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"Thank you again for your help on this, sounds beautiful"

What's Mixing?

Mixing a song, for me, involves:

  • Listening to the whole piece and understanding how it fits together.

  • Trying to grasp the essence of the song - what is its story, its mood, its emotional flavour - in consultation with the people who made it.

  • Working on what sort of listening space suits that essence - intimate? Spacey? Airy? A hot, packed club? A concert hall?

  • Carefully using reverbs to help create that listening space.

  • Listening to each instrument and voice carefully and working out how they can fit together comfortably into a whole picture

  • Using EQ to shape tone, compression to shape the dynamics of each part, and other effects and processing to enhance and perhaps dramatise.

  • Balancing volumes and place in the stereo image.

  • Automating volumes and effects, to add drama or emphasis at different points, or to help transitions from one song section to another.

  • Listening to the whole song after these processes and applying any treatments necessary to make the whole mix ‘glue together’.

  • Fading out, or enhancing the ending.

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