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BEGINNING MIXING - PART I

If you’re new to Band in a Box or have been using it for a while but are unsure of where to go after you’ve created your song, this is a great place to start. A nice basic mix of your tracks will improve your project almost beyond belief and will encourage to you continue creating more great music.

This series assumes you have already created a song with or without vocals and are ready to create a basic mix. Initially, there are some general steps to follow when mixing your project which are more science than art. The art comes later, and is much more subjective.

If you don’t have your own song yet you can load one of the sample songs from your favorite STYLE in Band in a Box and work with that. Ideally you would have already exported your tracks to a DAW like Real Band or your own favorite. You can also simply utilize the MIXER in Band in a Box to explore the possibilities.

For the purpose of this instruction I suggest you use a good set of studio style headphones. You’ll want something with a flat frequency response that does not color the audio by boosting frequencies anywhere in the range. You can listen later with your studio monitors to compare what you’ve created. Using headphones initially will help you hear the effect of panning, which means where a track sits in the panorama (pan) or stereo spectrum of the mix; for example, is your guitar track left or right of center, or right in the middle? You get the idea.

START HERE:

- If you have a vocal (a temp or “scratch vocal” will do) set the volume to zero DB.
- Set the PAN of your vocal to exact CENTER or ZERO..
- Pull the volumes of all your other tracks all the way down so they are inaudible.
- Make sure you have no effects like reverb or delay on any track for now.
- Set your master volume to a comfortable level in your headphones.

Remember: “Engineers who fry their ears, find themselves with short careers.” Live by it.

BEGINNING PAN SETTINGS:

For now, set the PAN of each track according to the following list:

Vocal - CENTER Nothing else ever gets set to CENTER unless it’s a lead instrument solo. “Walking” on the vocal is bad form and no singer will like it if you do that.

Bass - 5% - 10% left OR right of center, but opposite of the drums

Drums - 5% - 10% left OR right of center, but opposite of the bass.

Guitar or Piano - Set your basic accompaniment instrument about 25%-35% left or right of CENTER. If you have more than one accompaniment instrument, like a strummed guitar AND a fingerpicked guitar, set them opposite of each other.

Other instruments - Set any other instruments further out from CENTER in the mix for now. 50% -70% is a good range. These would include instruments like electric guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, etc that are “sweetening” instruments or ones that might be used for solos later in the song. Try to place instruments that have a similar frequency range like fiddle and steel OPPOSITE of each other. Don’t overload one side of the stereo spectrum with instruments in the same frequency range.

Backup vocals - This will be discussed at a later point. For now, if you have backup vocals, push them to the outside of the mix. 100% either left or right of CENTER and opposite each other if you have multiple vocals.

NOTE: The goal here is BALANCE in the mix. You should visualize your mix as you would a band onstage and attempt to give each instrument it’s own sonic space. No crowding.

BRING IN THE BAND:

Choose your main accompaniment, guitar, piano, etc and gradually bring up the volume while listening to your vocal. Watch your VU meters and make sure the vocal stays out front in the mix.

Next bring in the bass, and drums, and listen to the mix as you bring them in to be sure the vocal is still out front of the mix.

Do the same thing with the rest of your instrument tracks while listening. Generally, other instruments will be softer in the mix than your vocal, main accompaniment, bass, and drums. We’ll get into fine tuning the mix later.

LISTENING IS KEY

If you’ve followed the steps above you now have a basic mix that should be satisfactory for now. You can use this mix while replacing your scratch vocal with a better take, or add intros and outros, or instrumental breaks, depending on what you want to hear in your song. Keep any additional tracks away from the vocal, giving them their own sonic space in the mix.

Learn to “hear” the different instruments in the mix. Good listening is an invaluable skill that takes time to develop. Once you have it, you can put a mix together in minutes. Unfortunately, you’ll also be able to hear bad mixes in others’ productions. Once you get good at it, you’ll find yourself becoming a critical listener. You may find this ruins your listening experience of other people’s music. Sorry. You now have “producer’s ears.” It goes with the territory.

There’s much more to come in this little series including using EFFECTS like reverb and delay, and using BUSSES to group your tracks for fast mixing.

Have fun!

Bob Buford, Producer
Summertown Recording Studios
Longmont, Colorado

Excellent post Bob! Looking forward to the next one!!

