13 Audio Mixing Tips for EDM Producers.
This Guide Updated Regularly.
Learn How to Mix EDM
As you may know, Mixing EDM is a difficult and sometimes overwhelming task for beginners and even established producers. The Mix-Down stage of EDM Production is one of the most crucial and time-consuming parts of creating music.
That’s exactly why we’ve put together this list of tips to help you learn how to mix EDM and improve your overall production process.
1. Your sounds are everything
The samples you use and how you design your synths are the most important thing to achieving a full and professional mix down. The saying “you can’t polish s***” firmly applies here, because if you do not start with pristine quality sounds, how can you expect the finished product to be polished. You can also think of producing like a simple mathematical function, your output is equal to the sum value of the inputs (which in this case the output is quality)
2. Less Is More
Have you ever heard the expression “keep it simple stupid” when mixing music this definitely holds true. By focusing on fewer elements, you can make sure that these elements are truly engaging, and mixed to perfection. As a learning producer it is essential to not spread yourself too thin by over layering, and overcomplicating. This also has some practical advantages as well. By keeping things simple you use fewer channels and effects, which saves you serious cpu power, and also allows you to have a mix that is less cluttered which makes balancing all of the individual sounds a breeze.
3. The Car Test
This is one of the simplest ways to ensure that your mixdown is solid. Listen to your mix on as many set-ups as possible, and ensure that it is balanced and will sound good no matter what it is played on. Almost everyone has a variety of audio devices available in their own homes from studio monitors, laptop speakers, home theaters, car stereos, ect… Making sure your mix sounds good on anything is a true test of your ability as a producer and an engineer. Listen on high fidelity and low fidelity set-ups, cheap and expensive set-ups, and mono and stereo set-ups. Pay careful attention to how it sounds on phone and laptop speakers because chances are the majority of casual listeners will listen via these devices.
4. What doesn’t feel right?
Getting feedback on your track is essential to ensuring that you don’t overlook anything during the production process. It will also help you to ensure that you don’t miss the mark creatively. Try getting 510 friends to listen to your production and after they listen ask them “What didn’t you like” and you can almost always guarantee some solid feedback, not just a quickly messaged “that was sick.” It is important to have other people listen to your work before it is released because it helps you pause and take some time to listen and think about your work objectively, and from a fan or expert perspective. By doing this you can ensure you are only truly releasing your best work.
5. Clean up Reverb and Delay Tails
Long and spacious reverb can be an excellent way to add depth and air to ones track. But since the delay can be very long, and collect and build, it can take up a surprising amount of space in the mix. Start by reducing the reverb decay to be long enough to achieve the desired effect, but also have a definite ending point to mitigate the buildup of reverberations. To further clean up your reverb, try cutting the low end before the instance of reverb on the send to avoid the buildup of lows which can ruin the articulation of the bassline, as well as bring your bass out of phase.
6. Gain Stage
Maintaining the appropriate amount of headroom is essential to achieving a proper mix down and a professional sounding product. To ensure the elements of your track are not too loud and squashing your mix from the get go, add a utility set to -8 db first in your signal chain on each channel to reduce the volume of the track. As you compress, and manipulate the sound further, this will ensure that your track stays at the appropriate level.
7. Don’t High Pass Everything
This is a tip written out of necessity. For some reason, many producers hi-pass everything other than their kick and sub by default. Yes it is essential to take measures to prevent the buildup of low end, but you are better off designing your sounds and choosing samples that naturally don’t have much, rather than drastically removing it from the samples. By cutting out the low end of your sounds, if it is present, you may find your source now sounds weak and very dry. Don’t forget as well that low end is important. For example, you may want a snare drum with some thump, or you may want a lead with some buzz, having subtle amount of low end is necessary. Just make sure it doesn’t compete with your kick and bass! At the end of the day, just make sure you are strategic, and trust your ears.
8. Take Breaks
If you are mixing like you are supposed to, it will take a significant amount of time. Respect the process, and understand that mixing requires a meticulous attention to detail and a serious commitment. Take breaks every hour, and in times of stress and frustration even more frequently. This will allow you to stay positive, along with prevent ear fatigue, which is a very real concern for long sessions.
9. If it sounds good, COMMIT
It is often hard to commit especially early in the production process, but sometimes, you can do too much and actually impact the song negatively. If it sounds good, don’t mess with it to try and make it sound better, just roll with it because it will strengthen your production and end up sounding great!
10. Take Notes
This is extremely important due to the fact that a mix down has many steps. When you are not mixing, listen to your song and write down everything that you think you should change, or think doesn’t sound right according to the feedback you have received from your peers. This is now your project list. Next time you are in the studio, use this to guide your mix-down; by the time all of the issues you have written on the list are crossed off, chances are your track will be sounding hot! Also many DAWs have a section for notes, or comments. Feel free to use this feature to mark up your track!
11. Don’t mix as you go
Separate the stages of production. By arranging first, mixing down second, and mastering third, you can ensure that you don’t accidentally halt your creativity by getting involved in an engineering side project. Also how can you mix and balance your elements if they are not all there? This one is personal preference.
12. Mix in Key
Just like when you Dj, make sure all of your elements are in key, or at least complimentary. Start with your kick. Make sure that it is in key with your bass. Tune your percussion or choose sounds that are naturally in key with your song. You will be surprised at how well all of the elements fit together
13. Be Happy With Everything Else First
A secret tip to ensuring a solid mix down, is to make sure everything sounds good before the mixdown stage! By choosing good samples, and tastefully effecting and sound designing, ideally your song should already sound very good, and very close to being done before the mix down even begins.
