THE BIGGEST MIXING MISTAKE I MADE FOR YEARS
The Biggest Mixing Mistake I Made for Years
I've been mixing records for a long time.
And for years, I made a mistake without even realizing I was making it.
The strange part is that I thought I was doing exactly what a mixing engineer was supposed to do.
I'd open a session and start working.
Kick drum.
Solo it. EQ it. Compress it. Get it sounding good.
Then the snare.
Then the bass.
Guitars.
Keyboards.
Vocals.
I'd work my way through the session, making each individual track sound as good as I possibly could.
Technically, I wasn't necessarily doing anything wrong.
I understood EQ.
I understood compression.
I knew how to get sounds.
But sometimes I'd put everything together and think:
Why doesn't this feel like a record?
Eventually, I figured it out.
I wasn't mixing the song.
I was mixing the tracks.
And there's a big difference.
Nobody Listening to Your Record Has a Solo Button
Solo is a useful tool.
I still use it.
Sometimes you need to isolate something to hear a problem, find a noise, work on an edit, or understand what's happening.
But here's the problem.
Nobody listening to the finished record has a solo button.
They're never going to hear your kick drum by itself.
They're not going to sit there admiring the snare tone in isolation.
They aren't going to listen to your bass track and say, "Wow, what a beautiful bass sound."
They're going to hear the song.
Everything together.
And that's where the decisions we make as mixing engineers have to work.
A Great Sound Isn't Always the Right Sound
This was a big lesson for me.
Something can sound fantastic by itself and be completely wrong for the record.
The opposite is also true.
A guitar might sound thin when you solo it.
Maybe it's got more midrange than you'd normally like.
Maybe there's not much bottom end.
Your first instinct might be to "fix" it.
Then you put it back into the mix...
And it's perfect.
Why?
Because it has a job to do.
It doesn't need all that bottom end because the bass guitar and kick drum are already down there.
It doesn't need to be huge because the vocal needs that space.
The right sound isn't necessarily the sound that's most impressive by itself.
It's the sound that works in the song.
Not Everything Gets to Be Important
This is another lesson that took me a while to understand.
When you're mixing, you can't make everything the star.
If everything is loud, nothing is loud.
If everything is huge, nothing feels huge.
If everything is wide, you lose the sense of width.
If everything is bright, nothing cuts through.
A great mix needs contrast.
There needs to be a foreground and a background.
Something can be big because something else is small.
A chorus can explode because the verse gave it somewhere to go.
A vocal can command attention because the instruments around it aren't all fighting for the same space.
Not everything gets to be important at the same time.
That's not a limitation.
That's mixing.
Mixing Is About Relationships
The longer I've done this, the more I've come to think about mixing as relationships rather than individual sounds.
The kick doesn't exist by itself.
It has a relationship with the bass.
The vocal has a relationship with the guitars.
The lead vocal has a relationship with the background vocals.
Reverb has a relationship with the dry signal.
The verse has a relationship with the chorus.
Loud only means something compared to quiet.
Wide only means something compared to narrow.
Big only means something compared to small.
Change one element and you may completely change the way another element feels.
That's why obsessing over one track in isolation can send you down the wrong road.
Start With the Song
This realization changed the way I start a mix.
I don't want to immediately start fixing things.
First, I want to understand the record.
I listen.
What kind of song is this?
What's carrying it?
What's supposed to grab the listener?
Where does it need to build?
Where does it need to pull back?
What already sounds good?
Then I start building a basic balance.
Faders.
Pan.
Listen.
You'd be surprised how much of a mix can start coming together before you ever reach for another plugin.
Sometimes the problem you were about to spend 20 minutes trying to fix with an EQ can be solved by moving a fader a couple of dB.
Stop Fixing Things That Aren't Broken
This is something I see a lot when people are learning to mix.
You have an EQ, so you think you need to EQ.
You've learned compression, so every track gets compressed.
You've got 500 plugins, so you'd better use some of them.
Why?
Before I put something on a track, I want to know what I'm trying to accomplish.
What's the problem?
What am I trying to change?
What does this do for the record?
If you can't answer that, maybe you don't need the plugin.
Sometimes the correct processing is:
Nothing.
That's one of the harder things to learn because doing nothing doesn't feel like mixing.
But you don't get extra points for the number of plugins in the session.
The listener certainly doesn't care.
Step Away From the Screen
Modern mixing gives us an incredible amount of visual information.
Waveforms.
Meters.
EQ curves.
Spectrum analyzers.
LUFS meters.
Gain reduction meters.
All useful.
But none of them are the record.
Every once in a while, stop looking at everything.
Sit back.
Listen.
Ask yourself one simple question:
Does this feel right?
That's ultimately what matters.
Mixing Got Simpler as I Got Older
I don't mean that mixing became easy.
It didn't.
What changed was my understanding of what needed to be done.
When you're learning, it's natural to want to use everything you've learned.
You've figured out parallel compression, so you want to use parallel compression.
You bought a new plugin, so you want to put it somewhere.
I did the same thing.
Experience eventually teaches you something else:
Knowing when NOT to do something is every bit as important as knowing how to do it.
The tools aren't the point.
The record is.
Try This on Your Next Mix
The next time you open a session, try something different.
Don't immediately start working on individual tracks.
Listen to the whole song first.
Figure out what matters.
Build a basic balance.
Pan things.
Listen again.
Identify the actual problems.
Then start processing.
And every once in a while, while you're working, ask yourself:
Am I mixing this track...or am I mixing the song?
That one question can completely change the decisions you make.
How I Mix
This lesson is actually one of the reasons I'm starting something new on my YouTube channel.
Every Thursday, I'm going to be digging into the practical side of recording, mixing and mastering in a series called How I Mix.
Not secret tricks.
Not magic plugins.
And I'm certainly not going to tell you that my way is the only way to make a record.
I'm simply going to show you how I do it and explain why.
We're starting with:
How I Start Every Mix
I'll walk through what I'm listening for when I first open a session, how I approach the initial balance, what I'm trying to accomplish—and what happens before I start reaching for plugins.
Because that's where mixing the song instead of the tracks really begins.
Final Thoughts
You can have a fantastic kick sound.
A killer snare.
Huge guitars.
A beautiful vocal.
And still not have a great mix.
Because a mix isn't a collection of great individual sounds.
It's all those sounds working together to serve one thing:
The song.
It took me years to really understand that.
So the next time you find yourself spending 20 minutes making one track sound incredible in solo, hit the solo button again.
Listen to the whole record.
And remember:
We're not mixing tracks. We're mixing music.
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