Today, we’re mixing a song from two of my students, Eggplant and Garlick. They submitted this song on my feedback Livestream that happened on my youtube channel a while ago, and you can check it here:
But then, I decided to mix and master this track, and we did it all in one sitting, which you can watch on the video below:
In this video, you’ll learn everything about my mixing process, and it is split into different sections that we’ll cover:
1. Organizing the Mix and Master Session: To get the most of our mixing section, it’s always better to organize your project in a different mix & master project so, this way, you’re dealing with only audio and no VSTs. However, you must stem out the song correctly for that to be useful to you, and I’ll show you how here. You can see more about this on this post about mixing and mastering workflow and get our template in our free downloads sections.
In this step, we also go through the importance of using reference tracks, something that is covered in this post.
2. Initial Playthrough: So you can listen to the song before we go through it
3. Initial Master Chain Adjustment: I always start my mix & master projects by adjusting the mastering chain. If you don’t know how to set your mastering chain, you can check this video below, showing exactly what I do on my mastering chain. This is the mastering chain I’ve used to mix and master multiple songs released on Enhanced, Armada and Sony:
4. Adjusting the Kick and Bass: After adjusting the mastering chain, we go to adjust the kick and bass of the track. The kick and bass are the most important part of your track, so it’s crucial that you adjust them correctly. We start by anchoring our kick, and then our sub, and then checking the second octave and mid bass of our bass sound. You can check more about this on our 35 mixing tips ebook, available on our free downloads sections, or on the video below:
5. Cleaning the Low end from Non-Bass elements: After adjusting our kick and bass, you need to make sure that your other elements don’t have low end frequencies as well since these could clash with your kick and bass. Therefore, here we’re going to apply a lot of EQ to make sure that the non-bass elements are low end free.
6. Adjusting the Sidechain: After adjusting the frequencies, it’s time to get some groove into to song, and one of the ways to get groove is by adjusting your sidechain properly. If you don’t have a ‘volume shaper’ tool, I definitely recommend you check out Volumeshaper 7 by Cableguys, which is party of Shaperbox 3, or Flux Mini 2 by Caelum Audio, which is free, but takes more CPU from you
7. Post Low End Adjustments: After we’ve set everything on our sidechain and cleaned what needed to be cleaned on our low end, we’ll probably lose some volume down at the low end, which is why we have to make sure the relationship we set on item #4 is still valid.
8. Adjusting the Drums: Then, we move on to the drums. The melodic elements are set, and now we’re going to adjust our melodics based on that. A lot of it will be just with the volume and listening to our reference tracks and comparing it to the track in question.
9. Adjusting the Song’s Structure: After all these adjustments, some elements might become too loud, and some parts might be lacking, which is why we have to adjust the song’s structure and elements. Feel free now to delete elements that you think could possibly be crowding the mix.
10. Adjusting the Transitions: After step 9, we have to adjust the transitions to different sections, to make sure they are smooth and flow nicely.
11. Adjusting the Breakdown: Then, we move to the breakdown and make sure that, according to how we adjusted the drop 1, we’ll adjust drop 2 as well.
12. Adjusting the Drop 2: After all these adjustments, the drop 2 will likely be sounding good already, and we have to fine tune the new elements that might have been introduced into this part of the track only. Make sure that they all play nicely according to what you’ve already done.
13. Tonal Balance Controlling the Song: Now, we’re just making sure that after all the adjustments that we’ve done, our song is fitting nicely with our reference tracks according to how they sound. For that, I’ll use a technique that I’ve been using called EQ Matching, which simply is a guide to my mixing and mastering. You can also read about EQ matching over here or watch the video below:
14. Final Drop 1 Considerations: After all these adjustments, give a good listen to your song and make sure that everything is fitting. Write down what needs to be fixed and go correcting them along the way.
15. Adjusting the Intro & outro section: If you have an intro & outro section, now it’s time to adjust them. One thing that you need to have in mind is that this section can never be more energetic than the drops. So, if they are, make sure to dial them down a bit so they aren’t!
16. Final Playthroughs & Final Master Adjustments: If you’ve made it this far into your mix and master, it’s time to play your song for one last time and make sure everything is ok. In addition, you can also apply some mastering tricks to intensify your drops, something you can see in the video below:
And that’s it. If you want to check another mix and mastering video, you can check this post over here in which I mix and master a song from start to finish, and it turns out REALLY nice as well! If you want to check another Mix & Master Start To Finish, you can check this video that I’ve done for one of my tracks, signed on Masvingo Recordings.
If you liked this post and want to support our channel, you can get 60 AMAZING presets from my preset pack over here or if you want to see other presets that we’ve recreated, you can head over to my Youtube Channel or you can head over to our blog to watch more recreations.
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