The most common mistake I make, all the time, is record all day and somehow believe I can knock up a rocking mix after all that fatigue sets in. The times I have finished up, thinking I have a great mix, only to discover the next day with fresh ears, I sucked. Best plan, I guess, break after several hours of recording and come back to mix much later. Recognise fatigue is your enemy and work with this understanding.

Very important lesson! The biggest problem was the leveling in my mixes. As a beginner it was very, very difficult to understand that the mastering will bring up the high mids and highs and all "quiet" elements. Reverbs and delays will be louder. And the most shocking was to hear professionell mixes. They are darker than you think by the reasons above. A mastering engineer told me: "It is easier to make a dark mix brighter than a bright mix darker." That is even in my mind... (dark means not too much bass)

As a drummer, my snare is always about 1 db too loud. Right where I want it!

The previous video you did about deciding what's going to be 'lowest' has really worked for me. I've found focusing on this as early as possible... when I'm arranging / composting & sound designing is very effective, makes mixing a lot easier! Focusing on 'lowest' also being 'simplest' seems like another golden tip... thanks :)

"If you try to have both your kick and bass be dominant there, you're gonna have a bad time" XD FACTS! I realized later in life that I can tune the kick drum to the key of the bass guitar. When those are in sync... its soo crisp man.

All great points and great reminders.

Just want to say a massive thank you as I've been following you for some time and the guidance you provide has meant I've now got my first single coming on the 30th April mixed by myself. When taking it to the mastering engineer I was absolutely terrified, but they actually were pleasantly surprised of how it sounded considering my low cost setup - not perfect by any means - but good enough for us to work together and really bring the track to life. Wouldn't have got here without your help. Thank you so much!

Another great one! I'm going to steal some of this for my students! Thanks Justin!

Such a great material, thank you! I can relate especially to too much top end on hihat and vocals in comparisson to the rest of the instruments in the mix.

Incredible content. So helpful. Thank you!!

Thank you SO VERY MUCH, Justin!

I Always reference your mic tip videos. Really enjoying these mixing discussions. Keep it up

Another very good Video. Thank you, George

Amazing advice! Thank you.

Man... I absolutely love your content. Thanks for all of these wonderful videos!

amazing advice thank you

It’s great to look back at when Instarted mixing and say “ok, been there.. and there also.. also there” throughout the video and then on the flip side, receive the same mix examples when mastering and realize that it’s just the process and it’s great to have walked down that path!

Great tips - the first tip is certainly true - I can vouch for it. My listening environment was fine - it was my sense of hearing that was skewed towards too much sub and low-mids - I simply didn't know how to hear adequate brightness, much less discernment of key frequencies in the mids, upper mids and air. It just takes logging a lot of time mixing. Now, I can hear the difference between 1500 and 1800, or I can hear 4.8k versus 5k. Spectral balance is probably the most important aspect of mixing, including masking/making space and all the effects that come from spectral balance. This was THE breakthrough for me. And once you achieve that you'll understand Chris Lord Alge's answer to "How much compression?" to which he replied "As little as I can get away with". Or, I heard a mastering engineer asked = "How much compression in mastering?" And the engineer said "Preferably none". Notice he said "Preferably" not "Absolutely".

Thanks for this, I just realised I've been making the cymbals a little brighter than the rest of my mix. Time to fix that.

some great advice!

Common problems here, poor vocals (moving forward and backward mostly), noise (sleeves against a guitar, or hum, bad microphone placing) clicks from hitting a bass guitar strings, giving annoying clicks around 2,5 Khz. Another classic, phase problems, like three tracks, just doubled or tripled. And there you go. And still running the PPM till -1dbfs, and distortion as a result. I always ask to record as much as flat as possible. The EQ, compression etc is part of the Mixing/ Mastering. And not to forget, all of the above, Justin thanks again :)

Best advice along with Matthew Weiss'

I got your ad while viewing this video lmao... Thanks for the tips buddy. It was really helpful

This was worth watching, 99% on topic and no need to fwd. Thankfully I’ve learnt these issues but I have one issue that beats me every time, perhaps someone could offer some suggestions. Having a nice clean and good separation in the stereo mix, tried them out on various listen devices, good and bad. The problem however appears when listening to them outside the stereo field, like outside and to the side of my car “with windows and doors open. High end goes and low end is just yuk. I’ve ensured the bass and other low end instruments are in full mono, no reverb or delay. Usually cut 30 htz off the bass and kick and do a cut on the kick at 80-100 htz The interesting thing is even when I sent a couple of mixes to get mastered, they still came back with the same issue.

really good help , thanks !

