Why Mixing Gets Hard When Your Workflow Is Wrong

[00:00:00] Welcome back to mix sessions and number two, going live again every Monday. Today I'd like to dive a little bit deeper in to a couple of aspects that I touched on briefly last week, but before I jump straight in the deep end, please subscribe your email, uh, right below so you can watch every single episode in full and get a notification in your email inbox every time they're out.

If you watch this on socials, chances are you're just going to find a little snippet, and please also subscribe to my social. So also, you know when new episodes are out. So what is it we need to talk about today? I would like to dive a little bit deeper into the different workflows and the mindsets, and I spoke about in very briefly, uh, how important it's to separate the workflows between the recording and production section [00:01:00] of a product, uh, of a song production of a music production.

The editing, mixing, and also mastering. All of those in my books should be separate steps. And although it's technically possible to still, I don't know, add backing vocals in a mastering stage, this is definitely not a wise workflow because it messes with your mind. It is much better. We humans are much better focusing on one aspect rather than many at the same time.

I know that some people believe they can multitask, and let me tell you one thing, my wife is much better than it at it than I am. But this said, we humans aren't really meant to do that. We are not built for it, and we typically don't work at our best when we spread our workflow across too many different things.

You don't believe me, try to get a mix done while Facebook is open and you scroll funny cat videos. Let's see how that goes. [00:02:00] So to prove my point, when we wanna be at our best, we first need to focus on only one thing at a time, and that means we need to lock out all kinds of distractions. For example, my phone is on silent right now in airplane mode.

Actually, the doors are closed and I'm here with you not doing anything else. But of course it goes much further. Example, when I record, uh, an artist here, the same thing applies. Social media is definitely off when this happens, my phone is off and I only want to get called when there's a family emergency of some sort, which, you know, I've got a 12-year-old boy who.

Ends up being the emergency emergency department quite frequently it can happen, but this is the only time when I want to be disturbed in a recording session because when I'm here with a client. I wanna be here a hundred percent, and I wanna focus entirely [00:03:00] on all the technical things that I need to sort out to make that happening.

And most importantly, I want to tune into the music vibe, how everybody's feeling, understanding how the band's working, and how I can serve the best and get the best takes out of 'em. And that requires a hundred percent of my focus. And therefore when I record, I actually apply some processing, like basic EQs and definitely some compression on the way in.

And I generally like to record as if there was no mixing, but I'm very selective here. I do some things at not all of 'em, so. EQs and compression. I only apply lightly and when I'm a hundred percent positive that I will not change my mind on that heavy handed stuff. Stuff that needs a bit more, dialing in, a bit more finesse, uh, I'll leave for later.

And that also means when I record, I will never bake the reverbs into the [00:04:00] recording signal, although the musicians will probably have reverb in their cans which is. A placeholder, let's call it a placeholder. Sometimes they call it comfort reverb. It's uh, in the musician's headphones, so they feel comfortable, but it's actually just heard on the recording day.

It's never, ever committed into the recording. A queue and compression can be a little bit different. I also like to print at least raw, rough levels into, uh, my DAW. In other words, something that I want in the foreground of the mix is probably recorded, is smidge louder, and something that I know needs to sit further back in the mix.

I have no hesitation dropping the recording level. Tastefully a little bit to sort of drive it into the right balance gain Staging. Recording is a topic for another day, and I might touch on this. If you want to hear more about this. Why don't you just leave a comment below, but let's now move on. [00:05:00] Once the recording is done, we move on to a new phase, and that's what I call editing.

A recording is a very creative process where we. Think about musical flow, energy and vibes a lot when it comes to editing. This also applies to some degree, but it becomes a lot more of a rational task. So it's engages a different section in your brain, and I personally like to separate these workflows as much as I can.

I also know from experience that. Introducing lengthy edit breaks in a recording session is definitely a mood killer. So when I have a band around and I say, but guys, give me 20 minutes just to edit, uh, the drums, they will hate me for it, and it really kills the spirit and the flow of the day. So I try to avoid this wherever I can.

This said, I do edit in tracking, but I keep it very basic, and most of the time it's literally done with punchin. [00:06:00] So if there's a section of a song that was recorded really well and let's say the final chorus was not so good, I would just place the chorus in front of it, add some pre-roll time and punch the band back in.

