Saturday, I was conducting an audio training session and I was given the opportunity to work on their mix with the worship band. The mix was pretty good so instead of re-building their full mix, I focused on cleaning up the mix.
There are seven areas to consider when cleaning up a mix. Mind you, like I said, this assumes you have a pretty good mix to start. For the sake of this article, let’s say you’re in the middle of your sound check, you like the mix, but you think it could be better. This is a great time to focus on cleaning up the mix.
Seven Steps to Cleaning Up Your Music Mix
1. Check your volume balancing.
Go through each channel and use this process; mute the channel, listen to your mix, then un-mute the channel. If the instrument or vocal seems to jump way out in your mix (too far out), then you need to pull the volume back a little. If the muting didn’t make a difference, then you didn’t have it loud enough.
2. Did you cut before boosting?
This is an easy mistake to make, especially on an analog mixer. What is that old commercial for BASF? Something along the lines of, “We don’t make baseball helmets. We make them better.” It’s better to have the best from the beginning.
Regarding the situation I was in, cleaning up the mix, I thought something with a singer’s vocal didn’t sound right. It was close, but not where I thought it should be. They had a boost in the vocalist’s mid-range. Maybe in the 6K range, I don’t remember. Using the sweeping mid, I moved the sweep frequency way down around the 800 Hz mark and did about a 4dB cut. This really warmed up their vocals and gave their voice a great tone.
The first part of creating a mix should be cutting out the offending frequencies. Once you do that, then you can consider boosting when it’s necessary. Remember, boost wide, cut narrow when you have control over the frequency range with a Q control.
3. Review your gating.
Gating is often used on drum kit microphones to minimize audio bleed – when one kit piece is played but a different kit microphone picks up the sound. Where else could you use gating?
Consider the vocals a place for gating. A vocal microphone near a drum kit could easily pick up the drums. While that would happen when the vocalist is singing, what about when a different vocalist sings lead for a song, like in the case of a pianist who plays and sings. Why let those other sounds into the microphone? Gate the microphone.
4. Hit your high pass filter.
You don’t need low end coming through a lot of your channels, so stop it. I’ll enable the HPF on my vocals and guitars with one exception. If I don’t have a bass guitar on the stage, then I’ll allow an electric guitar to give me some of that low end. In some cases, you can control the point of your high pass filter. I’ve used a high pass filter in the 200 Hz mark on vocals to clean up my bottom end…smooth as a baby’s bottom….ummm…ignore that last part.
5. Check your subs.
The signal to your low end subs might be one that you can control. Therefore, you have this additional means of altering the mix sound. Don’t be afraid to pull them back or push them louder if that’s what’s needed for the mix. While you are building your basic mix, you should have your subs at an average level. Once you have set your overall mix, then you should consider the sub volume.
6. Consider microphone polarity.
When two microphones pick up the same sound, the combining of those sound waves may or may not cause problems. This is where you get into sounds being out-of-phase. For example, if the two incoming sound waves are in phase with each other, this means the sound waves, when compared side-by-side, look identical. As the distance from the sound source to one microphone changes, so does the point in which the sound waves enter the microphone. When this happens, the sound waves start to get out-of-phase (compared side-by-side, the wave peaks are at different spots. In the extreme case of being 180-degrees out of phase, the sound waves look like a mirror image of each other. Combine these sound waves and you lose a lot of the audio signal because it’s like math; +10 + -10 = 0 (flat-line)
A simple way for ensuring you are getting the best sound from an instrument, where phase could be an issue, is by switching the polarity button on the channel. If you get more bass response, then you have found a better setting. By switching polarity, you are inverting the sound wave.
7. Re-visit your effects.
Once you’ve cleaned up your mix using the above methods, you should re-visit your effects settings. If your board enables it, turn off all the effects and listen to the difference. Otherwise, go channel by channel. What worked before might not work now. It might not be needed to the same degree or it might not be needed at all. You might even need MORE of an effect because your cleaner mix enables you to use more of the effect to reach your mixing goal.
The Take Away
The process of cleaning up your mix is best explained with the words of author Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
“…he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.“
You aren’t going for perfection in the traditional sense but the idea applies just the same.
