People (including myself) love quick “takeaway” ideas that they can apply to whatever they are doing right away. That’s the idea with these seven tips. Hopefully you’ll find at least one these tips to be something you haven’t tried before, something that you can try out on your next project.

#1 Cut Bass EQ When The Bass Is Muddy

I’ve found that many of the best mixing tips I’ve come across are also some of the most counter intuitive ones. This actually makes sense because counter intuitive ideas are the hardest ones to come up with on your own.

This tip is a good example of this concept. If you’ve got a muddy bass sound in your mix then your first instinct may be to try to pump the bass instrument up higher. But you may be better off actually cutting the bass EQ. Not on the bass or the kick drum but on everything else.

By cutting out the bass on other parts that don’t necessarily need the bass part of their frequency spectrum you can open up more space for the bass parts you really want to hear.

In a similar way it’s often a good idea to try to sculpt the EQs of your kick drum and your bass so that they each have their own space. This should provide more clarity and a stronger, clearer bass sound.

By the way, this tip also works for the high end. The first instinct when you’ve got no highs shining through may be to raise them, but you will probably get better results by cutting back some of the highs you don’t need. This will leave more space for the highs you want to be heard.

#2 Panning In Mono

This may be the king of counter intuitive tips. I’ve found that I can often get the perfect panning arrangement by actually flipping REAPER over to mono and then moving the panning around until everything sits just right in mono.

When I flip it back to stereo I’ve got a nice rich stereo spectrum that isn’t too wide and isn’t too narrow. And of course I already know it works perfectly in mono too.

#3 You Don’t Have To Include Everything In The Final Mix

Just because it was recorded doesn’t mean it has to be included in the final mix. You know that old saying “less is more”? It’s probably more applicable to mixing than just about anything else.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you need to have spare mixes. A lot of my favorite music is quite busy. All I mean is that you don’t want to be wed to including every single part that was recorded in the mix. A lot of times the best thing you can do to make a mix come to life is to remove something that may be holding it down.

#4 Level Matching

When you add effects to a track be sure you adjust the output so the volume is the same as the bypassed version of the track. This allows you to listen to a good A/B comparison to make sure that you really like what the effect is doing rather than just getting excited about it being louder.

#5 Mix At A Normal Listening Volume

Or even a bit lower.

It’s not a good idea to mix while listening to the music at a very loud volume for a number of reasons. One of those is that you will fatigue your ear very quickly. Another is that it’s much easier to make something sound “good” when it’s loud. It’s more of a challenge to make it sound good when it’s quiet. If you can do that, it will sound good when it’s loud too.

#6 Don’t “Perfect” Soloed Tracks

Nobody’s going to be listening to the guitar by itself, they are going to be listening to the guitar within the mix. It doesn’t matter how it sounds when it’s soloed, it only matters how it sounds in the mix. You can waste a lot of time perfecting a soloed track only to realize that it’s in the way of everything else when you bring everything else back up.