DJ Crillo & Blacks Snake’s Mixing Secrets

After over 20 years of work as an audio consultant: mixing, recording and producing music.

I’ve put together a list of some hint & tips when it comes to mixing and recording music.
I see this as a WIKI, that is great to have available when producing and mixing.
If you want to add anything to the list, do not hesitate to contact me.  These tips are very useful for In-The-Box mixing (ITB) but I’m sure they are handy when you use outboard gear as well. Hope you enjoy.

Mixing and Producing Tips

-          Try not to have more than of 3 sounds in focus at the time. Most people have problem hearing many things going on at the same time.

-     Gather some nice reference tracks that you keep available when mixing.

-          Get several different speakers that you easily could swap between when mixing and producing. A good setup is Studio Monitors, Grot Speakers (Auratone or Computer Speakers) and a pair of transparent hifi speakers.

-          Get some decent acoustic treatment for your Control/Studio Room.

-          Bring in something new every 4-5 second in the song to keep the listeners attention.

-          Don’t neglect the intro of the song, this part is important to get attention.

-          Use automation in your mix to fade in/out, mute and effects sends on parts and instrument to make the mix dynamic and interesting.

-          At first use the EQ for cutting out ugliness in the audio recording. If the record is too bad sounding, re-record it, as that will save you a lot of time. A good way to find those bad spots is by setting the eq to a very high gain and a narrow Q and swipe up and down thru the spectrum. As soon as you hear the ugliness louder, that your sweet spot. Now lower the gain to remove…

-          Use EQ for balancing you tracks together with the faders and pan. Wait until this parts is done before adding any reverb or delay effects.

-          Put s EQ after any compressor effects as it will often change the sound and enhance some frequencies.

-          Very often in modern pop music producers seems to breakdown the last chorus.

-          If you want some instruments to pop out thru the mix, add some distortion, saturation or bitcrusher to the track.

-          Instead of boosting the EQ on the bass and/or kick drum. Try to add another sound and layer that on top with only the sub frequencies (use LF filter to filter out the high frequencies).

-          Keep Keyboard pads low so they don’t take over the sound spectrum. It’s ok to mix them really low so that you barely can hear them.

-          Use a side chained compressor on the bass that is triggered from the kick drum. This way you keep you kick drum sound clear without clashing with the bass.

-          Use a side chained compressor on long reverbs and delays that is triggered from the lead vocal.

-          Place and EQ after the reverb and the delay and cut out between 200 – 300HZ, this will make the bottom end of the mix clearer.

-          Use the EQ to remove some on 300 hz on the kick drum to enhance the bass sound.

-          To remove mud  us the EQ to remove a couple of DBs at 100 – 300hz.

-          Use HF and LF cut to remove unused frequencies on a track. Play track and add LF/HF and when you hear it kick in move it back a little. However, be careful on vocals tracks there are some harmonics in the high that you don’t want to take away. A general rule is to make HF cut at 30hz on all tracks and around 80hz on vocal tracks.

-          If you use Propellerhead Reason and think the overall mix sounds a little muddy and dull try to and the master EQ and cut some around 200-350hz and add some air by 10khz.

-          When recording audio keep you recording levels at around -12 to -16 db to avoid any clipping.

-          If the vocalist is singing some louder parts ask them to move their head backwards to avoid distortion.

-          Mic Placement for Vocals : place the mic upside down, use a pop filter and acoustic treatments around the mic. The mic should level to the vocalist lower lip, 3 – 9 inch away. Be careful with singing to close to the mic as this will boost low frequencies. Place the pop filter half way between the vocalist and mic.

-       Mic Placement for Acoustic Guitars: Place the mic 1 foot away by the 12^th fret.

-     Double the lead two times or more times to enhance the chorus part. Keep these tracks low. A very useful tool to align vocals track to play really unison is SyncroArts Vocal Aligments Plugin.

-          Whisper on the chorus to make it shimmer a little. Keep this track really low in the mix and make sure to use HF filter on them.

-         Widen tracks by using delay. Place the original track panned full left and add a delay panned full right, keep very low speed -30ms and zero feedback. Very useful on eg, guitars.

-          Widen a vocal track by copying it two times and transpose one channel -0.5 and the other channel +0.5 to make that track sound wide.

-          Use combing when recording vocals. In Reason 7 you are able to set a loop and record several takes on one track. After recording you are able to use the built in combing tool to build the best sound pieces to one fine sounding take.

-          Use EQ Scooping to remove a couple of db’s at 1.2 khz to make room for the vocals. Use a quite wide Q curve.

-          Boost a EQ at 2khz to enhance the clip/hammer on the kick drum. This will make the kick sound thru the complete mix.

-          To give the vocals some air, boost a couple of db’s around 5khz and 14khz.

-          It’s very useful to have a Spectrum Analyzer plugin to have a look at the audio frequencies before cutting or boosting any eq. There is some really advances plugins available where you can compare your mix with your reference recordings.

This list will be updated over time with new tips. If you want to add some of your tips, comment below and I will add them to the list.