58 Quick Mixing, Producing and Sound Design Tips
Try a tempo synced tremolo on your reverb return.
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Humanize your shaker and percussion loops by automating a transient designer. Back off the attack in
quieter sections and vice versa.
Present your hook in an almost subliminal way by loading a sample of it into an IR reverb and sending
a rhythmic element to the reverb.
Stereo Trick for mono tracks. Duplicate the track, hard pan, use a compressor on one track and an
expander on the other.
Strings: double the part a few semi tones up/down and tune it back to the target pitch. You'll blend
different samples = more real sounding.
Cut out the reverb for a few seconds to create an almost claustrophobic feeling! Check the verse on "A
Sorta Fairytale"
Any melody line (vocal or instrumental) can be made richer by adding a harmony, sending it to a
reverb and muting the dry sound.
Make a pad or shaker track with verb 100% wet followed by a gate. A dry snare triggers the gate and
gets a very interesting reverb tail!
On drum reverbs, use a transient designer and turn up the attack. It gets you a tighter reverb and
punchier drums without spiky transients.
A track needs more presence? Try brighten up the reverb instead of the dry sound. How does it sound
different? How does it work in the mix?
When using several rhythmic loops, try moving them slightly (in samples or ms) to mess with phase.
Interesting tonal artifacts often appear.
Guitar parts played with a pick on single strings: Transient designers can make the player sound a lot
more confident. Turn up the attack!
Automate tempo and go up a few BPM in the chorus. It adds excitement and life, just like when real
musicians play together. Subtlety is key!
For dry sounds that sound a little detached from the other instruments, put a slap delay (80-100 ms),
0 FB, panned to the opposite side.
Use a filter in the low end to reduce the bass a bit in the verse, turn off the filter in the chorus. The
chorus will have a greater impact!
ABBA used to speed up the pitch of the song (varispeed) and record vocals and then pitch it back to
normal. Try this in your DAW.
Duplicate a track, pitch shift up 1 octave, insert reverb (100% wet) and mix in subtly with the original
for a gentle kinda exciter effect!
You got two guitars or synths panned hard left and right? Put a subtle tremolo on each, one doing
16th notes, the other doing 8ths.
Try inserting a distortion/saturation plugin followed by a low pass filter on an aux before your delay
to simulate a tape delay driven hard.
Try a de-esser before your reverb. Not just on vocals.
Put a compressor on mid-range heavy sounds like electric guitars and synths, letting the vocals trigger
the sidechain, to make room for it.
Put a gate on a pad or vocal; let a 16th note rhythm trigger the sidechain, let the gate attenuate 6 dB
or so.
Tape stop reverb: Record the reverb tail to a new track. Automate (or do in real time and print) a pitch
shift down an octave or more.
When using a delay on a send, put a gate after it and let the dry signal trigger the sidechain. Either let
it open the gate, or close it.
Put some street noise or the sound of a train at low volume behind your drum loop to give it depth
and subtle variation.
Classic vocal trick: don't send the dry vocal track to a reverb, instead send it to a delay and send the
delay to a reverb.
Try an EQ after your delay with a hi shelving cut, followed by a reverb 20-40% wet for some subtle
depth and width added.
Try putting a subtle chorus on an aux before you reverb.
You can have a virtual 3D map in your mind when placing a sound. Front to back - reverb, delay, more
(front) or less (back) high end. Left/right - panning, haas effect. Up/down - lots of high frequencis (up),
emphasis on lower frequencies (down).
Automate the reverb time throughout the track; longer times for the chorus to create more depth and
sustain - shorten the reverb to clean up when there’s a lot of things going on at the same time.
Basic sound design and a great way to learn about audio processing: move the plugins around in the
chain, one by one and listen to what happens.
With an EQ in ms mode on the mixbus, use a shelving filter to cut some lows on the sides. It gives the
mix some more space and lightness.
EQ'ing your delays attenuating at 2-5 kHz will tuck them in to the mix creating depth without being
too obvious.
If you plan to high pass-filter a lot of tracks in your mix, try a 6dB/octave filter. You filter out a lot of
low end without getting too much separation between tracks. It also messes with phase less to have
less steep filters.
Are your virtual instruments locked to the grid? Tap in some subtle delays manually to get some
human feel.
Transient designers are great for recordings made in a bad sounding room. Back off the sustain and
get some of the room out of the way.
Near the end of a mix, note the level of the snare (this is to see if you tend to mix it too loud or too
quiet), pull it all the way down. Push the level up slowly until it sounds right. Do the same with lead
vocals and kick drum.
There’s an idea that you shouldn’t have any compression on the master bus if you’re gonna send the
mix to mastering. If you’re compressing for movement/groove - absolutely keep it there. If you’re
compressing/limiting for loudness - remove it.
Space for vocals: Attenuate vocal frequencies on other tracks (mixing). Move things out of the way,
changing timing or pitch (arrangement)
Layer your vocals with a whisper track. It helps the lyrics cut through and can create a bit of an eerie
feel if you turn it up loud.
Add weight to vocals: Duplicate vocal track, filter out highs and high mids. Distort. Blend in with
original track.
Put a phaser in parallel on your hi hats or shakers loops for a subtle variation to make it sound less
like a loop.
You probably have a lot of unfinished music on your harddrive. It can be a burden for sure. Try using
the old sessions as sample libraries and create cool and unique samples. Suddenly that work was not
in vain.
Vocal production: use breaths creatively, copy an intense sounding one and paste before a phrase or
transition to add drama and intensity. Also works wonders for VO work when there's too much
intensity on a single word; lower the volume slightly and add a big inhalation.
Widen mono track: duplicate track, pan the tracks hard left/right, boost with EQ on one track and cut
at the same frequency on the other track.
Any processing you do to your audio tracks you can do to your reverbs. EQ, distortion, delay, another
reverb, pitch ..
Two similar instruments playing the same chords, use different voicings or octaves and pan them L/R.
It adds width, depth and detail.
A close miked source can sound even more in your face with a short delay on it. Gives your ear a point
of reference.
Adding a tiny bit of attack with a transient designer on the master bus before the final limiter can give
that extra bit of life and punch.
More difference between L and R means wider stereo. Think about this when it comes to microphone
choice, EQ, compression and arrangement.
Boomy low end, mix gets thin when you try to fix w/ EQ? Shorten the sustain of the bass drum/bass.
Edit manually or use transient designer.
For instant inspiration: load up a loop that's preferably kinda cheesy but with great groove and
energy. Compose around it, then delete it.
Make virtual instruments like drums, pianos, etc, sound more natural by turning down the velocity
and turning up the volume
Before EQ'ing your kick/snare, tune them to fit the track. If it doesn't sound quite right, tuning a
sample up or down a semitone can do it.
Sweep with an EQ on the master bus, find the bad frequencies (if any). Then cut 0,5 dB or so from
several tracks at that frequency instead of 5dB on the master bus.
When you’re asking ”How many?”, three is often a good number. Three layers (drums, lead melodies
...), three dubs, three harmony parts, three cups of coffee ...
Using delays in sync with the song (8th notes, quarter notes etc), offset them a few milliseconds to
create a rushing or dragging feel for a section.
Steal the dynamics from a drum track by routing it (mute the output of the track) to the sidechain of a
compressor that’s inserted on anything you want to move like the drum track.
