I’m curious about how you think before you even start mixing. What’s your mental process, your philosophy?


I’d love to hear about your mindset and theoretical approach—how you frame your thinking going into a mix session. This isn’t meant to be a discussion about plugins or specific gear—I’m more interested in the deeper, conceptual side: techniques, mental models, and the mindset behind mixing.


How do you think when you mix?

 

The better the source material, the better the quality. Each instrument should sound great on its own and have enough space. If two instruments are very similar, I choose to use EQ to separate them. If I have vocals, the vocals are in the foreground, and I pay attention to good speech intelligibility.

I listen to my mix the next day with fresh ears, or I go for a walk in between to rest my ears. You can also pan instruments forward, to the side, or backward, or place them in the room with more or less reverb.

Save your recordings from time to time, and save your work externally in the evening, even if you're tired. I only drink green tea; I gave up coffee years ago. Sugar and coffee make you nervous and fidgety. There's strength in calm. It's better to eat fruit, dates, or raisins. Even if you're unsure, it's worth creating a version 2 and possibly a version 3 of the mix.

There are days when everything goes smoothly, and days when you're not at your best. Often, you have to identify problems in the mix and then be able to solve them. You have to love what you do, but sometimes it's just hard work that gets you to your goal.

 

mostly sneaking up to it from behind

 

...with a Bowie knife in my right hand and a Billy club in my left!

 

I did almost only mastering for nearly 20 years. Of course I did some recording and mixing before turning to mastering. I did very little mixing during my mastering years an, when it happened, I tended to stick to mastering concepts like :
- if it is on the recording, it is meant to be here
- the signal must be respected at all cost
- my work must be transparent, I should not interfere with the intent of the artists, just enhance things
Of course I took artistic decisions, choosed effects, even tried weird things sometimes, but my main mindframe was still what I described above.
It brought technically good mixes, maybe a bit bland. Most of the times, the bands were happy with the results. I dont really like to listen to what I mixed during these times.
Then, I was asked to do mixing more often, while mastering dried a little.
Gradually, as mixing became more or less my main activity, my mind changed from what I described above to more 'agressive' views.

So, I make things mine. I'm not afraid to radically change the sound of some instruments. And I absolutely dont care about the way individual instruments sound. In the past, I tried to optimize individual sounds, have eveything sounding great soloed and so on. It was a loss of time. I dont even clean noises, except if they're audible in the mix in a detrimental way. I automate a lot and I drastically change the way an instrument sound when its surroundings in the track changes. I dont care if this is a guitar or a synth, I need some kind of sound occupying a space and I use whatever is available in the multitrack to make it, even if it means processing it beyond recognition.
I try to hear the mix from an external perspective, it's the surface of the whole which counts, not the way it is built inside. Because the audience will listen to it this way. They come from the outside, they dont know how it is inside (and dont care at all).
I mix mostly Black / Doom / Industrial Metal, Noise Rock, experimental stuff and more generally guitar oriented stuff. I was not at ease with synths when I began to mix records with many of them, but now it's not a problem anymore.
I process the drums first until they coarsely sound like they should for the genre. I dont go in depth as things will change later when I'll add the rest. And then I put everything else, guitars, vocals, bass, synths and I adjust things according to how they sound together, not individually.
Almost always, bands give me rough mixes they did themselves or the recording engineer did. I listen to them a lot but without really analyzing them. I dont think consciously unless I encounter something which requires intellectual thinking, specific knowledge and so on. Then comes the obsessive part : I feel a correspondance between what I feel about this record and some other thing, usually from a different genre. I mix Doom Metal being inspired by Hawkwind, Black Metal while hallucinating I'm Joe Meek mixing 'Telstar' by the Tornadoes, Industrial while regarding it as some early Pink Floyd... I dont use reference tracks. If I feel something must sound like Hate Forest, I dont listen to Hate Forest, I use the idea I have about how Hate Forest sounds as guidance. Except some times I want to check a specific snare sound or the way the bass is integrated with guitars...

It's some kind of scupture : I quickly build coarse fundations (usually drums, or drums + synths if there are many of them), I throw the other tracks over it, like it was some clay, and I refine the form. As long as needed. I use tons of processing and remove the superfluous during the process.

It's a travel. Some kind of a shamanic trip where I build a net of relationships between sounds and ideas which arent perceptible in the result and which i forget soon after the end of the job. In fact I am the main processor and eveything goes through me, is digested and then brought back to the external world in a different form.
Well,this for big projects that last long and into which I feel truely involved. i'm not always that fanatical. But this the direction in which my mind goes.