How do you clean up your mix?
*Photo provided by Oreckel.
This page was very usefull
Thanks for the tips here. I’ll try to remember to freq boost/ wide Q, freq cut/narrow. My biggest problem with audio mixing thus far has been with piano tracks. Doesn’t matter if they’re midi or audio files. I’ve had to deal with a constant mid-rangy, ringing type audio, especially when half or whole chords are playing in a piano piece. I’m using Audio samples In Most Cases So I Don’t Know What Gives.
That sounds like an issue with your room acoustics. Do you have the same problem with live sounds such as a person talking, singing, or playing an instrument. You likely need to use the house EQ to cut a few decibels from a couple of frequency bandwidths.
Thanks for responding Chris. Currently I’m using pre-recorded audio samples. So I don’t know what conditions The Audio was Recorded under. But I Think You’ve Got A Valid Point About Room Acoustics. My Room Hasn’t Been treated. I’m Not Recording Anything. Just Trying To Mix. The Piano Audio Has Been My Biggest Headache To Fix. I Can Pretty Much Straighten Out The Other Sounds. Still Learning. But In My Humble Opinion. A Screwed Up Sounding Piano Will Mess Up The Whole Song Even If The other Instruments Sound Pdrfect In The Mix.
Have you ever listened to the recordings with a pair of headphones? This will tell you if the problem is in the recording or the room.
I have listened to one of my songs with headphones. Not this one. Will give it a try though. As a whole my earlier mixes sounded worse than my 2015 efforts. I’m not sure headphones listening or the lack thereof would have mattered pre-2015.
I Got A Free Mid-side Controller Plugin. You Either Raise Or Lower The Mid and/or The Side Volumes Of The Audio. I Lowered The Side Volume And The Mid Slightly. Some Improvement With Eq But Not Much. I’m Gonna try Using The Bx-hybrid Dyn Eq Using The Mid-side eq Setup And See What Happens. Will Fill You In. I Need To At Least Get A Decent Enough Sound So A Mastering Engineer Will be Able to improve On what’s There.
Hi again Chris. Glad I found your site. I won’t keep bothering you with my mixing issues. Think I’m gonna order your Audio Essentials book. I could certainly use those instrument frequency range info.
Still Got A Ways To Go. But I’ve Been Fighting With My Mixes Long Enough To Know That Most Of The Trouble Is Coming From The Low/high Mid Areas. The Latest Mix I’m Working On Sounds 100% Better Since I Adjusted My Piano Tracks In The 200-800 hz ranges. The Eq Was Done With The Three SPL Eq Rangers And I Also Added The SPL Deverb At The End Of The Effect Slot. I’ll Check My Stereo Image (each track In The Mix) and Widen Where Necessary After I’m Satisfied with The Overall Mix. Hope I Can Do My Own Mastering. Will Try. But I’m now Getting The Mix Good Enough Where a mastering Engineer Will Have A Decently Clean Mix To Work With.
Great article, but I want to know how to clean my mixing console, (potentiometers, switches, faders, etc) literally.
If you want to clean off any dust, use a dry soft paint brush or a microfiber cloth. If anything is dirty, use a slightly damp cloth without any cleaners. Just enough moisture to cut through the grime.
An aspect that’s perhaps a little tricky – good arrangements. These are achieved through careful music arrangement or experienced sensitive musicians. Busy arrangements require more sonic manipulation than sometimes justified?
G’day,
Reading the article above I noticed a reference to a mid boost at 6k on a vocal, had this channel been used for anything else or was the original mixer looking to add to the resonant frequencies? The vast majority of our worship songs are sung in a range between Low G and High E (G3-E5) which equates to a frequency range between 196Hz and 659Hz. Short of pulling out an old physics book and relearning resonance do you know of any particular resonant frequencies that are going to benefit vocal at those higher ranges?
Aaron, there is a huge range of usable frequencies for manipulating vocals. You can see the range of fundamental and harmonic frequencies on this chart. Also check out these article on fundamental frequencies and harmonics. Those articles mention a lot in regards to vocals.
You are a gem. Thank you.