Couple Of Guidelines On Mixing

Electronic Music
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By HTMEM on 20/04/2011 Tutorials

Mixing isn’t something that can be learned overnight. I’ve been making electronic
music over 10 years now and even though I can make decent sounding tracks, I still feel
that I have a lot to learn.

However, it’s not rocket science either and anyone CAN learn to mix. You just need a
tad of a patience and decent monitors or headphones. Practice makes perfect like they
say!

In this article, I give you a couple of tips on mixing that I’ve personally found helpful
in my own music production.

Keep in mind though that I am not professional, just a hobbyist and these may very well
not be the best advice on mixing.

Even so, I hope you find at least some of these audio mixing tips useful!

Preparing To Mix
I usually start the mixing process by dropping the master channel volume level to
around -6.0dB or lower.
This is because I want to leave some headroom between the loudest peaks and 0.0 dB
level to avoid clipping.

When adding more sounds and instruments to the mix there’s a risk of clipping. If you
export your song to .WAV and it’s clipping, it’s very hard or impossible to fix it
afterward (unless you’re exporting to 32-bit floating point format).

At this point, it doesn’t matter if the mix doesn’t sound loud enough. Just turn up the
volume of your speakers.

When you export (mixdown) your song to WAV, you can normalize it afterward (that
means increasing the amplitude of the WAV so that the loudest peak is at the maximum
possible level without clipping) and use limiter and compressor to make it loud.

Okay. Before going to the actual mixing process, I usually have a rough mix created
already in the composing stage…

But after that, I usually do this: in the mixer tracks, I drop every instrument level to INF
(completely silent) except the kick drum.

And the mixing process starts here!

Drums
I usually mix everything after the kick drum and I always start with the drums.

So basically I start by setting the kick drum mixer track volume level to 0.0dB. In my
opinion, in most of the electronic music, the kick drum should be the “dominant
force”.

Then I mix the other instruments so that kick drum stands out the most. Also, I never
pan the kick drum. I keep it always centered.

Few words about Panning: Panning is a great and simple way to widen the stereo
image of a mix. With panning you can place different sounds around the stereo
panorama. It’s also a good way to “separate” sounds that are on the same frequency
range to avoid them messing with each other.

This is very handy if you have a “busy” (a lot of sounds and instruments) mix. I really
recommend practicing the use of panning.

Sometimes – very rarely though – I layer two or more kick drums if I’m not satisfied
with the one I’m currently using.

Then there’s compression as well. Compression is basically automated gain control

that reduces the dynamic range of sounds and it’s useful for many things such as
making the whole mix sound louder.
With compression you can modify the volume shape of single sounds as well – works
well with kick drum. For example, you can add more “thump” or “snap” to your kick
and control how the tail of the kick (oomph) behaves.

I have to say that I rarely compress kick drums. I have a huge collection of kick drum
samples and most of the times I can find a sample that suits my needs as is.

So if I’m not satisfied with my current kick sample, I usually don’t start playing around
with the compression – or layering or tuning in that matter. Instead, I change it to
another kick drum sample.

Ok. Now that the kick drum is at level 0.0dB and the rest are INF, I start to increase the
levels.

First, the claps (or snare)…

I usually set it few dB’s below the kick drum level, but this is really depending on the
amplitude of the snare or clap sample.

Also, depending on the sample, I may do a slight high shelf boost via eq around the 7-
8kHz area to give it a bit more clarity.

I may also add a very gentle reverb to the claps or snare to add a bit of a sense of space.

For claps and / or snare sounds, I use layering more often than for kick drums, but still –
quite rarely.

Next, I mix in the hi-hats…

Usually the closed hi-hats first. Again, setting the level a few dB’s below the kick drum
depending on the amplitude of the sample. I often pan the closed hi-hats a little bit left
or right.

Equalizing may be needed as well as hi-hats may sometimes compete with snare or
claps. In this case, I usually either slightly boost or cut the high frequencies.

In this case, I usually either slightly boost or cut the high frequencies.

Gentle reverb may be suitable for closed hi-hats as well.

For open hi-hats, I pretty much give the same treatment as with closed hi-hats.

Panning and equalizing helps to separate closed and open hi-hats from each other as
they are often in the same frequency range.

Crash cymbal may be sometimes quite challenging to mix. It may mess with the hi hats
or even clap / snare.

Depending on the amplitude of the crash cymbal sample, I set the levels to several dB’s
lower than the other drums just to make sure it’s not overtaking the drums.
Then comes the percussion sounds. I set the levels few dBs below the kick drum. If I’m
using low tom – a type of percussion sounds, they may compete with the kick drum so I
use a high pass eq to cut around 100-150 Hz and below.

If I’m using a drum loop to spice up the drums, it usually needs some pretty heavy
equalizing to avoid messing up with the rest of the drums.

Sometimes, claps, hi-hats, and percussion sounds may need to be tuned as well to make
them work together.

As a general rule of thumb, try to find a spot for each sound in the frequency range and
stereo image and do not use too many sounds to avoid the drums sounding messy. Keep
it simple!

Alright, now that the drums are pretty much ready, comes the hardest part: mixing the
bass with the drums.

