Even if you are tired, make a backup after work and save your data. Bring up another moment of discipline.... done and safe....!

 

"Leave it to the professionals"

 

Monocompability, trying to learn how each frequency range sounds (it will lead me to the right eq decisions), learn how to listen compression, and doing striclty what the record needs. If it needs a lot, i will do a lot, if it needs little moves, that's what im doing. And the most important: im making music for common people to enjoy, not for musicians or engineers.

 

Martini, shaken and not stirred.

 

musical balance is around 3dB / octave (orchestral reference). Can be 4.5dB/octave for modern electro music.
3dB mean two time power

1kHz to 500Hz +3dB
500 to 250 +3dB
250 to 125 +3dB
125 to 62.5 +3dB
62.5 to 31 +3dB

So basically your 30Hz is 15dB louder than your 1kHz.
And power is 32x more. Yes you read right : 32 times

Now you understand why you need 1KW sub for 2x500W stereo speakers just to cover two octaves from 120 Hz to 30Hz.
Whereas you covered ALL the spectrum from 120Hz to 20kHz with the same energy. Around 7 octaves.

Now you understand :

why your kicks and toms will cause trouble on your drum bus : trigger limit is power based, they will hit first

why you need an overdrive pedal set to 0 gain ... just to cut the bass and avoid muddying your tone (an EQ can work) because amp distortion limit is power based. Bass will hit BEFORE mediums. And we need mediums distortion.

why bass is eating your mix power for breakfast

why you need to be careful under 45Hz-60Hz. Those few Hz will eat more than any other freqs.

... and more to come

Musical freqs are NOT flat (they look like that with 3dB/octave compensation)
They all look like that :

 

Mix fast!! try to get the mix balance 90% in the first 10 - 15 min, and then go to the details..
i'is too esasy to loose perspective and overprocess everithing.

don't over think it, just use your instincts and move on.

 

I've read stuff and watched videos, but I cant remember ever receiving any mixing advice. I guess that's why my mixes are always shyte!

 

If the sound design is on point, what is there to mix?

I do it at the same time, so I don't know what mixing is without thinking sound design.

 

Which just goes to show, it's all pretty subjective based on the genre you're doing.

 

Use fresh ice.

 

I think it also illustrates the importance of a repetitive workflow. I used to try doing everything at once like that way, and then I took a track I thought was done and stemmed it all out, pulled all the plugins, dropped everything to -6db on faders, and started the mix over. For me, personally, it showed me a lot of places I was forgetting things I meant to do, skipped steps, and lots of other goodies.

Just the amount of CPU you can regain for more work is worth doing it in distinct stages. imho, of course.

 

1) Mix at a low level. It not only keeps your ears from getting fatigued it tends to translate better. If you can make it sound really good quiet it will likely sound even better loud, but mixing at higher volume while usually sound much worse at lower volume. It's basically the "louder sounds better" perception trick for your whole mix.

2) Related to that when adding processing make sure it's actually better, not just louder.

3) The one that would've saved me the most time and maybe most controversial is forget about trying to learn your crappy room and speakers and use VSX (or Realphones, or whatever the state of the art is). You'll can mix anywhere/anytime, learn far faster, be able to actually trust what you hear and mixes (good or bad) will translate.

4) Learn about gain staging.

5) Forget about analog gear.

6) "Try before you buy" is your friend, because you need to learn before you earn.

 

Why would you want to forget about tools that can help?

 

I agree. Even with plugins, knowing how each piece of gear sounds is a powerful weapon that takes a lot of time to organize and remember. Digital is digital, but the sounds in the digital domain are based, 9 out of 10, in outboard gear, consoles and even little components like tubes and transistors.

 

Digital is a fantastic tool for some things, analog is a fantastic tool for other things. I want every tool available to me come mix time possible.

This is one of the worst mixing advice tips possible IMHO.

 

What part of your body did you use before this surprising advice?

 

It's always better to sound different than to sound good.

 

Always remember that you can not only raise frequencies, but also lower them.