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.