Mixing Guides
What is mixing? The job, explained simply
On this page12 sections
Mixing is deciding how separate recordings sit together as one piece of music. That is the whole job. Every technique, plugin and technical term exists to serve that one decision.
The five decisions
Every mix, at every level, is made of the same five choices repeated per element.
1. How loud? Level. The most powerful control by a wide margin, and the most underused.
2. Where? Position in the stereo field.
3. What tone? Which frequency ranges the element occupies, and which it gives up.
4. How dynamic? How much its level moves over time.
5. How far away? Depth — dry and close, or distant and reverberant.
That is it. A vocal ride is decision one. A cut at 300 Hz is decision three. A reverb send is decision five. Compression is decision four.
Everything else is technique in service of those.
The order that saves time
Make the decisions in this order, because each one changes the ones after it.
Balance, with faders only
No plugins. Play the whole arrangement and set levels until the song makes sense.
This step solves a surprising number of problems for free. A part that sounded muddy at the wrong level is frequently fine at the right one. Spending twenty minutes here saves two hours later.
If you take one thing from this article: most mixing problems are balance problems wearing a costume.
Panning
Decide where things sit. Two guitars in the same place fight; the same two guitars apart do not.
Keep the low end and the main vocal centred. Everything else is available.
Tone
Now use EQ, and use it to solve a named problem — see EQ cutting vs boosting.
The goal is not to make each sound good alone. It is to make each element give up the ranges it does not need so the others can have them.
Dynamics
Compression where a source’s level genuinely gets in the way. Not on every channel by default. See what is a compressor.
Space
Reverb and delay, usually on sends, to place things at different distances. This is what turns a flat balance into a scene. See when to use send channels.
The one habit that changes everything
Make every decision with the whole arrangement playing.
Solo tells you what a sound is. Only the full mix tells you what it needs to be, because balance is a relationship and relationships do not exist in isolation.
This single habit removes more bad mixing decisions than any plugin. Mix with everything playing covers it properly.
What mixing cannot do
Worth knowing early, because it saves a lot of frustration.
- It cannot separate two instruments playing the same notes in the same octave. That is an arrangement decision.
- It cannot make a badly performed part good.
- It cannot create energy that was never recorded.
- It cannot rescue a sound choice that was wrong for the song.
When a mix fights you, ask whether the problem is actually in the arrangement. Changing a note is free and permanent; fighting it with EQ is neither.
Structure helps more than skill
A session where drums, bass, instruments and vocals each go to their own bus is easier to mix than one with forty channels going straight to the master — because you can balance four things instead of forty.
What is a bus in mixing covers it, and templates means you never build it twice.
How to know it is finished
- Your changes have become alternatives rather than improvements.
- It works quiet, loud, in mono, on a phone and on headphones.
- A day away does not reveal something obvious.
- The song is doing what it is supposed to do emotionally.
Not “it is perfect”. Mixes are not perfect. They are finished.
A first mix, in ten steps
- Organise and name the channels. Route them to four buses.
- Balance with faders, whole arrangement playing, at low volume.
- Pan.
- Fix the biggest tonal problem you can name. Just one.
- Rebalance — it will have changed.
- Compress only what genuinely moves too much.
- Add one shared reverb on a send.
- Rebalance again.
- Check quiet, in mono, and on a phone.
- Stop, sleep, listen tomorrow.
That produces a better mix than most first attempts, and it takes an afternoon. The mixing checklist is the longer version to run before you call anything done.
Frequently asked questions
What does mixing a song mean?
Taking the separate recorded parts and deciding how they sit together — their levels, positions, tone, dynamics and sense of distance — so the result works as one piece of music rather than a set of tracks played at once.
What order should I mix in?
Balance first with faders only, then panning, then tone, then dynamics, then space. Most problems that seem to need processing disappear once the balance is right.
How long should mixing take?
Less time than most beginners spend. A focused mix on a well-arranged song is often a few hours. Sessions that stretch over weeks usually contain a lot of undoing.
Do I need expensive plugins to mix?
No. A basic EQ, compressor and reverb cover almost everything. Mixing is decisions, and the stock tools in any modern DAW can execute them.
How do I know when a mix is finished?
When the changes you make stop being improvements and start being alternatives, when it holds up on several playback systems, and when a day away does not reveal anything obvious.