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T H E U L T I M A T E M I X I N G F O R M U L A © 2 0 1 4 P R O S O U N D F O R M U L A . C O M

W H A T R E A L L Y M A K E S A G R E A T M I X - T H E 5 K E Y O B J E C T I V E S O F M I X I N G

What Really Makes A Great Mix The 5 Key Objectives of Mixing

By Rob Williams

©2014 Pro Sound Formula Pty. prosoundformula.com All Rights Reserved

http://ProSoundFormula.com




Contents

Introduction

The Production Pyramid

The 5 Key Objectives of Mixing

Key Objective #1: Final Arrangement & Composition

Key Objective #2: Emotional Experience

Key Objective #3: Sounds Good Technically

Key Objective #4: Sonic Consistency

Key Objective #5: Format Ready for Mastering

Closing Thoughts

The 5 Key Objectives of Mixing – Graphic Overview





Introduction It’s been said that…

"Behind every great song, is a great mix”.

There’s a lot of truth to this.

A great mix brings out the BEST in a song. It makes it SOUND great. It makes people want to listen to it again and again.

Of course, a great mix doesn’t guarantee a great song, but even the BEST of songs can be ruined by a poor mix.

The bottom line is this, if we want our songs to sound great, we need to get a great mix.

The only problem is that mixing can be a daunting, confusing, and sometimes just downright frustrating process. It brings up more questions than any other stage of the production process, such as…

What are the right plugins to use?

What order should I put them in?

What are the correct settings to use?

What should I mix first?

How do I get the balance right?

How do I get more clarity in the mix?

How do I get a great drum sound?

How do I make the vocals sit in the mix?

What should I use on the mix buss?

How do I make sure my mix sounds good on different playback systems?

How do I EQ a guitar?

What reverb should I use?

etc. etc. etc.





All of these are good questions, but they’re NOT the FIRST question we need to ask.

Ultimately, it all starts with ONE QUESTION…

What really makes a GREAT mix? Without knowing the answer to this question, everything we do in the mix is GUESSING.

If we want our songs to sound GREAT, we need a GREAT mix, and if we want a GREAT mix, we have to know what MAKES a GREAT mix.

It took me over a decade to figure out the answer to this one question, and I’m about to share that with you in the next few pages.





Phase 1:

The SongIt all starts with a song. A song is essentially just the melody and lyrics. A composition is a piece of music without lyrics.

Phase 2:

Arrangement & Pre ProductionThe arrangement is what makes the song / composition unique and interesting. This consists of choosing a style, tempo, structure, and which instruments play what.

Phase 3:

Recording The recording phase is where we capture the performance of the song. This could be done live, or with programmed instruments.

Phase 4:

Mixing The mix phase is the final creative phase a song goes through. It's where we bring everything together and must combine the various recorded and programmed tracks into a great sounding mix that brings out the best in the song.

Phase 5:

MasteringThe final phase in the production process is mastering. The main goal of mastering is to make sure the song sounds great on a variety of different playback systems, and put together the final album.

The Song

Mixing

Mastering

Recording

Arrangement & Pre Production

The Production Pyramid

Before we get into what makes a great mix, let’s have a quick look at where mixing fits into the production process.

The ‘Production Pyramid’ illustrates the 5 phases that a song goes through to go from a simple idea, to the final master.

Phase 1 – The Song: It all starts with a song. A song is essentially just the melody and lyrics. This could also be a composition, which is a piece of music without lyrics.

Phase 2 – Arrangement & Pre Production: The arrangement is what makes the song or composition unique and interesting. This consists of choosing a style, tempo, structure, and which instruments play what, amongst other things.





Phase 3 – Recording: The recording phase is where we capture the performance of the song. This could be done live, or with programmed instruments.

Phase 4 – Mixing: The mix phase is the final creative phase a song goes through. It's where we bring everything together and must combine the various recorded and programmed tracks into a great sounding mix that brings out the best in the song.

Phase 5 – Mastering: The final phase in the production process is mastering. The main goal of mastering is to make sure the song sounds great on a variety of different playback systems, and put together the final album.

What we’re focussed on here is Phase 4, the MIXING phase.

The mix is the LAST time the song will ever exist in multitrack format, where we have all the parts and instruments separately and can tweak each one individually.

Once the mix is bounced down, it can’t be changed in the mastering phase.

The goal of mixing is to get ALL the recorded and programmed tracks down to a single, stereo audio file.

It’s almost as if we’re putting everything into this big funnel – whether you have 10, 20, 50, or 200 tracks, they’ve ALL got to fit through the same space and end up as a single stereo track.

Up until this point in the production, things have been relatively simple. If we wanted to record a new instrument, we just created an audio track and added it to the overall mix. No problem.

