Mixing

Essential STEPS in mixing are:

Volume ratios

Compression

Equalizer

Panning

Automations

Effects

The main goal of mixing is achieving a balanced sound between all individual tracks of a multitrack recording. Tracks like drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and vocals get mixed together into a single stereo file. Furthermore, effects like equalizer, compressor, delay or reverb are used to improve the individual tracks or make them sound unique.

Other techniques like panning are used to move certain tracks all the way over to the left or vice versa. Simply put, it is about bringing individual tracks together to create a perfectly balanced song.

The process of mixing can be compared with cooking. Various ingredients like oil, salt, pepper or other spices have to be added in the right amount to get a delicious meal. It is the same with mixing music. You have to make sure that the vocal is not too loud or too quiet and has the right amount of reverb on it that fits the song, but also the genre.

Like in a good restaurant that has a good chef you need an experienced mixing engineer who knows what he is doing. To achieve great results the mixing engineer has to know all the tools that are used in music production, but also has to know different music genres and their characteristics. In addition, an acoustically treated room with good monitors is indispensable.

Otherwise your mix will not sound good in different listening environments. However, this is very important in professional music production. Especially nowadays, when many young people are listening to music on their smartphones or laptop speakers. We have the equipment, the know-how and the passion to make your music sound fantastic in every listening situation.

We use state of the art analog & digital technology

Another important tool is the compressor. It can be used to edit the dynamics of individual tracks. For example, a singer sings a little louder at certain parts of the song than at others. A compressor helps to ensure that these differences between the loud and quiet parts do not become too great and that it sounds as natural as possible.

Other much used effects are the reverb and the delay or echo. With a lot of reverb, the voice in a song sounds like the singer is in a big room. And with the delay you can repeat single words like an echo. Surely everyone has heard these effects before, but perhaps not consciously noticed them.

Thus, by using a wide variety of effects, large sound changes can be made during mixing. There are of course many more effects that are used in music production, but we don’t want to go into too much detail here and just provide as simple an overview of the subject as possible.

In short, it is about a good balance between the different elements. However, it’s also about getting the artist’s (band or singer’s) vision across as well as possible. At the same time, everyone has a different taste, similar to food.

mixing