And we just continue the take until we've got a good chorus. So by the end of a recording, um, the final takes should already be compiled for the most of it. And for that, I can tell you one thing. Notes are the absolute key. So every time I track, I write down notes, the take number and a quick comment, a thumbs up, thumbs down. If it was a bad take, I'd cross it out straight away so that when I compile, I don't need to go through all the playlists I can jump straight to the good takes. And that really helps here.

Good. So we now move, uh, into the editing phase, and it's very important that we separate this from all other sections. So once I go into editing, recording is on pause. It might be that I record drums and bass [00:07:00] and then I do some fine tuning in the edits later, and maybe a couple of days later we come back and overdub on top of those.

If you want to do drum editing, if you feel like the performance needs a bit of tidying up or a push closer to the grid, do it before I add extra layers, otherwise it can end up in a big mess.

Okay, this said, um. Sometimes I get given recordings to mix and then I have no influence on that. And one of the first things I typically do when I sight files, uh, that I receive from a client is to check if the timing really locks in between the instruments and if there's a common pulse driving the song.

It's usually something that I really crave and that I wanna bring out in mixing. So. If that is not really in the source material, if I feel like they're working against each other, they're not always on together. I need to sort this out before I get into the mixing stage because I will hit a barrier in the mix if I don't [00:08:00] sort this out first. So let's go into a couple more details on the editing phase.

So editing. Um, is something that I definitely need to have completed before the mixing starts, and it's very important to me to really stick to those routines.

The mix will not start until the editing is done.

In my personal opinion, editing is a very rational, logical, uh, workflow, which, uh, I don't need to be super focused on. I can do that with a bit of noise in the background. That's totally fine.

So things I do in editing is, performance editing. That's whenever I feel like the music needs a little nudge in the right direction. And that could be sometimes something very simple, like a great drum take that has a great spirit, but there's this one drum fill where I feel like, ah, that snare lags a bit too much, or it's clearly not on top of the bass and it needs to get a little of a push, uh, left or right.

That's what I call [00:09:00] performance editing. This is also genre specific, so there are definitely some genres and some drummers who don't need any of that. But um, other genres, let me say heavy rock. Uh, metal. They typically require a lot of that. There are some genres that are literally processed in editing to absolute perfection on the grid, and that's a stylistic thing.

So let's be totally honest here. This is a matter of, of genre. What works for one genre may not work for another. So the degree to which we edit goes from very light to very, very deep, and therefore also more time consuming. That depends on the genre and on the performance, of course.

Then of course you wanna compile takes and then go through it one more time. Sometimes I find that timing wise, I hit a snag with a certain drum fill. And in this case, I actually go back into the playlist and hunt for another drum fill that works better for me. While I do the editing, um. I [00:10:00] actually leave the signals together. I try to use solo, the solo button as as little as possible so that I always hear the instruments in context and see not just how the guitar sounds, but how it feels and how the pulse goes in relation to the bass and the other instruments.

So that's quite important. So instead I often just increase the volume, a little bit of the signal that I'm currently editing. So just have us a bit over the mix, which helps me to really focus on small details. Vocals of course we need to talk about as well. Um, pitch correction is a common production technique and let's not cast any judgment here.

Uh, it is a genre specific thing. Um, it needs to be done for certain genres. Other Jo and some singers don't need it, but still like it applied for the tuning. Sound, uh, which is okay, you know, no judgment in any way. But I'm also very [00:11:00] cautious not to grab any pitch correction tools if I feel like I'm overstepping a line and I'm try to be as respectful as I can to, to the singer.

And I always think about it as in context. So when it comes to pitch correction, again, there are some invisible approaches where nobody notices that I actually just took a bit of sharpness out of a certain vocal section. Uh, and then of course there's the heavy handed approach, which we all know from T-Pain and all the autotune effects and no judgment.

Again, for certain genres this is absolutely desired, but in other genres it's also not. So finding the right. Balance not deciding how far you go with the edits. That's really important here. Good. And lastly, I find that with vocals, again, the timing is quite important, especially, uh, when it comes to the main vocal and the backing vocals.

Time alignment is something that I definitely consider, uh, a little tip here. Um, I [00:12:00] find that not every sound of the human voice is equally. Um, important here. I find that sometimes, let's say the onset of an R or O sound is not that important, but sounds like a P or a T or sometimes the sibilance, uh, really jumps at me when I hear a main vocal and the backing vocal and that, let's say pops sound is slightly offset in time where other.

Sounds of the human voice seem to be more forgiving, where it doesn't bother me as much. So I'm quite selective at choosing which sections are time aligned and which ones I don't. Good again. Uh, some DWS have amazing, uh, tools to help with that. Let's say in Logic, there's a tool where you can choose the main track and then others are aligned automatically.

