Whenever starting a mix and master, I always see producers jumping to fancy plugins when they should only start with EQ and Volume.
Not that it is a rule, since I don’t believe in rules for mixing and mastering especially, but it’s definitely something you should consider doing since it will solve A LOT of your problems without having to add tons of plugins. And the best… you don’t need any fancy EQ plugins to achieve this.
In my last video, I went deeper into a mix that I was doing for a client and showed how I solved MOST of the song’s issues with mainly EQ and Volume. This is not specific to this song, but something I always do in my mix and masters, as I’ve commented here in this post. However, if you prefer to watch my mixing workflow, consider checking the video below:
As said, this is not a rule that you must follow, but the idea of making EQ and Volume adjustments based on a prior list of “TO-DOs” is something that will speed up your workflow and give you a more consistent mixing after all, which was also mentioned in this post about how to finish songs faster. If you liked the notepad used in this video, you can grab it for free by clicking on this link.
The concept is the following: If you know what you need to do and put them down to a TO-DO list, you focus on the elements of the list and you’ll notice that most of what you miss is volume and presence in the mix, which can be achieved with EQ and Volume. Therefore, by knowing what you need to do, you avoid overdoing or adding elements that you don’t really need, something that I mention in this post about 4 tips to avoid overworking a track!
If you liked the concept of this, but are still not sure how to apply it, you can hit me up and we can talk more about this so I can clarify it even further to you.