What is mixing music

Streaming platforms may sometimes prefer a high res sample rate and a bit resolution, but CDs require Some aggregators call for premade mp3s, and how these are encoded makes a big difference RX, again, has a great MP3 encoder that naturally fights distortion.

Your mastering engineer keeps track of all these formats, as well as conventions behind modern day deliveries. Each set of files is quality-controlled to ensure no glitch gets through. Now, with generalized definitions out of the way, we can cover what differentiates mixing from mastering in a more granular way. While I cannot speak for all mixing and mastering engineers, there are some key differences in workflow between these disciplines, regardless of genre.

Because mixers receive multiple tracks, a chunk of their job, at least in the earliest stage, is organizational in nature—labeling and color-coding tracks, ordering them hierarchically in a DAW, and creating instrument groups and submixes.

Once this is done, a mixer will proceed to the more creative tasks of mixing—EQing, compressing, transient shaping, effectuating, and more. Mastering engineers also need to be organized, but their focus is narrower. A typical mastering workflow goes something like this:. The creative changes that happen during the mastering stage are subtler than those at the mixing stage. Most EQ changes are around 1 dB up or down. Since changes are made to a stereo file, there will be unexpected consequences that need to be listened for.

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Depending on how a production sounds when it reaches the mixer, a full song mix can take anywhere from a day to a week. This time investment requires mixing engineers to develop a routine that enables focus and avoids ear fatigue.

It also requires discipline in the face of external issues, from computer malfunctions to sinus infections. Mastering, however, traditionally takes much less time. An album can be addressed in half a day. The quickness in time is tied to perspective. The mixing engineer takes a deep dive into your music, shaping it over the course of days or weeks. This is by design and necessity: you want the engineer to pay close attention to every little thing in every track that contributes to the vibe.

Mastering engineers, however, aim to provide a balanced and objective perspective, so they try not to get lost in the weeds. EQ, Compression, and Limiting can be found in both disciplines. However, the quality of these devices is different in mixing and in mastering. By default, Neutron Pro offers a broad gain range for its equalizer: with a mouse, you can boost up to 15 dB in Neutron Pro, and cut down to dB.

This is more suitable for mixing. Not so in Ozone Pro. In Ozone, the gain range is sized with mastering in mind: the mousable range is decreased, made subtler for the practice of mastering—you can only drag up to 6 dB and down to dB. The mixing process required tons of expensive gear that only professional studios could afford. Additionally, operating the multitude of audio control boards needed a sound engineer with huge experience.

However, in our beautiful times where everything is digitally available, beginners can definitely try their hands at the virtual mixing panels.

They can obtain raw tracks from any digital audio workstation DAW , and through MIDI-supported instruments , they can put together a rich compilation ready for mixing. For any music enthusiast, there are many benefits to understanding the ins and outs of mixing. The biggest one is being able to produce a presentable song or score at a home studio. Sending this polished product to potential buyers from the music industry is way better than sending them an amateurish recording.

Luck works best for those who are well prepared. Vote count: 0. No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked. Share 0. Tweet 0. Pin 0. What Is Mixing in Music? Table of Contents Show. Understanding What Is Mixing in Music. Can Beginners Do Music Mixing? How useful was this post? Click on a star to rate it! You may also like. What Is Form in Music? Mixing in music is the process in which multiple audio elements in a track are brought together and sonically placed to appeal to a listener.

Mixing makes the song more pleasant and soothing to listen to. Without mixing a song would sound blunt and the instruments would sound out of sorts. In this article, I will go through every step related to how mixing is used in music and audio production.

Mixing music is not just one click of a button. It takes hours to process each element and get things right. This would result in chaos and confusion when adding effects to the tracks and elements of a track.

This is one of the reasons why you have to finish your arrangements and then start mixing from the ground up. If you are keeping the arrangements simple, then you will have less of a hassle in the other process of mixing a song. Leveling a song is also known as the process of gain staging a song.

Gain staging or leveling just means that you are adjusting the volumes of each element to fit them perfectly in the mix. This is where you would change the volume of an instrument or a vocal to appear well in front of the mix.

Gain staging can be a hard task to do when you have about plus tracks in your project. You can tackle them by grouping them one by one. Starting from drum elements, bass and moving towards the other elements of the mix would help to have clarity in gain staging.

Trained audio production engineers will use bus tracks to organize a mix. If you find any individual instruments with issues you can fix them in their separate tracks. All the other tracks can be routed and organized using bus tracks. This saves time and energy while working on a large project with say more than tracks.

Ratio is best described as how much compression is applied after a signal goes over your threshold. Attack and release times is how many milliseconds does it take for the compressor to start or stop working after the threshold level is crossed. Knee is an additional control that changes how gradual compression is applied before it gets to your chosen threshold.

While EQ and compression are often underused and underappreciated, reverb and delay are the effects that are commonly overused and abused. These effects are used in moderation and even in some cases scarcely. Most instances of these effects in a mix are used in a bus. This helps audio engineers make the mix cohesive and everything sound like they are in the same room. Once there are five or more different delays or reverbs, things start to get muddy and confusing. These busses of effects are also usually panned pretty dramatically to help the most important aspects of the mix stay in the middle.

When scrolling through your effect list you may not know how to apply these effects in a mix. The prized tool of every mix engineer in the world is their ear. The ear is trained well to hear subtle differences in the tone of a sound and to decipher what the sound needs.

The challenge is to simply be creative and learn how to use other effects in your mixes to find a new way to approach mixing. One last quick note is that mixing is not the last step in the song creation process. Mastering is the process of taking the finished mix and using specialized equipment and techniques to make a song commercially acceptable in terms of balance between frequency ranges and loudness.

Extremely subtle coloring in a song can take place here too like harmonic-distortion, stereo imaging, and many other techniques. A song needs to be clean cut and controlled.