mixer can still find themselves managing lots of plugins by virtue of having a lot of tracks to deal with. That’s not over-use. It’s just being busy. One area where my approach has changed over the years is that while I used to relish the control that virtually unlimited instantiations of plugins brought. These days I remember how things were in the tape and outboard days and when it comes to things like EQ I’m more inclined to EQ busses when similar sounds exist on multiple tracks. Backing vocals, guitars and the like are often treated as single sources at the point where they are summed on a bus, in Pro Tools that is usually via a Routing Folder Track. I’ll do the same with compression, often preferring the movement bus compression can introduce but always preferring the fact that I have a single plugin to deal with.

Individual plugins can of course still be used but if you have a significant number to deal with, and track counts can quickly mount up, for example 4 part harmonies all triple-tracked is 12 tracks, then consider creating a Mix Group and linking the plugins parameters. This refers to a Pro Tools feature but other DAWs have similar functionality. Group the tracks you wish to control and un-check Follow Globals. Then check Controls and Bypass for the insert slots you wish to group. That way you can set up all of the plugins at the same time. Something to be aware of is that while you can bypass the Mix Group and change a single parameter on one of the plugins. If you try to change that parameter again with the Mix Group re-enabled the parameter will be re-linked across all plugins the next time it is touched. No offset is maintained, so leave individual tweaks until last. Check out this technique in the video above, brought to you with the support of Avid to see this in action.

Reference - But In The Right Way

Referencing other mixes can be a good idea but I’ve spoken to too many top class mixers who don’t do it to say that you have to do it. The main thing I’d say about referencing is what do you mean by referencing? Some people use careful references, chosen for the style of music being mixed and AB scrupulously against their mix. Others use references to calibrate their ears, particularly when working in a room other than their usual mix space. Something I try to do is to use referencing to protect my perspective. Fatigue, repetition, expectation and frustration can all colour our objectivity and listening to something else, actually sometimes anything else can be really helpful.

Intrinsically tied to perspective is the monitoring system. If a recording goes through the whole production process from composition to mastering in a single room then translation outside that room is far from guaranteed. Like many people I’ve experimented with multiple sets of monitors but I only use a single set today. The usefulness of secondary monitors comes from them being sufficiently different from the first pair. Nearfield monitors as an alternative to soffit mounted mains makes sense but two different pairs of two way nearfields of similar quality doesn’t really tell me anything apart from how different monitors all sound from each other, however ‘flat’ they claim to be!

What does help is a radically different monitor. A single driver grot box, or my preference, a bluetooth speaker placed elsewhere in the studio. Something I really like about the MBOX Studio is that it has a bluetooth out which is really handy for exactly this purpose. I’ve used the old trick of listening from the next room for years but using a wireless speaker means I can move the music relative to me rather than me having to move! An alternative take on a lower bandwidth monitor can tell you a great deal about the really important things about a balanced mix: Vocal level, the relative levels of kick, snare and bass, how cymbals and guitars sit relative to each other. The really important things.

Balance can be elusive and it’s most elusive when you’re over-thinking. the best piece of advice I have is to make sure that what you’re dealing with is as good as possible before it goes anywhere near being mixed. A bad arrangement or a messy performance isn’t going to become anything other than what it is by being mixed. Mastering won’t save it either. But a well balanced mix, like good theatre lighting, should reveal every detail of the music, and direct the listener’s attention without drawing attention to itself. After all, it’s about the music, not the mix.