Seperating "mixing" from the "creative process"?

[tomtom1]

If you try to do the arrangement and mixing yourself, i.e. you are "artis"t and "mixer" in one person, does it make sense to separate the mixing? You sometimes read about mixing advice like setting all faders to zero and then starting from there. But if you have already made decisions in the creative process, should you throw them overboard? What is your opinion about it?

[Jac459]

Hi, not an expert but generally what I keep is all the side chaining, unmasking of frequencies, reverb, etc that I have done during the creative process.

And then yes, I restart the whole volume and pan part from scratch while iterating on the sidechaining/reverb/eq-ing part.

Restarting the level and panning allows me to adjust some EQ-ing I would have done too quickly during the creation process. Same for the reverb, saturation, compression I may have.

[Jac459]

One important point I forgot is referencing with other tracks, I generally start during mixing because by definition during the creation process you loose subjectivity.

Then again when I do mastering, I like to review my mixing based on my mastering (for example instead of EQ-ing the master I will try first to rebalanced by playing on volumes (and some times side chaining)).

I think if you are very good you can be more straight forward but I need that personnaly.