But now, we’ve got to mix all these tracks down… and this is where things tend to go wrong.

…It’s like herding sheep – not that I’ve ever done that before, but I’d imagine that they’re all quite happy out in the field, until you try and get them into their pen! – And the more sheep there are, the more difficult this is.

Kick

Snare

Acoustic

Synth

Vocal

Final Mix – Left

Final Mix – Right

Vocal double

BGV 1

BGV 2

Electric L

Electric R

MIX FUNNEL





Needless to say, the mix is a critical phase in the production process, and we risk throwing away ALL the hard work that’s gone into the song, arrangement, and recording so far. ...Which happened to me more times than I’d like to admit :) And if you’ve ever felt like you’ve ‘wasted’ a good song because you didn’t know how to mix it properly, you know the frustration I’m talking about!

It was this very frustration that drove me to do whatever it takes to figure this out. For years I searched for the answers. I found every book, article, “expert”, video, magazine, forum, course – ANYTHING I could find. And it was all to answer this one seemingly simple question: What makes a GREAT mix?

I got virtually every answer imaginable...

– “Mixing is an art form” – “Mixing is using EQ, compression, and effects to make a song sound good” – “Mixing is combining multiple audio sources in a pleasing manner” – “Mixing is an attitude” – “Mixing is where art meets science”

While all of these are true in one way or another, I didn’t find them very helpful. They don't really answer the question, and they aren’t specific or practical enough that you can actually USE them. So when I’d sit down to mix a song, I’d still have NO IDEA what exactly I was SUPPOSED to be doing.

It was a total mystery to me.

What made it worse was that every person I asked, every book I read, every video I watched – ALL had different, and often CONFLICTING advice. I even traveled across the country to go to a really good sound school. It was a great experience and they taught as everything from recording, to video post production, to mastering. But toward the end of the course when it finally came to mixing, they basically said: 'You're on your own, go figure it out’.

I was speechless.





Again and again, the same basic premise came up – "Mixing can't really be taught, you've just got to figure it out yourself”. It was around this time that I started to realize something...

Almost no one knew what mixing really was, and the guys who DID KNOW didn’t know how to describe it very well.

Long story short, this sent me off on a journey that would last MANY more years than I could ever have anticipated, and now I’m about to share what I’ve learnt with YOU, so that you, and your music, can benefit without having to go through all the years of trial and error that I did.

Mixing DOESN’T have to be this difficult.

One of the main things that makes mixing so confusing is NOT understanding the key objectives that lead to a great mix.

This is the FIRST step, and this is where we need to to start.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re mixing dance, pop, jazz, indie, rock, EDM, acoustic, death metal, or ANY other style of music. At its very core, mixing comes down to accomplishing…

5 KEY OBJECTIVES

What I’m about to share with you are NOT ‘5 ideas on mixing’

They’re NOT ‘5 tips to get a better mix’.

They're NOT ‘5 main objectives’.

These are THE ONLY 5 OBJECTIVES OF MIXING.

EVERY great mix accomplishes these 5 things, and by accomplishing them you’ll give your mixes, and your songs, the greatest chance of sounding their very BEST.





Now you may think that you need fancy or expensive gear to get a great sound – I thought the EXACT same thing for years.

In fact, I often blamed my gear (or lack thereof) for not being able to get commercial quality results.

But I know a little better now... and I can tell you that gear is no longer the limitation it used to be. It’s the RIGHT knowledge and skills that really makes the biggest difference.

Once you know how, it takes no more work or effort to get a great mix than it does a mediocre one, yet the impact that a great mix has can be the difference between a song being enjoyed by a lot of people for years to come, or being totally irrelevant.

The fact is, technology has come so far that today literally ANYONE can mix a song. You move around some faders, throw on some plugins, choose a couple of presets, go to 'file' and hit 'export', and mix done!

One problem...

It’s probably not going to sound very good! – MAYBE average at BEST.

You and I don't just want our songs to have an average mix, what we want is a GREAT MIX.

I know this is something you want because you wouldn't be wasting your time reading this right now if you were willing to settle for mediocre sounding tracks – and I admire you for searching for the answers because most people don’t.

I know you want your songs to stand out and sound great. I know you want a great mix, and I’m about to show you the first step to getting it...





The 5 Key Objectives of Mixing Before we do ANYTHING we MUST first understand what we’re trying to accomplish. Most people fail because they don't know or understand the purpose and objectives of mixing.

As the old adage goes; “You can’t win a game that you don’t understand”, and so the first step to getting a great mix is understanding what MAKES a great mix, and the key objectives (outcomes) that we must achieve.

These are the 5 Key Objectives of Mixing:

In the next few pages we’ll take a closer look at each of these 5 objectives.