Turd. There's of course, VKA Line by Synchro Arts. Be a little bit careful because there's an expensive tool. Don't buy it unless you need it on a regular basis. Uh, then of course, elastic Audio [00:13:00] can help with that as well. And to be perfectly honest, in most cases, I solve it all in Melaine. If I start. Vocal tuning somewhere, I might as well just do the, uh, timing correction if needed in Melo as well, which means shortening a note here or there, uh, which can really help.

Good. Okay. So all of those things, um, I would clearly identify as editing and mixing is really, really not on the forefront of my mind when I work my way through those things, but I find that. As a side effect of going through the edits on each track and figuring out what everything is doing and getting it to really lock in with each other and cleaning up, I find that by the end of it, I typically have a really good rough mix already dialed in.

And that means typically the levels are sitting in a, not the perfect balance yet, but in a pocket where everything is audible about, just about [00:14:00] equally loud. And that really helps of course, because I'm going to take this forward into the mixing stage and some basic panning is typically done here, uh, as well.

So things like overheads, I pan them hard left right? Typically, unless I have a good reason not to. And if I find, let's say, double track to rhythm guitars, I definitely start panning them sideways in the editing phase. Um, and it often ends up. Similarly in, in the mix, but I find that if I focus on the timing of double tracking, having the guitars panned makes it even more apparent to the human ear, whether they're ti uh, timing differences or not.

Headphones, by the way, are quite superior, I find when, uh, when you're on the hunt for small timing discrepancies. Good. So we are going through. A bit of a phase here that I'm not spending a lot of time on the editing phase. Uh, in an ideal [00:15:00] world, the editing's done in less than an hour.

It depends on what genre you are working on. And of course, what the source material, the recorded signal desire, what they need to get 'em to the next level.

So why would I bunch all of the editing tasks right at the front? The answer is that if I don't do it and try to get into a different mindset, the creative mixing mindset. I tend to run into a barrier, into, I hit a roadblock where I can't get past unless this is sorted. And when I then try to go back into editing mode, it snaps me out of my creative flow and I'm back in editing land.

It's a different area of the human mind, and as I'm hinted before, going between the different mindsets is not how I get the best out of myself. I like to really aim for the creative workflow. That's what I enjoy most and I think that's where my clients get the [00:16:00] most value out of me.

But I need to sort out these editing task force to allow the creative mixing to actually happen to its full extent. So while we edit, so there comes the point when I say, okay, all the editing is done. Now I really need to start mixing. And personally I like to start that on a new day.

Editing I can do easily at nine o'clock at night, uh, when I'm actually a little bit brain fried. But I sort of go into autopilot and my mind just does something repetitive and it does that very well and, uh, very accurately because I've just done it for so many thousands of hours. But when it comes to mixing, that's not possible.

So I leave the actual mixing for the day after. Typically, once my kids are in school and the dust settles and I switch all my other devices off, social medias, I locked out. My phone is on silent, and now I go into it and move faders and start to actually do the mixing. And [00:17:00] that's of course something I have a lot to say about.

But for the time being, let's just pause here for a moment because again, there are some things that are more rational in mixing, and I will front load things that take me out of my creative spirit. For example, all my routing.

That to me is something that I don't wanna do in the midst of it. So actually front load all of this, and when it comes to routing, I want to share a few things that I do on autopilot because they work for me every single time. And I do it right at the very first moment when I warm up in the mixing stage.

I also follow the same routing routines in pretty much every song, be it. A pop song or a metal song or a reggae song or something else. I typically do the same things in a routing structure and, and I wanna [00:18:00] explain this routing structure in a little bit more detail. So let's head over to Pro Tools and switch to the other screen.

So I'm just displaying a pro tools session that I worked on some time ago. And if we just zoom in here on the left, you can see that I organized all my drums into a drum subgroup, means that if we look at the outputs.

So here's my kick, for example. It is now routed into a bus, and this bus is called drum group. And this bus it then feeds, in my case, a routing channel over here. And then from there it continues to the main output. In my case, that's called monitor.

So what that means is that all my drum elements from here to there. All of their outputs are routed to the same drum group, which now funnels like from the top of the funnel down to the narrower part of the funnel into a drum group. And all of [00:19:00] the drums together travel through this subgroup channel, which now allows me to do some amazing things.

