Today we're going to elaborate more on a topic we have already started talking about here: The Focus of our mix!
Let's start by saying that if we have applied the 5 rules of the first article we will already know what is the focus of our mix, whether it's the vocals, the drums, the guitars, the synths etc...
Once we have a mix that satisfies us we need to make 2 more trials to check the balance of our mix:
1) Check the mix in mono: maybe the mix sounds incredibly well in your 1000 bucks monitors and headphones, but you need to imagine that roughly half of the listeners will listen to it in less than ideal conditions, like from the mono speaker of the phone, and you need to be ready to spot all the possible problems (for example something hard panned that disappears or that makes some weird interaction with the other instruments or loses balance.
2) Check the mix at minimum volume: now it's the time of the trial by fire, we need to listen to the mix with the volume at the minimum, when it's barely understandable.
What are the instruments that stand out the most? Are they the ones that we expected? If they are not, we need to eq the things we want in spotlight better, moving them towards the most audible frequency area (2khz to 5khz) and carving space in the other instruments.
I remember in the past I have listened to some death metal song that at normal volume was sounding decent, then lowering the volume we realized that basically only the kick remained audible, so the sound guy had to rebalance things a bit, and this way he freed up a lot of headroom for the other instruments without sacrificing too much the perceived kick volume at normal levels.
I remember in the past I have listened to some death metal song that at normal volume was sounding decent, then lowering the volume we realized that basically only the kick remained audible, so the sound guy had to rebalance things a bit, and this way he freed up a lot of headroom for the other instruments without sacrificing too much the perceived kick volume at normal levels.
3) Once the focus of your mix is established, work your way backwards: once you have clear where you want the attention of your listener to go, you need to put the chosen instrument under the spotlight, and make room both in terms of volume and eq through the other ones, according to your priority list; don't let the audience focus on a useless cowbell while in the background the singer is singing the most beautiful melody of all times!
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