Bass
In electronic music, the bass is at least as important as the kick drum. Bass is a sort of
rhythmical instrument as well so it’s a bit challenging to mix it with the kick drum so
that they work nicely together and won’t fight.

I’ve found there are two things that affect most to how hard or easy it is to mix the bass
with the kick drum: the sound and the sequence.

In addition to the bass sound, it makes a difference what kind is your bass sequence: is
it in arpeggio style or other staccato types of composition or looooong notes or do the
notes hit a same time with the kick drum, what notes are used etc.

Sometimes I end up changing the bass sequence just to make it work better with the
kick drum and I find I need to do less equalizing.

I usually layer two bass sounds together. First one has a lot of low-end and it’s a soft
sub-bass type sine wave sound, while the second sound is much more sharper saw or
square wave typish.

I use both basses sounds to play the same sequence, but I transpose the other (that
sharper one) an octave higher.

This will make the bassline to stand out in the mix better even if it’s listened through a
smaller speaker system.

However, eq is usually needed here: I cut the low frequencies out of that second,
sharper bass sound to avoid it messing the low end.

After cutting off frequencies such as low end I need to increase the sound volume level
a bit, usually around +1-3dB’s.
Panning I set to center. Just like the kick drum, I always leave the bass to the center.

I use it quite a lot sidechain compression when mixing kick drum and bass. It’s a savior.
With sidechain compression, you can make almost any kind of bass sound and kick
work nicely together.

It’s also a trademark in a modern electronic music – ducking or pumping sound.

For more about this, I have created a tutorial on how to use sidechain compression in FL
Studio.

So now that the drums are ok with the bassline, I start to mix the lead synth.

Lead Synth
If I create uplifting trance music, I let the lead synth to really stand out in the mix.
Depending on the sound and the lead synth sequence, I set the volume level only little
below the kick drum.

Next step is to eq the lead synth. If there’s a lot of low end in it, it may compete with the
bassline.

The sequence makes a difference as well: if the lead melody goes really low and it is a
type of sound that has a fat low end, then the low cut filter is most likely needed.

I often use a little high shelf boost to add some brightness to the lead. Sometimes I use
peaking eq to slightly boost frequencies around 2kHz with a quite narrow bandwidth to
make the lead synth to be more audible through the mix. But this depends on the other
sounds in the mix.

Layering different lead sounds is what I do a lot. I like to use three different leads and
pan them like this: lead 1 to 20-40% left, lead 2 to center and lead 3 to 20-40% right.
This creates a nice, wide stereo image.

Delay effect with ping-pong effect panning from left to right and reverb is what I use to
make them sound really huge.

Just like with the bass, I may sidechain compress the lead synth with the kick drum.
Works well though I usually use a little more gentle settings than with the bass – a little
less ducking that is.

Alright. Now there’s drums, bassline and lead synth in place. Usually, pads are next.

Pads
Pads I like to keep in the background so I set the levels several dB’s lower than the
other instruments.
Equalizing is needed as well to cut off those low frequencies and maybe some highs too
to not let it mess with the lead synth. But as always this depends on the pad sound and
other sounds used in the mix.

Sound Effects
Noise sweeps, explosions, synth thwirls and things like that are very important in
electronic music.

This kind of sounds may be on whatever frequency range so I just say that I try to make
them sit nicely in the mix, not too loud, not too quiet.

Compression
Compression might be a good deal to use on individual instruments for more tighter,
fuller and present sound. Suits very well for bass.

Personally, I use compression on single instrument tracks quite rarely though, but it’s a
handy tool for evening out the most extensive changes in the dynamic range: there
might be some areas that are a tad too loud or quiet. The compressor can balance these
“gaps”.

This way, the individual instrument tracks sit better in the mix – the quieter parts can be
heard more clearly through the mix and the louder parts won’t dominate as much.

Single band compressor like Fruity Compressor should work pretty well. Maybe start
with something gentle like threshold: -23, ratio: 2.0:1, attack: 15ms, release: 200ms,
Gain: 5dB. Remember though, with the compressor it’s easy to kill all the dynamics so
avoid overusing it as things will start to sound unnatural and stressed. Unless you wan’t
that as in electronic music that kind of sound may be sometimes desirable.

Listen Through Several Speaker Systems

It’s always a good thing to test out your mix through several different speaker systems:
from very small ones to HUGE and on all possible volume levels.

By doing that you can hear what needs to be tweaked. Your main goal should be to
make your mix sound as balanced as possible on all sound systems.

More?
Few more words about the delay effect: subtle delay works great with closed hi-hats and
basslines. It’s also an easy way to add etheric quality and dense to pads.

Also, very gentle flanger is a great way to add a little life to otherwise monotonous hi-
hat or clap patterns.
Okay, it’s actually kinda hard to give even general guidelines on what settings to use in
mixing as so much depends on the sounds, melodies and what kind of elements you
want to stand out in the mix.

There’s just so much you can do to make your mixes sound great.

A general rule I’ve been personally following is I try to make the drums and bass
sound as good and powerful as possible and try to keep the mix simple by not adding
too much stuff.

I hope this helped.