So, lemme just turn around again. So the concept of funnels is really important to me because it allows me to, to. Blend my processing between the source channel and the subgroup channel and also across the master bus. So the way I organize my mixes, I take all the drums and funnel them down into a stereo subgroup, and.

I also take my bass and the bass effects and funnel them down into, well, I guess a smaller funnel. And some people could argue that, why would you do this for a bass It's just one signal. But I find that the bass is such an important signal in the mix that yes, in my books, it deserves its own funnel.

The next funnel is typically keyboards and synthesizers and their effects. Another funnel often for guitars and another one for vocals, depends on what I'm actually working on, [00:20:00] but sort of I categorize all my signals into different groups or funnels, and then they're funnel down into stereo subgroup. So what that does for me is actually something that works on many, many different levels.

I wanna show you one thing. You've probably been in a situation where you mixed for a while and then realized, man, for the last three hours I've been working on this, I don't know, low Tom eq, and you completely lost sight of the big picture. We tend to get lost in details. So mentally it's the same thing. If I look at the entire song or if I zoom into a certain section, like this one over here, let's say this clip over there.

Yeah. So. Right now I'm zoomed in visually and I can also [00:21:00] zoom back out and show the entire production. So in one situation, I can see everything, how it interacts with one another. I see the big picture a bit like a listener would. And the other state of mind is zoomed in where I, my focus is completely narrowed down on something small.

I use the EQ on a low tom earlier, as an example, but that could be anything. There's a very good chance if I stay in this mode for a long time, I completely lose sight of the big picture. And while I work on this little detail, I might not even notice that it does some damage to the main vocal. And of course that's not very good.

So I remind myself about these zoom stages. Zoom in and out, and it's very important to me to lean back and more zoom out than zoom in. Zoom in can happen and it needs to, but I don't wanna spend much time there. I don't wanna be long into the zoom, zoomed in mindset. So I quickly move back [00:22:00] out and see the big picture.

And one thing that really helps me is those subgroups. So let's go back to Pro Tools and show me how I do it. Sorry. Just kicked something I guess that happens when you live. So we're back in Pro Tools uh, and let's switch to the mix window. So a little trick that I use is to hover the mouse over the folder icon over here, and with the option key, I just click the folder icon, which now collapses my entire mix down to the.

Four funnels in my case over here, it could be five or six sometimes, depends on the size of the production. So when I do that, all the folders are closed and I have lost access for the time being to my snare bottom signal and to the high hat and to, you know, one of my keyboards. But all I can look at is the entire drum set, the entire bass, all of my guitars and all of my vocals, and that allows me to do broader decisions and really ignore.

[00:23:00] Make it inaccessible to zoom in for myself, so I stay zoomed out for longer. And from here I can do some course broad mixed decisions really easily. Often, I actually work there quite a bit before I then go into the individual groups and say, okay, now it's time to zoom in a bit further, and I really need to look at the second guitar and adjust the volume or the EQ or whatever it is that I need to do.

So the concept of zooming in and out applies to zooming in the edit window. It applies to my mixer and very importantly to my own mindset. And when I get creative. The key is to stay zoomed out and see the entirety as much as possible. There are other tricks that are also used to keep my mind from drifting into zoomed in state, and I will talk about those in another session of course.

So stay tuned, and if you haven't done so, maybe subscribe right below so you get an email [00:24:00] notification once a new episode is out. Good. We need to finish up pretty soon, but there's one more creative thing and one more technical thing that I wanna share today. Let's talk about plugins and the groups of effects that we apply in mixing.

As you all know, I'm a little bit of an old fort. I'm just turned 50, so that means I've been working for a long time and I actually learned the craft with. You know, analog tape and analog consoles, and a lot of those workflows have stuck, and I still hold onto them. I wanna share some of these workflows with you now, and I also wanna explain why I think they're still the best when it comes to plugins and processes.

I categorize all of them into two groups. There's one group. That replaces a signal, and there's another group that adds to a signal, let me explain. [00:25:00] A voice has been recorded with too bright a microphone, and maybe it's a female voice with a lot of sibilance to begin with. So my vocals are very bright to begin with.

In this case, I would take an equalizer, for example. There's other choices, but let's start basic with an EQ and I bring the tops down and maybe the low mids up a bit to straighten out the frequency response and make this voice sound more natural. In this case, I have replaced the previous sound and all I hear is now the processed version or the EQ'd version.