 

Last edited: Jul 11, 2025 at 3:08 PM

The badass way...

 

The statements in the first three videos in this playlist make the most sense.

In short: Create a completely repetitive workflow.
Or: Be boring.

 

Last edited: Jul 11, 2025 at 4:48 PM

I listen to the song. I take notes on what strikes me. I listen to the song again. Make more notes... mostly mental notes, but sometimes on paper for complex projects.

Then I work through the notes. If I notice something in the meantime, I tackle it directly or make a note for later. When I've worked through all the notes and nothing else comes to mind and my client has no requests for changes, I'm done.

 

It depends on whether it's prepayment or postpayment.

 

I really like how you described the whole process. Some of these ideas were floating around in my head, but I didn’t know how to put them into words — you nailed it. Thanks for the detailed response!

 

Good topic, to me the of music making are often the most interesting ones.
Just some quick notes:


1) I want my mix to sound interesting from the beginning, so I tend to start from the very beginning. If something feels off or distracts me, I work on it.

2) Make decisions quick and intentional! Leave room for fiddling around on a detail, but my main focus is on making very fast mixing decisions. Don't overthink (only once in a while).

3) When mixing my own music: if I can't get something to work and have no vision how to make it work... fuck it. This was a gamechanger for me. For example: in the past I spend much time on tweaking kick sounds, inserting this and that and so on. Nowadays I am not afraid anymore to simply throw another kick sample in. So much more effective. I know I mash up the mixing and producing stages in my process and many say it's a no-go. For me it works better than not jumping around the stages if I have a vision.

4) Have a vision! Be intentional!

5) See plugins and gear as tools to make your visions come true. Stick to things you have, you know and that work for you.

6) I tend to hear tracks in a mix as different textures. I paint my mix with different sonic textures. This approach works with every instrument in any given genre.

7) Be aware of what the focal points of your mix are.


Best videos I know about approach/philosophical sides are from the Kush Audio guy.

 

I'm getting more and more into minimalism when mixing. Unless there's something clearly wrong to fix, I want to have most of my tracks EQ'd with only three bands. Less compression overall, more saturation or at least parallel compression. I've mostly stopped caring about things such as clarity and all the buzzwords, the only thing I care now is how the song vibes. If I have to push the vocal back in the mix, I'll do it if it makes everything else bigger.

So, in short, my current philosophy is: less plugins, less CPU usage, less processing. Not worried about accuracy, not worried about fishing for stuff to filter out in surgical EQ. Just lots of broad strokes.

 

Well, since generally I'm mixing things I've recorded I have a pretty good mental image of how it's going to be and I've kind of been mixing bit by bit through the whole tracking process, so nine times out of 10 it's really just a question of tweaking and finalizing the mix that I already have about 85% done.
I usually start getting a good drum sound, adding in the bass for foundation, then guitars, then anything else, and then the vocals on top- and then fixing whatever has to be fixed so it can live with all the other stuff that got added in. And voila.

I'm also deeply on board with simplicity. Sometimes a vocal chain can get a little complex but everything else tends to be, hopefully, little eq, little comp, not a whole lot else. I've sworn off goodizers. They do more harm than good. If Alan Parsons didn't need that stuff then neither do I

 

This guy mixes.

THIS. GUY. FUCKS.

 

That's an interesting approach cos I was reading somewhere that working with notes is very difficult and very few people understand notes, or ever learn how to truly work with notes. Seems you're quite skilled in working with notes, which suggests you must have a great belief in the power of notes.

Thanks for sharing

 

Listen > Analyse > What's going on? > What's the big goal this is trying to achieve? > Mix levels, just levels > Hm, what are the little goals I have to accomplish in order to achieve this big goal? > Think more about the arrangement > Mix levels, just levels > Panning > Ok, so what are the problems I couldn't fix mixing the levels? > Fix problems > EQ > Do I need to make something stand out, do I want to hear a particular color or am I looking for a particular dynamic envelope for a track? This track needs to behave a little bit? Time to pick a compressor > Reverb/Delay > Mix levels, ride faders > Coffee > Facebook break... why is my auntie sharing antivaxx fake news? > Oh, shit, the mix, right > Ok, listen to everything again, with a pair of fresh ears > More tweaking > Listening at LOUD and also low levels > Aight, should this go into the mixbus? If the answer is yes, more tweaking (this part is relatively fast tho), if the answer is no, then I can finally save the project, close the window and resume the Breaking Bad episode I was re-watching for the 92398492384 time. SCIENCE BITCH!