I’ve been producing music for twenty years at this point, and long gone are the days of only finding forum posts telling you to “Use your ears” when I tried to find information about mixing tracks so they would sound good. It wasn’t until the last few years with the explosion of the creator economy has there been a plethora of information (good and bad) regarding how to nail the mixdown on your tracks. I’ve done courses on mixing and studied from different engineers from LA to London.
Avoid The Mixer Faders For Mixdown
I know, this may sound crazy and contradicts everything you know about mixing tracks but I swear by this. Using a Utility device to control the gain of your tracks on an individual and bus level helps you really hone in on different pieces of the mixdown puzzle. I will use multiple utility devices to be able to automate gain changes easier without affecting the overall mix too much.
Audio signals and Ableton’s volume or gain controls particularly use a logarithmic scale rather than a linear scale when adjusting volume. It’s just how audio signals work, even in the analog realm. That is to say, gong from 0db to -1db will have a more drastic effect on the signal than -19db to -20db would have. By using the utility devices to control not just the gain, but also the panning and width of your tracks, you can more precisely control the audio signals to nail the mixdown.
Gain Staging
For the longest time, I was confused why when loading samples into Ableton’s Sampler/Simpler devices, the volume gets set to -12db, and once I implemented proper gain staging, I realized that it actually helps ensure that if you utilize distortion on your kick drum, for example with Soundtoys Decapitator, you can properly drive the kick drum to get usable saturated tones.
I often use Simpler for programming my drum patterns, and so I’ll throw a utility device immediately after the Simpler device to have more control over the volume of the channel before I do any more processing. All of the devices start at -12db, so reducing the signal an additional amount from the default Simpler -12db setting. Recently I’ve found my hi hats commonly sitting around -15 or -16db depending on the samples I chose to use.
If you need some help with reading gain signals or understanding proper gain staging, Volume Compensator is a Max4Live device that consists of two devices Compensator Send (CS) and Compensator Receive (CR). CS measures RMS and CR adjusts output level to same RMS. Another device I would recommend for Max4Live is Volume Buddy, which both help identify volume and gain issues however Volume Buddy works in LUFS and Volume Compensator uses RMS values.
EQ & Compression
The best sounding club or festival speakers have a maximum range down to 29 Hz. Anything that isn’t your sub-bass or bass tones should be low cut around 120hz or higher to help improve clarity in these lower frequencies. I always tend to cut off my sub bass at 29 Hz since I know that’s as low as pretty much most commercial sound systems can go. I always notch around 250 Hz on things as a lot of mud collects around there. On my bass sounds, I’ll additionally notch at around 120 Hz to help the kick cut through. Boosting around the 3kHz range on the kick can also help it cut through when adding that dip.
I frequently use the HyperCompressor from Euromix on a return channel, and send individual groups of instruments and synths to this channel. This is a solid form of parallel or bus compression in action. This helps get a high quality mixdown in a short amount of time in combination with other techniques I’ve discussed.
I will use Pro-MB and sidechain the kick drum on my basses but only to the sub frequencies of the bass, so that the kick really helps come through. I might also add an additional band in the 100-200 Hz range. You can get different effects by using compression and expansion to really help develop your sound and nail the mixdown.
When setting up groups of instruments, for example my drum group and a group of synths, I frequently use the Mix Gel preset in the normal stock Ableton Compressor. I find this helps things gel faster and sit better in the mix than using the Glue Compressor personally. I do use the Glue Compressor for drums, but still include the Mix Gel stock Compressor setting too.
Use Your Ears
This was the piece of advice I hated hearing for so many years, until I learned how to use my ears. Training your ears with what sounds good and what doesn’t helps a lot. Constantly striving for improvement but also knowing that being a perfectionist isn’t going to result in releasing music can be a hard thing to balance for a lot of people. The only way to learn how to use your ears just comes with experience and dedication. You can learn a lot by using spectrum analyzers and metering plugins, but at the end of the day if you’re focused on seeing you aren’t as focused on hearing the actual issues.
If you find these tips helpful, or have any questions reach out to me on Instagram!