In the mixing world today it’s easy to believe that it’s a complicated process full of secrets and successes that can only be achieved with expensive hardware and software but the fact is – this is totally NOT the case. Don’t get me wrong, i’ve spent a long time having the same belief and thinking “It’s not possible for me to achieve a mix to the standard of Chris Lord Alge, Forrester Savell or Randy Staub without the equipment that they have”, but the reality is that these guys set the standard that they have because they have the experience and have spent a long time honing their craft particularly with the core elements of mixing, balance, EQ and compression.
If you are someone feeling like that right now then this post is for you.
It’s time to take things back to basics, no endless track counts, no complicated channel strips full of plugins that you don’t really need and no infinite amounts of drafts and revisions before you may or may not decide to bounce the track out of your DAW.
Start your next mix with the conscious decision to use 1 compressor and 1 EQ for every track you work on. You ask why? I’m telling you this because i’ve implemented these limitations on myself and i can tell you first hand that it works because you are forced to achieve a result with what you have. By doing this you also remove all the questions going through your head about what plugin you should use, what everybody else is using and what brand has promised you results. It will free up so much of that needed space in your mind enabling you to focus entirely on the one plugin you have available and know that you have to achieve the sound you want with it. I’m not necessarily suggesting that you stick to DAW bundled plugins, but make a decision on a single plugin and stick to it.
As i mentioned in an earlier post, balance is one of the most important things in mixing and this is entirely relevant to the idea of keeping things simple. Start every mix by playing with the faders and pan pots, get the mix to where it sounds best to you and then apply the rest of the core elements, your chosen EQ and compression. If you treat your mix as these 3 core elements then the mixing process will immediately feel easier and more manageable because you are breaking it down into stages which have clear objectives.
As well as setting these positive limitations, this will allow you to become more familiar with the plugins and really understand how they respond to the audio you are working with. Choose the built in EQ and Compressor in Pro Tools, Logic, Reaper, Cubase or go with a plugin you own such as Fab Filter, Waves or DMG Audio. Make this decision and i guarantee that you will achieve results in your mixes faster than ever before and more importantly, you will gain a better understanding of EQ and Compression without the distraction of the hundreds of plugins out there that sometimes we want just because they look good.
Keep things simple in the beginning with mixing because you will truly learn the value of limitations, the principals of EQ and compression and the importance of balance. These are all factors that you will be able to apply to whatever DAW you are using and therefore, make you more versatile as an engineer if you are ever faced with having to achieve a result within a DAW that you aren’t familiar with.
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