One thing I do at the early stages of a mix is use a pink noise generator to balance the volume levels of all my tracks. It is a quick and easy way to tame a mix with a bunch of tracks!

Hey John

Thanks for the input. How about sharing a bit more detail on how and why you actually do that. Some good info there.

Thanks,
Bob

Wow, phenomenal post, Bob! I love resources like this. I'll definitely be sending some people to this

Well, I am no expert but I have read about this trick and use it to start every mix. It simply serves as a very quick starting point for mixing. Basically you get a pink noise generator plug for your DAW. Then you solo the pink noise generator and one of your tracks. Adjust the track volume until it is barely audible above the noise. Repeat for each track soloing only the noise and the single track. When you are done mute or remove the pink noise and all of your tracks should be at a nice starting point for mixing.

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-pink-noise-reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsV4mGTLB8s

Hi Will,

Glad you like the article. Most of the points in there come from questions I'm asked over and over again. Thought it would be quicker and easier to just put it all down so I can refer folks when necessary.

Since we all do things a little differently, if you have anything to add from your own experience please feel free to post it.

Thanks,
Bob

This has been a valuable post for me. I'm just getting started and had no clue of how to arrange the mix using pan. This helps alot....keep the posts coming. There are many others out here like me. Thanks...

Thanks. What a great post. I'm going to try this on some of my backing tracks. At the moment I just leave them all at 90 and pan them a bit (if I remember) As always it's the obvious stuff that we never do. I'm wondering about using it with my live BIAB mixes as well as rendered Wav / MP3 files etc?

Just thinking how nice it would be if BIAB 2017 had some mix automation built in to allow us to automate varying the mix during playback? I guess Realband can do that, but I'm not sure how solid that would be live.

Hey John,

You're very welcome. Try experimenting with different settings and output several files that you can compare to find the mix you prefer. We'll get more into the details in the upcoming parts.

Have fun...
Bob

lambada,

I think all that's possible with just about any DAW. We'll get into "envelopes" to automate volume, pan, etc in upcoming articles. Give it a try. Experiment to your heart's content and output different mixes to see what works for you.

Thanks,
Bob

Hi bob. Great post! Looking forward to the next one.

Seems odd that you would pan drums and bass. I always keep these right in the center, especially drums which is a stereo file (as rendered from BIAB). Although I suppose 5% is pretty much the same as zero.

These days what I struggle with the most is making a mix that sounds good in both stereo and mono, because most people seem to listen on mono devices with crappy speakers these days (phones, iPads, etc.) . I come up with a mix that sounds good in stereo, but when I turn on the mono button something will be too loud, or not loud enough.

Hey BA,

Yea...panning drums and bass may seem counter-intuitive, but just a tad helps keep that vocal clean. Give it a try and see if you can tell the difference. I used to keep 'em right in the middle too; I think most people do.

We go to a lot of trouble and expense to produce great recordings and some people, not nearly all fortunately, crush it down to nothing and play it on crappy gear. It's a shame. But those are NOT the folks I write and record for. I know people who don't even listen to lyrics; for them it's all abut the BEAT. Whatever.

If you try some of this let me know if you think it helps your final product.

Thanks for your response. Really like your work.
Bob

Hi Joanne!

Thank you so much. Hope it helps some folks.

B

Hi Bob,

Sure, I will certainly give it a try next time I do a mix.

Cheers,
Dave

At some point in the mixing phase (after you got the panning the way you want) you should mix in mono only for awhile. I have also heard that EQ'ing in mono is an excellent way to get sonic separation since you won't be fooled by the stereo panning. Use professional tracks from your favorite artist as a reference tool. Note that they always sound good in mono also. Generally if it sounds good in mono it will sound great in stereo.

Really good points there. When I'm not in the middle of a client or personal project, I spend a lot of time "AB'ing" some of my favorite artists' songs. For those who haven't heard the term it usually refers to attempting to recreate a mix perfectly of a song you know well. The process really teaches you to LISTEN. I've learned so much from doing this. I may not use the exact process someone else used to create a song, but if I get close enough I usually learn a lot on the trip. By this time I have enough cover songs recorded from my AB'ing exercises I could release several albums...if I could afford the royalties.

I think a lot of folks tend to stick to what works for them, or doesn't, because they get comfortable with the process and don't really want to experiment with new things. Recording, mixing, mastering are extremely subjective after a point. There are literally millions of possibilities when creating a project. So I think you have to have fun with it. Experiment and learn to listen.

