Thanks for posting, Steve!

I'm nowhere near where I want to be in terms of mixing skills, but I'll post anyway.

Steve covered just about everything, but one obvious point: stop working on something, and come back to it a couple days later. It's amazing how different something can sound after time's passed.

This thread is probably the best I've read on mixing, and is pretty hardware/software agnostic.

One of the points on that post is that you need to be able to trust your ears. Sadly, I don't think I'm there yet, so I find something like a spectrum analyzer to be really helpful.

A corollary to the above thread's "trust your ears" idea is if you can't hear what an effect does, don't use it. For me, that meant not putting effects onto tracks just because the effect's name sounded good.

One of the hardest things for me is to not start mixing before high/low passing tracks. I just can't resist jumping into the mix, so I consistently skip this step. I intend to go back an clip all the tracks at some point, but then I figure the mix sounds "good enough", and never get around to it.

So don't do that!

Every couple of bars, there should be some sort of change to the texture. It doesn't have to be anything radical. It can be as simple as a tambourine replacing a shaker, or bringing down the volume of the bass. Generally, it means taking something out, and replacing it with something else. Sometimes, it just means thinning the texture as much as possible, so I can build things up again.

I try to build the song at the end. Instead of making everything louder, it's usually better to do things in reverse, and take stuff out before the end, so they can come back in.

I like to use automation to fade things in and out. I figure it's better to fade things out over the course of several measures than to have hard cuts at the beginning of sections, although that can be effective, too.

My general process is subtractive. I'll begin with far too much material, and try to remove as much as possible. I still tend to have overly busy mixes, but I'm working on that.

I start in BIAB, and generate lots of tracks, looking for any RealTrack that might make sense.

I'll also create a version of the songs with nothing but holds on the chords, and create RealTracks from that as well - usually guitars, pianos and bass.

I'm pretty lazy about bass and drums, but I'll usually try to get some drum hits as well. This means making a short song with 4 bar phrases, so I can get various drum fills and hits.

If there are instrumentals, I'll generate a bunch of tracks for that instrument - at least 8.

All this goes into my DAW. I'll then put together a basic rhythm track with bass, guitar/piano and drums.

I'll solo each basic track over the rhythm track to hear if there's something that I like. A lot of tracks get dumped at this point, because they just don't match. But you can't tell until you try.

The basic track is now mapped out with the instruments and fills where I think they make sense. I'll start messing with faders and try balancing things, so hear a rough mix.

I may have to go back to BIAB at this point, to add an instrument I didn't initially know I would need.

Then it's time to work on the instrumental fills. I'll solo the various tracks, picking out the snippets I like the best. Hopefully, by the time I've gotten through the 12 tracks, there's enough material.

If not, I'll look for bits that will match the spots I need filling. One fill may consist of 6 different bits spliced together.

If I'm still stuck for material, I'll got back to BIAB and generate a bazillion variations over the chord progression that I need material for. I may also generate a track over a single chord, just so I have material I can pilfer from. If I'm lucky, I'll find a phrase that matches the contour of what I wanted. If not, I may have to build it from snippets and pitch shift it into place.

There may be something in the mix that BIAB can't supply, and I'll add it here. For example, a MIDI piano part or strummed guitar. I've got a couple of loop CDs I like. Essential Acoustic Percussion has various percussion loops that can be used to spice up a track. I may also go through the drum hits from BIAB looking for material.

At this point, everything is in place. Best practices would have me A/B a reference recording, but I'm not at that level yet.

I'll start looking at effects. The drums/percussion will usually get some reverb, as will the strings and orchestral instruments. In the past, I've tended to go overboard on effects, so now I'm leaning the other direction.

I'll try to put some light reverb on the master buss, along with some kind of mastering effect. EZMix has a couple nice ones, or I might just use a compressor.

In either event, the effect will have brought some instrument more to the forefront that I wanted, so I'll go through the channel levels and compensate a bit.

At that point, I render it to a high-quality MP3, and have another listen. Invariably, there will be something that catches my attention that needs fixing. This repeats until it's way too late at night.

Once that's "done", I'll burn the song to a CD so I can listen to it in the car on the drive to and from work. It's amazing how much different my car sounds from my monitors!

At some point, I'll get so tired of making corrections that I'll actually declare something as finished.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?