In other words, the previous version, the one that sounded. Too bright is no longer audible. I have replaced that. You could look at a noise gate. Let's say you work with, I don't know, electric guitars and a noise gate is needed because there's a lot of bus on the guitar. So you put a noise gate across and that now replaces the signal with the, uh, process version of the noisy previous version.[00:26:00]

F compressors typically belong into this category. They don't have to be there. They actually live in both, but most of the time they live in this category as well. And all of those effects I simply apply in the mixer as an insert effect right here. For example, I'm using soft tubes console one, uh, soft tubes.

I love you guys. You do fantastic stuff. And then I follow up with the guitar strip and in both cases I will now replace the signal and no longer hear how it was before. Okay, so for so good. Let's talk about the other group of effects. And those were the ones that add to the signal. This could be an echo effect.

Or delay could be a slap back effect. It could be a reverb, it could continue a chorus, and so on. Every time we add those, we actually want to hear both. We want to hear the previous original signal and then we want to add an echo to it, [00:27:00] or we want to add reverb to voice, or we want to add a chorus to bass In this case, we add to it, and whenever I do that, I religiously follow send routing. Some people call it an effects loop. And this is based on a workflow of one of these old school analog consoles. That's exactly how I did it. Compressors like processors and EQs and stuff were inserted via the insert on a per channel basis for time-based effects.

We typically used Aux sends which. Carry the signal sideways into summing bus from there into the effect unit. And then they typically return somewhere on these two channels. Uh, where's it in the picture over here? as a hundred percent wet effect. I'm carrying this workflow into Pro Tools and although we don't have to, I still think it's the best workflow there is.

So let me explain how I'm doing that back to tools. So let's open up, let's say [00:28:00] my drums, for example, and let's have a look at what has received some reverb. For example, over here is my snare plate send. That's where I use an aux send or bus send however you want, call it to reroute, uh, a proportion, or, no, that's the wrong word.

A copy of the snare into a bus that carries the signal sideways to the drum plate. Over here. In this case, I'm using a plate reverb. Snares and plate reverbs. They love each other. And this effect, this is really important to me. It has to be a hundred percent wet solo, uh, or wet Solo means no snare comes through it, but only it's reverb.

That's the only way, uh, it should be done when you do send routing. So that means if I want more or less reverb, I can now use the send control and bring it up or down, which now leaves the snare level exactly as it was, and my snare volume actually doesn't [00:29:00] change. However, the reverb now goes up and down in level.

So what I get now is my dry snare over here. And only the reverb tail means early reflections and reverb tail coming through my reverb channel and none of the actual dry signal. That has a huge advantage.

By keeping it entirely separate, I have gained the ability to process my effect tails completely separate. From the source material, and there are many situations, especially on echoes, where that's absolute gold.

Okay, let's go back to it. So everything that replaces the original source, a processor that replaces the sound I use as insert across the channel every time I would like to add to it. I use Send Routing into a separate return [00:30:00] channel. And extra advantage is that is very easy to open up a cent on another channel and add a secondary signal into that same effect, which also means you don't need as many reverb plugins and most importantly, a few signals share the same reverb, giving the mix some cohesiveness and the belonging together, which is really important.

Okay, last thing. Before we go back to technical things, another advantage of using my subgroups is that I take the, let's say all the drums into the subgroup, but keep them together with their drum reverb and put that reverb into the subgroup as well. when it comes to compression, I love to balance my compression and spread it across several stages. [00:31:00] Instead of doing everything on the source channel, I do a bit of compression on, let's say the kick or the snare, and then there's a little bit more compression on the drum subgroup.

And then I often even work into a master bus compressor or glue compressor, which works very lightly. But on each different stage, a little bit of compression is applied, and I find that when I turn one of 'em off, my kick drum sound sort of collapses, is no longer as I wanted to be. I need all three of them to do just a little bit rather than one process of working really hard for the drums to sound the way I like it.

So that's a very unique workflow as well. Good. Alright. Lots of creative stuff. Hopefully some gold among here, but now we need to move back out of the creative bubble, back into some rational workflows. When it comes to finishing a mix, we need to be technical again. So we need to think about and bit depth, [00:32:00] oh, here's another great topic for another day, and we need to think about the overall gain staging of the mix.

How loud is the mix That's creative as well, but also a bit technical.

Okay, well that was a lot of information today. I hope you got something out of it. Next week we are going to dive even deeper, and I hope you really enjoyed this. Do me a favor. If you took something valuable out for yourself, think about one other person you may know who could also benefit from it, and please share this link with them.

Thank you for being on board. See you next time.