Key objective #1: Final arrangement & composition

Key objective #2: Emotional experience

Key objective #3: Sounds good technically

Key objective #4: Sonic consistency

Key objective #5: Format ready for mastering

Musical Objectives

Technical Objectives

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Final Arrangement & Composition The mix is the LAST opportunity we have to make any final arrangement or composition decisions. Ideally you want to have this done BEFORE you even start mixing, but sometimes it’s only in the mix phase that you notice things that can be fixed or improved.

The composition should be complete by this stage, but in some styles of music, such as many electronic styles, often the composition is an evolving process that overlaps with the mix. At some point you have to decide to just ‘go with something’ though, and I recommend making any final composition choices BEFORE doing the final mix.

Most of what we do in the mixing phase is simply optimizing an existing arrangement and FIXING any arrangement issues.

Ultimately, our goal is to make the song the best it can be, and there’s no point making it SOUND great if there are parts clashing, or it just sounds too busy. It’s beyond the scope of this short book to go into all the elements that make up a great arrangement, but here are some of the most common issues to look out for and what you can do about them:

Key Objective #1

>>> Song sounds too busy – Take parts / instruments away

>>> Instruments clashing – Remove the least important element, transpose up or down

>>> Not enough contrast – Try removing parts from the verse to give the chorus more impact

>>> No climax – Take away parts from earlier sections, layer big sections

>>> Too long – Try cutting out a section / sections

>>> Song isn’t flowing / it's dragging – Try cutting out unnecessary sections

>>> Sounds empty / lacks detail – Try adding a pad layer in the background, copy fills if possible





Emotional Experience Every song is written for one ultimate purpose: To make the listener FEEL something. A song could have a great arrangement, sound great, have sonic consistency, etc. but if it doesn't convey EMOTION, it's pointless. The mix should enhance and support the emotional vision of the song.

Simply put, the SOUND needs to match the SONG.

For example, let’s say we were mixing an intimate love song which consists of just a piano and a female vocalist. Imagine if we were to EQ her vocals to sound very aggressive and sharp. Then we added a very aggressive sounding compressor. And to top things off, we added a giant hall reverb to the piano track.

Do you think this sound is going to COMPLIMENT or CONTRADICT the song?

Of course, a big, aggressive sound is NOT going to compliment an intimate love song! What this song probably needs is a warm, natural, intimate sound.

By aligning the sound and the song we AMPLIFY the emotion.

As simple as this may sound, it was NOT obvious to me for MANY years.

One of the things I remember doing was always trying to make my drum sounds as big and punchy as possible, no matter what the style of music was.

This would work well for something like a big rock track… but not so much for a mellow pop song.

I couldn’t understand why some of my mixes would sound great, and others would just sound a little – “off”.

Little did I know at the time that by creating a sound that contradicts the emotional message of the song, I was making it virtually impossible for the mix to ever work.

Key Objective #2





You could have the greatest sounding drums in the world, but if they don’t match the song and style, it’s not going to sound right in the context of the mix.

It comes down to this: If we want our songs to have the greatest emotional impact, they need to be ‘congruent’.

The definition of congruent is: "in agreement or harmony”. All instruments and processing need to be aligned and sending the same “message” as the song and style.

All great songs are aligned in this way. ALL great songs are congruent.

There are a number of ways we can ‘amplify the emotion’ in a song, but this one is the MOST important.





Sounds Good Technically The third key objective of mixing is to make the mix sound good “technically”.

Now you’re probably wondering, what do I mean by “technically”? And why only only make the mix sound ‘good’, why not GREAT?

I want to draw a distinction here, something can sound good TECHNICALLY but not necessarily MUSICALLY.

For example, let’s say we bought the most expensive electric guitar in the world. We then hooked it up to the most expensive amp in the world. Chances are, it’s going to sound pretty good :)

But then… we ask little Jimmy who’s had about 3 guitar lessons in his life to go play the guitar… you might want to close your ears for this.

The sound of the guitar is amazing TECHNICALLY, but not MUSICALLY.

Of course, the opposite could also be true, no matter how great the guitarist, there’s only so much they could do with an entry level acoustic with 5 year old rusty strings!

The point is, there’s a difference between something sounding good technically, and musically.

In the mix phase, the music has already been recorded and there’s not much we can change about that. But what we CAN do, is make it SOUND GOOD TECHNICALLY.

Every great mix sounds good technically.

Then, you may be wondering why I say ‘sounds good’ instead of ‘sounds GREAT’? – Isn’t the whole point to get a GREAT mix?

Yes, but I think what makes a mix GREAT is accomplishing ALL 5 Key Objectives. Just getting a good sound is not enough to make a great mix, but it is an essential part of it.

