One of the cool things about audio engineering is that there are virtually no rules. There’s a common saying in the business—to paraphrase it; if it sounds good then you’re doing it right. Getting experimental in the studio is essential to developing a distinguished sound for yourself and truly mastering the art of the mix. But make no mistake—there is a method to the madness that you’ll want to master in order to consistently deliver good quality. In this post, we will discuss a few mistakes that engineers will want to avoid.

A Bad Recording Can’t Be Fixed

One of the most important factors in putting a good mix together is the quality of the recording. Don’t settle for a bad recording if you can help it. If there are things off about it, you should address the issues by recording over the bad parts again. Your client may be resistant to the idea of going back over some things, but chances are they will be willing to do so if you assure them that the end product will be much better. You may be asked to try to work with a project where not a whole lot can be done to make it sound good because the quality of the recording is so poor. In that event, don’t waste you or your clients time trying to fix it–it’s better to decline to work on the project unless it is done over to an acceptable standard of quality.

Easy On The FX

The last thing you want to do is oversaturate your mix by going overboard with effects. Being too aggressive with the FX tends to douse the mix with too much distortion and things end up sounding noisy. The key to a good mix is to finely tune your levels in a way that masters the balance between good and bad distortion. If you are unsure of what a particular effect does don’t just wing it–take the time to learn about how it works to make sure you are using it properly. When dealing with effects like dynamic and EQ plugins, you should aim for the adjustments you are adding to sound more or less transparent; that is, it doesn’t sound radically different from what the clip sounded like before the adjustment is applied. Rather, the effect should simply enhance what is there to make it fit and sound better in the overall mix. With other effects like reverb and delay, you can take more license to be aggressive and experimental if the occasion calls for it, but don’t get too crazy.

Balance The Bass

Who doesn’t love the sound of a beautifully booming bass? All of the top hits you can name feature an awesomely fat bass line. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the bass is the only star to take the stage on the low-end spectrum. There are many other sounds that are equally as important, and you have to make sure that they all have their own space to shine. A lot of people starting out have a tendency to juice up the volume too much on the low end and this will usually have the effect of drowning out all of the other frequencies, resulting in a mix that sounds muddy and lacks depth. With the bass, usually, less is more. First, try filtering out sounds that are unnecessarily taking up space in this area (e.g. vocals, cymbals, snares, frequencies below 31Hz) and also try to cut back on the bass frequencies that are causing things to sound muddy. Spread out the low-end instruments as far apart in the frequency spectrum as desirable. Generally, you want to have the bass sitting at the very bottom of the mix with other sounds such as a kick sitting on top of the bass. Once the low end has been cleaned up all you need to get the bass to fatten up is to boost the “sweet spot” around 70-90 Hz a few decibels.

You’re Not Finished Until Your Client Says So

As the engineer, you are the one that is large and in charge when it comes to post-audio work. You are the expert and should lead the way in the direction of the mix. Hopefully, your client trusts your ear more than her own and will be satisfied when you bring forward a quality mix. However, remember that you are working for the client, not the other way around. Therefore the mix is incomplete until the client says otherwise.  Expect that they will want to have their own input and make adjustments to the mix. In anticipation of this (if possible), arrange an opportunity for the artist to listen to the mix in-studio so they can offer their feedback before the mix is finalized. Once they like it, then you can consider the mix to be final. Even after this, you should anticipate they may want to make a few more adjustments, so do not reset everything just yet. Leave a window of time available that the session can be recalled in the event the artist would like to make further changes. Make sure to have a policy as to how many edits and do-overs a client can have before you will have to charge them extra for whatever changes they make–your time is valuable and you cannot afford to go over things too many times without there being a price on it.