Common Mistake: Using too much and too many instances of eq during production and mixing to get the right tone. There are plenty of other ways to get the tone you want without resorting to eq all of the time. The problem with eq is that it changes the phase relationship within the sound. If you are dealing with a stereo signal or a multiple miked sound these phase changes from minimum phase eqs will smear the sound, especially the higher frequencies due to their short wavelengths, and clarity will suffer as a result. Mic technique, mic placement, saturation, compression and reverb can all change the tone of the sound without having to use eq. Sometimes you just need to change the instrumentation and sound. No amount of mixing can make a less than ideal sound fit a song better than finding a more appropriate sound/instrument. Lastly, linear phase eqs are a last resort when you need to use eq while preserving the phase relationship. The only issue with linear phase eqs is the pre ringing artifacts.

I tend to boost midrange here and there to make different instruments more present and cut throught the mix ending in very abbrasive mixes... lately checking if it really needs it, mixing in context with better results...

Great stuff! I am going mix by mix for my music videos and learning as I go. Thank you for the help!

Tnks Justin.. Really helpful tips... I have a question : since I don't have a flextone speaker or any of the common mid-range speakers, are there other speakers u cud suggest that I cud also check my mixes on??..especially my mid range.... Tnks!!!

I know I can work on all of this 🙌 and i am haha .... daily 🙌 thanks for the great advice as always 🙌 oh I recommended you to a mixing and mastering Facebook group yesterday day 🎯 I’ll continue to do that 🎯 it’s so important for the learning proses to have a pier critic your work 🙌🎯 I look forward to our phone conversation ✌️💚🔱

Hey Sonic Scoop. My take away from your other video was this: Which instrument you’d want to be “lowest in level”. I now see that you were really talking about the “lowest in frequency”.

SOLID JUSTIN C!!!!!!

About tip #1... What about when the busyness of the kick and bass fluctuates through the track, then what? How do you decide which to put lower?

I think I've recently been going overboard with saturation and/or distortion as I'm discovering gain staging and hitting things just right.

can make a video on how to execute frequency sidechaining properly in a mix and when to use it ?

I think I make all these mistakes!! 🙄 But for me low end is the biggest issue especially because I can't set my studio up "perfectly" yet. So my question is, for a mastering engineer, is it preferable to work on a mix with too much low end, or a mix with too few? And if one acoustic room is not good, what do you think of mixing with headphone and plug in that simulate studio rooms, at least doing it partially to check stuff like lows and highs? Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge, this is always very helpful 👍🙌

As soon as I saw ur tittle I was jumping. Thnks icon

I always thought EQ stands for Equalize, and that's what I try to do make everything basically Equal?

For me the most difficult problem is making each instrument sound like they are playing in the same venue/room. When tracks are recorded one at a time, it is hard to make them sound like they are all playing together. I think understanding reverb is essential to solve this but there is probably other issues too I’m unaware of.

Is it a waste of time recording vocals on an iPad and IOS DAW like Cubasis LE3 with a leased beat that’s been mixed and mastered before you’ve purchased it? If the mic and audio interface are working well and the room has sound deadening materials in place and WAVE file exports ?

Hey Justin, I have a question about oversampling, in mixing or mastering: Not all plugins offer oversampling so on my mix bus or mastering bus, if my last plugin has oversampling, will that take care of everything that comes before it?

After all those years of producing I find balans is all it takes. Maybe some eq. But balancing makes or breakers the mix.

Hey Justin - You mentioned issues in a mix stemming from the listening environment. That for sure describes what im dealing with. The room i have to produce in is simply never going to be a good mix environment for using monitors, even with tons of money in sound treatment. So im just wondering, in your opinion - what are my best options for open back headphones? I would like to avoid spending thousands on a set of headphones (crazy they get that expensive), but something in the $500 range seems reasonable. Do you have any suggestions on what i can check out? PS - I would normally just go to my local music store(s) and demo different cans until i found something with the right sound and comfort - but i emailed all local stores and they have next to nothing in terms of open backs, and even if they did covid restrictions in my area wouldnt allow for this activity.

In you opinion its worth paying extra 150 euro for the shockmount? For the TLM 103 ?

I like the two hands showing us six fingers.

Kick and bass separation...

A lot of my old mixes suffered from a build up of low-mids. Turns things to absolute mud.

"...I think you should definitely try the salmon...." 😂 Seriously: if you enjoy watching these videos and haven't done Mixing Breakthroughs/Mastering Demystified.....what are you waiting for?

Why is there a three minute intro ? It’s mad it’s KZfaq loads of videos are like these.

Tool has the lowest vocal level ive ever heard. But ive never heard anyone complain about it.

you forgot one. the song sucks. that's a big problem too.