Key Objective #3





So, how do we make our mixes sound good technically?

It all comes down to what I call the ‘5 Drivers of Mixing’.

These are the 5 things that we’re doing throughout a mix to make it sound good.

There are 5 aspects that make a mix sound good “technically”, they are the 5 Drivers of Mixing:

Balance – The relative levels of the various instruments

Fix – Making sure there’s nothing that sounds bad

Enhance – Bringing the best out of the individual instruments and overall mix

Shape – Making the instruments fit together

Space – Creating depth and dimension in the mix

These 5 things are what we spend MOST of the time during a mix doing.





Sonic Consistency Every great mix has what I call “Sonic consistency”.

What this means is that the SOUND (sonic) is CONSISTENT with commercial standards. It means a track will SOUND CONSISTENT on a variety of different playback systems.

Great mixes sound great no matter where they’re played.

Have you ever had the experience where you’re mixing a song, and it starts sounding pretty good in your studio… So you bounce it down and take it out to listen on some other systems, perhaps your car or HIFI.

When you put it on, you start to wonder whether this is the SAME MIX you JUST listened to a few minutes ago?! – It just DOESN’T sound the same.

So what happened?

The main reason for this is that the mix doesn’t have a well balanced frequency spectrum.

When manufacturers design sound systems and speakers, they use commercial records as a reference for how the system should sound.

So if we want our mixes to sound great on the majority of playback systems, we must make sure that the overall frequency spectrum of the mix is CONSISTENT with commercial standards.

In other words, it should have a similar balance of frequencies as other commercial tracks of a similar style.

How do we check whether our mix has a ‘well balanced frequency spectrum’?

Two of the main ways we can do this is by comparing our mix to other commercial tracks, and by using a spectrum analyzer to look for major dips or peaks in the overall frequency spectrum.

Key Objective #4





If you’ve gone through my mastering training, you may be wondering, ‘Isn’t this the whole point of MASTERING – to make sure the track sounds good on a variety of playback systems?’

Yes, this is one of the key objectives of mastering. But we want to get the mix as CLOSE to commercial standards as possible so that we don’t have to make compromises in the mastering phase.

In the mixing phase, we have access to ALL the individual instruments and can tweak them without affecting other instruments.

In the mastering phase we can only make adjustment to the OVERALL mix.

Even the BEST mastering engineer in the world can only do so much with a bad mix.

If we get the mix right, the mastering will just add the final touches that enhance the overall sound.





Format Ready for Mastering The 5th, and final key objective of mixing, is to finalize the mix and get it into a format that’s ready for mastering.

Although this doesn’t really affect the way the song sounds, it is the essential final step that every mix must complete – and we can throw away a lot of hard work if we don’t pay attention to some of the final details.

I STILL get people asking me whether they should bounce their mix down to MP3 – NO!! :)

The goal is to produce a high quality, UNCOMPRESSED stereo audio file that’s ready to be mastered.

Here are some of the key points to keep in mind:

✓ Check the tops & tails (beginning and end) to make sure they’re clean

✓ Make sure to leave enough headroom for the mastering phase – try and get the master PEAKING at around -6dB and NO HIGHER than -3dB

✓ Export at the same quality as the mixing session, or higher

✓ If you’re not sure what settings to use, choose 48kHz 24 bit

✓ Save the mix in an UNCOMPRESSED format such as .wav or .aiff

✓ There shouldn’t be any mastering processors on the master mix buss – NO limiters!

Key Objective #5





Closing Thoughts The purpose of this short book was to answer one question, a question that took me a LONG time to figure out; ‘What really makes a GREAT mix?’

Every great mix accomplishes 5 Key Objectives:

A GREAT mix brings out the best in the Final Arrangement and Composition.

A GREAT mix amplifies the Emotional Experience we get from listening to a song.

A GREAT mix Sounds Good Technically.

A GREAT mix has Sonic Consistency and sounds great no matter where we play it.

A GREAT mix is finalized and in a Format Ready for Mastering.

While this is by no means a comprehensive explanation of the 5 Key Objectives, I hope that it has given you more clarity as to what we need to accomplish in a mix.

…Perhaps it has brought up a lot more questions for you – sorry about that :) But seriously, this is a GOOD thing. All improvement starts by asking good questions.

In a future training, we’ll look at EXACTLY HOW to accomplish these 5 things.

The bottom line is, if we want to bring out the BEST in our songs, we need to get a great mix, and to get a great mix, these are the 5 Key Objectives that we MUST accomplish.

I wish you all the best with your music,

– Rob





The 5 Key Objectives of Mixing – Graphic Overview

Refer to the JPEG version of this image for a bigger, clearer view.



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