mixing is just about finding a good balance in volume

and that makes 80% of the result,

remaining 20% is what people are obsessed about,

that's it, a quick ProTip

 

Life is simple: just breathe. (quick protip)

 

Yes, indeed. But there is also a "teeny tiny very small bit" of ahhmmm....a good song at the basis of all. A bad balanced but good song is preferable over a shitty but well balanced song I would say.

 

Yes, the statement wasn't "how to create a good song".

 

No, indeed. "You don't need a ten thousand dollar studio to get pro mixes." But a pro mix of a shitty song still delivers a shitty song, even when it's well balanced.

 

Exactly, my engineer listens, to my mix once, no plugins involved, he's so good I don't have to attend sessions any more, the previous guy i had to attend every one and tell him everyting.

Only mistakes my current engineer occasionally makes are levels, my tracks can get busy, fair enough, rarely so now i've done a fair few with him.

I spend no time processing the track,that's best left to pro engineers, and i only use mostly guitar effects, i leave verbs etc to him though, it's a top studio so they got top gear,


He's just sent me the last track of my EP, gonna listen in a mo, if it's ok it goes straight to Pete Mayer for mastering, special price for
unsigned.

My engineer kindly said a while back, 'it's already mixed,' there is little difference between his and mine, other than the processing but when it's mastered it sounds amazing, especially bottom end, at 30 quid i itend to send Pete one of my mixes see wot it sounds like.

Also i know Petes got analogue mastering tools, the bottom end is amazingly poweful and detailed and cuts thru like butter, I'm mostly analog SE02, Matriarch, Roland boutiques.

I might post a private link of same section of all three, mine, engineers and Pete's master.

You do your music a disservice if you insist on doing the above yourself.

 

Cool story bro

 

Well, yeah, it has to do a lot with volume, most of it for sure. But I'd assign a bit more than 20% to presenting a coherent soundstage with depth and placement, and this has more moving parts than just volume.

 

My hair needs more volume.

 

Yes. if you want to be productive, when composing, only set volume levels and essential/basic effects.
So if the track turns out garbage you lose less time on it.
It's also better to mix with fresh ears next day, anyway.

 

OMG! That is shockingly true. So many times I was mixing and thought "ahh, just a bit of this and a bit of that and then it's good". And then again and again and again. At the end of the night I felt marvelous and thought: this is it, finally, my big #1 hit! And then next day, hearing that last version, thinking in utterly despair: what the hell have I been doing? What a disgusting song this is! Did I learn from this? Mweh.....

 

It works out that way for certain, but is that because you're sort of ensuring that it will turn out that way; due to skipping so many details getting there? Or you can't delete/work yourself out of it? Like the track is an abomination or something like that?

The timeless production question of the chicken and the egg.

 

"Exposed! These 80's hair-metal mixing tricks they don't want you to know!"

 

Nope, i write bangin club music, stereo don't cut it in da club, i need and always get, a huge powerful sound.

Always inform my engineer, even for radio tracks, not too much stereo trickery, as it weakens the power of your music.

I only hear in mono, songs sound just as good to me as they do to anybody.

The only thing that makes hits is intervals, period, not processing, choose the right sounds in the first place, i give my engineer all my utreated stems, i might have three, even 5 bass lines in one section all on top of each other, he'll just eq and remove freq's, to make them gel better than mine a large bulk of my track won't need eq, less is always more with music, so his mix will have more clarity than mine, better maybe, or just different than mine, i couldn't judge, don't care, only end result matters.

 

But how? And this is where a lifetime of work and effort is required.
When someone becomes a doctor, do you think that's the end of the story? That's when all the misery begins. Because every patient has their own unique circumstances and needs to be treated in a specific way. And the doctor must try and make an effort to bring the patient's condition back to balance. But a doctor's work never becomes automatic or routine, and the doctor must think about and find appropriate treatment methods according to new conditions. Thinking never ends and if you think you can find a method that will work for all tracks, you are wrong. Each track, like a patient, requires specific treatment methods.

 

I'd take notes for every decision i'm making post fader work. I don't wanna be 'intuitive' and end up with a mess. I gotta listen the track, hear what it needs in terms of processing and take notes. If you got a good gain balance and starting pointing out what the track needs, you will notice that the track will need way less than we end up doing without discipline. And yeah, that's really about 20% or less.

 

By setting up an objectively good listening environment, because then you can simply hear it and everything becomes obvious. Audio processing is a very simple task.

 

listen to everything, that's the way to get ideas on what kind of sound you wanna achieve, indeed it's a lifetime process

 

Audio is a dynamic quantity and its processing is not easy.

 

But to me it is under the mentioned circumstances.
And to this guy in the video it is as well. It literally is the statement on the thumbnail and in the video.
If it was a lifetime process, a lot of "super pro" audio engineers wouldn't be able to do it, right?

I think an important realization is that in terms of audio processing "experience" is essentially "knowledge learned too late".