Thanks for your post. Some really good things in there to consider.

Bob

Bob, you have supplied some very valuable information here.

I was doing everything except that volume mix tip as I have always tried to mix with everything playing. That tip sounds, no pun intended, like a winner that I am going to try on my next mix.

Mario! Hey man...

Some of the points in my article are probably "DUH!" to a lot of experienced folks. But I think for a lot of us there are holes in our knowledge. And for folks just starting out...it's ALL holes. So I thought perhaps creating a baseline for mixing might help people get started with a mix they could be proud of and thereby encouraged to move on from there. Also, I thought it would be good to open a dialog and learn what other folks are doing. Nearly everyone has something to teach us.

Mixing by gradually bringing in all the instruments has also given me ideas for "building" a song where I would probably have just thrown everything into the mix from the first bar. Sometimes I think "Wow, that vocal with just a guitar and violin sounds great!" Sort of an experiment in "less is more." My mantra for this series of articles: Don't be afraid to EXPERIMENT and learn to LISTEN.

Here's an example; we all have a few I guess. I initially wanted to just take off on this, like a bluegrass tune, but thought better of it when I started mixing:

Faithless Heart

Thanks for your post. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what you come up with.

Bob

Yeah, the biggest tip I give people is learn everything and then forget half of it! It's honestly such an "art" as opposed to a science, in my opinion, that the best thing a person can do for their mixing abilities is just spend a LOT of time discovering what they like and forming their own opinions.

That's why I love posts like yours so much, because they give out so much information that people can try out and pick through and learn from!

Another tip that I adhere to all the time is that when you want to make something louder... you turn everything else down (instead of turning the main thing up). Has cleaned up my mixes so much it's unreal! Who knew that if I wanted the guitar to be louder what I really wanted was a quieter bass?

Since someone mentioned using reference tracks, here is a great article and a recommended list of CDs to use as references!

http://www.digido.com/honor-roll.html?option=com_content&Itemid=54&id=46&lang=en&view=article

This is INVALUABLE for me. Thank you, Bob!

Hey Andy...

You're very welcome. Glad that's working for ya.

Bob

Very nice, thank you, I mean I can hear the guitar on the right and the violin on the left, immediately, then the voice in the center, then the multiple voices on different side. this is a show don't tell moment.

Great, Marty. It must be working.

Thanks,
Bob

And then, just now, there was a video of Chris Hillman, and he was in the center with a mandolin, and guitars to the left and right, and listening with this separation was a newfound experience. I believe you said (or somebody, can't look it up at this moment) that it ruins a lot of listening, but for me it's going to get a lot better before it gets worse. One more thank you.

This is a great post you've started here Bob. Some really interesting techniques and a great starting workflow. I'm learning a lot. Thanks for posting.

Jeff

GREAT series in the making Bob.

Thank you for these these tips!

Excellent!!!

Well, it only ruins the listening experience when you're listening to badly produced projects. But you will definitely develop a discerning ear.

Having fun yet?
BB

Hey David...you've been busy. Read some of your newer articles, you power user, you!

You're welcome. Gotta get back to it soon,

BB

Buford,

We done loaded your settings into our mixing board template over here at Graceland. The Colonel gave us the greenlight.

We call it the Bob Buford Board.

Tomorrow we got to get up early around noon to cut some tracks but right now I need a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

Thank ya Buford.

BOB BUFORD BOARD

Yea...well them's called "nanners" and too many of 'em 'll build a dam in yer innards. So watch that.

What DAW is that? Looks a bit familiar.

Later 'tater
Buford

That's Sonar Buford.

Wow...haven't upgraded that one in a couple of years. Good looking interface. It's hard to justify those hefty annual upgrades when Reaper has been doing everything I need. I still have Sonar Producer on the main computer. One has Cubase, and another, ProTools. Love to "fiddle" with 'em but it gets expensive after a while. I"m such a geek.

BB

Just to say I noticed that in 2017 the instruments come with a panning preset (it that's the right phrase) and I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this thread. Thank you!

Marty

Hey Marty,

Sorry I didn't see this when you posted it. But you're very welcome. Hope to save some folks a bit of time and frustration getting started.

Best Wishes,
Bob