Mixing Is a Three-Legged Stool
Mixing music is a lot more straightforward than a lot of you think. If mixing a song takes you hours, or you struggle to get your songs to sound the way you want, read on.
Mixing is just three things.
Volume: including EQ, which is basically volume by frequency.
Space: where a sound sits in the stereo field, how close or far it feels, and how much real or artificial space surrounds it.
Timbre: the character of a sound: its harmonics, its texture and grit, its density.
When you’re mixing a song, all you’re trying to do is make all the parts fit together and help the featured elements shine. Volume, space, and timbre are the three legs that hold up the entire mix. If you can’t solve a problem you’re encountering using volume, space, and timbre, then it’s not a mix problem. It’s a production or arrangement problem, and you need to fix it at the source, not in the mix.
For volume, you’re working with the channel fader, EQ, compressors, and clippers. To manipulate space, you’re working with panning and reverb, and occasionally with delay or stereo width tools. For timbre, you’re shaping harmonics and texture with saturation, distortion, overdrive, and modulation. Some tools like clippers and compressors can do double-duty as volume and timbre tools if you push them.
And, again: if you can’t make a great sounding mix using volume, panning, EQ, saturation, clipping, compression, reverb, and a little basic modulation, the issue is not in your mix. It’s in the arrangement or production choices, and you’re working on the wrong thing. It’s not impossible to solve arrangement or production issues in the mix, but it is usually not a good idea, unless you’re being paid by a client to do just that. If you’re working on your own music, then you can and absolutely should take a couple steps back and work on the real problems you’ve got. Future you will be grateful for an easier mix job that turns out better.
Remember that every tool that can help you can hurt you too. Saturation can boost clarity and help sounds push through dense arrangements, but too much just turns to mud. Panning creates separation, but too much often causes phase coherence issues and confuses your listeners. Reverb provides depth and a sense of space, but too much pushes everything away and washes out your mix (and too much in the wrong places, especially vocals, is a big tell for amateur productions).
Get volume, space, and timbre right, and your mix will almost always work. And once it works, you can decide if you want to get fancy with it. If you whiff on these, then no amount of stacking up more plugins is going to fix your song. I’m not saying these are the only tools should ever use, but if you feel like getting the mix right is tough, focusing on these is the straightest line between a good arrangement and a great mixdown. Many of the best mixes are dead simple.
There’s obviously more depth here, but locking in on this mindset about mixing will do more for you than buying a dozen new tools.
If you want your music professionally mixed or mastered, or if you’d benefit from one-on-one mentoring, get in touch using the contact form. I promise it’s more accessible than you think.
Some Of My Favorite Mixing Plugins
Note: these are in alphabetical order, not in any kind of preference order. And yes, I know I’ve left off great plugins, largely because they’re not great for mixing. Valhalla Supermassive, for instance, is free and sounds amazing, but it’s an instrument effect, not a mixing tool.
Plugins for Volume
FabFilter Pro-C 2: remarkably transparent, extremely versatile, multimode compression handles instruments, busses, and glue duties well
FabFilter Pro-G: excellent, flexible gate/expander with good metering and linear phase operation
FabFilter Pro-L 2: the absolute gold standard for limiting
FabFilter Pro-MB: versatile, transparent, ultra-flexible multi-band compression
FabFilter Pro-Q 4: crazy powerful and surprisingly intuitive EQ (with a linear phase mode) that can also be used for manipulating width
Goodhertz VCME (can also affect timbre): highly characterful soft-clipping and bus compression
Klanghelm VUMT Deluxe (can also affect space): really this is a VU meter, but it has some excellent single band EQ facilities and a frequency-based mono maker
SIR StandardCLIP (can also affect timbre): straightforward and simple soft and hard clipper with a wonderful interface
Sonnox Oxford Drum Gate: specialty gate with frequency control designed to manipulate drum tails
Sonnox Oxford Inflator (can also affect timbre): loudness enhancement that can be pushed to tube saturation territories or used very transparently to increase loudness without changing level
Sonnox Oxford TransMod: simple and great sounding tool to increase or decrease transient response, which is similar to a compressor but is independent of threshold
SSL 4K E and SSL 4K G (can also affect timbre and space): excellent sound and simple channel strips emulating the 4000 E and G series consoles—E is slightly grittier, G is slightly smoother, but both are great and quite similar, and offer EQ, saturation, filtering, compression, gate, expansion, and VCA level-control all in one package
Tone Projects Unisum: truly exceptional multimode bus compressor that sounds more like high end analog gear than any other plugin compressor I’ve heard
Plugins for Space
Eventide Temperance Pro: great sounding reverb that has chromatic control so your reverb tails never get gross
FabFilter Pro-R 2: extremely powerful algorithmic reverb with very granular control, which can operate as either a big instrument effect or a mixing tool for coherent spatial glue
FabFilter Timeless 3: technically a tape delay, but depth of control makes it a valuable tool for bringing multiple instruments into a shared space
LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven Professional: hands down the best emulation of the Bricasti M7 I’ve ever heard and likely the single most useful reverb for mixing
SoundToys EchoBoy: highly flexible delay with saturation and chorus
SoundToys SuperPlate: plate reverb which excels at uncanny valley / semi-artificial sounding reverb for placing sounds in a shared space
TAL Reverb 4 (free!): 1980s vintage sounding plate reverb plugin that is highly useful for semi-artificial sounding shared space
Wave Alchemy Magic7 (free!): excellent emulation of the Bricasti M7 using IRs and modulation to achieve high quality recreations of the M7’s presets, though lacking in flexibility
Plugins for Timbre
Brainworx Black Box Analog Design HG-2: great sounding and flexible tube saturation tool
FabFilter Saturn 2: ultra-flexible saturation and distortion tool with deep controls that come at the cost of ease of use
Softube Saturation Knob (free!): very simple, good sounding analog style saturation with minimal control
SoundToys Decapitator: flexible and very useful saturation tool that can go from subtle to extreme
SoundToys PhaseMistress: versatile phaser unit emulating many classics, which is highly useful for adding subtle shimmer that helps sounds cut through density in the mid and upper mid range
TAL Chorus LX (free!): highly accurate emulation of the Juno chorus circuit
Which plugins would I pick as a starter pack for professional quality mixing?
This set of six plugins is absolutely enough to make killer mixes almost every time. It’s still not an inexpensive list, but it’s a truly professional quality set of plugins. Of course, pick up the free ones listed above… they’re great! But if you’re trying to build a collection of pro plugins, save your money until you can get these. Until then, use what’s in your DAW. Ableton, Logic, Pro Tools, Reaper, Reason, Studio One, and others all include plugins that can produce good mixes. The drawback is that they’re often harder to dial in, so you sacrifice speed. That said, in my opinion, you’re far better off holding out for gold standard tools than buying the cheap stuff, which, ultimately, you’re only going to want to replace in a short period of time.
