How do you cope with difficulty mixing?

[mjolnir]

How do you cope when the mix is not working out?
Which techqniques do you use to cope emotionally, psychologically, technologically?

[FranklyFlawless]

Simplify the amount of audio tracks dedicated to each section of the frequency spectrum to make mixing easier. If the source material is of poor quality, redo them with better studio equipment and an appropriately treated environment so you have less work to deal with afterwards.

[mjolnir]

that's legitimately good advice, thanks!

[Constructed Identity]

I read that you are supposed to take breaks to let your ears 'rest' and not become fateged while mixing.

[kritikon]

There's loads of stuff, such as the classic taking breaks, honing down what frequency range your instruments are in and weeding out the clashes, change some octaves - especially this as some hooks sound great on their own generally in octave 2 or 3 but only 1 will sit there in reality. But TBH nowadays if a mix really isn't working out well, I generally scrap the whole thing or at least great parts of it. Mixing shouldn't be so difficult that it won't gel together and I realised years ago that usually it's me trying to cram too much stuff in or using phrases that simply don't go together on the instruments I'm using. I saved myself a lot of brain-ache by just letting it go. If it doesn't work, delete and start over, because it's never going to work, or the compromises will lose the whole feel of what you initially wanted. Kinda brutal but saves you time in the long run. Persistence is not always healthy if it's just stubborness.

I enlightened myself enough to know that if I'm making shite music that can't be mixed well, it's not the tools, it's not my emotional state, it's not wrong filter settings that need fine tuning - it's me making stupid music that won't mix because it shouldn't mix.

[mjolnir]

these are good advices, thanks

[bmanic]

Remember to use reference tracks! Find a track that is professionally mixed and is in a similar genre as the one you are going for. Keep this available in your mix template so that you can reference it at any time.


Here is my current mixing process summarized:

STEP -ZERO- , Organize the project, making it ready for mixing

- name tracks
- group tracks to their relevant groups (drums into drumbus, guitars to guitars bus etc)
- add templates if you have any (like delay/reverb combinations, parallel compression templates, saturation/crushbus templates etc)
- prepare samples for drum replacement (if this is needed)
- edit all audio sources to be glitch free. No clicks or pops or poor vocal/instrument edits allowed from this point onward!! If you are mixing for a client, demand that THEY do this step.. or force them to pay hourly at a double rate if they insist that you need to do this.


STEP 1, the rough mix

Make a rough quick mix of all important elements first. Start with basic volume + pan on all tracks!! Then decide if you want to mix "into" a mixbus chain or mixbus compressor (I usually don't.. 90% of the time I add this at step 2 or step 3).

Then do a basic quick EQ pass and possibly some compression where needed on individual tracks.

Ignore every track that is filler (synth pads, sound effects, short vocal adlibs, huge backing vocals if they are just "ambience/filler", etc)! Only tweak filler tracks volume + pan. Don't spend more than 10 seconds on a filler track!

The most important thing for STEP 1 is to be quick!! Don't start second guessing anything. Just move fast and with intuition. Only add "technical reverb/delay" where needed (meaning that if you have extremely dry and boring audio sources that you KNOW need some space, do it at this step! This is not the time to start to explore creative effects.

Spend a maximum of 60 minutes at this step, even if the project has 100+ tracks! If you can do this basic step in about 20 minutes or less, that is ideal. The trick here is to be extremely quick and completely rely on your gut feeling. Make BIG BOLD EQ moves! Whatever it takes to get a track where it needs to be to fit in a mix.

If you find yourself bogged down at this step, take a 20 minute break then delete all plugins, reset all volume and pan positions to default and start over.

-- Take a minimum of 15 minute break here! If you can afford a longer break, DO IT! --


STEP 2, the creative mix

Start building the tracks artistic vision by automating volume (volume riding creates excitement and gives the mix life!). Then start automating and adding a whole bunch of effects and stuff. Get the filler tracks stuff to do their intended work and make them gel with the important elements.

At STEP 2 you can use quite a lot of time because ear fatigue is not happening the same way here as it should be a creative process, not a critical listening one. This part of the mixing process, this step is in my opinion THE MOST IMPORTANT one. This is where you have the potential to make a really unique song/mix. This step can take several days, if necessary. This is where you "create the songs identity". Big bold moves with effects and automation. If you don't have at least 20+ automation envelopes going, you are doing something wrong. At this step I usually experiment with all kinds of things like distortion, lo-fi processors, reverbs, etc.


-- remember to still take some breaks! I usually have a timer set to 90 minutes and force myself to take 15 to 20 minute breaks. --


STEP 3, the polishing/finalizing stage

For best results I highly recommend doing this step a separate day.

Once the artistic vision and all automation has been done in Step 2, it's time to polish and fine tune the mix. This is again a technical non-creative step, so try to keep it short and decisive. Make quick moves and rely on your intuition. The goal for this step of the process is to make it sound "professional". This is where you add all that secret sauce. This step can also be separated into two separate days if necessary. I'd spend a maximum of around 90 minutes here.. not more than that.

This is where you fine tune the mixbus processing (EQ, compression and limiters) and all other bus processing. This is usually where I subtly tweak a basic digital EQ on every bus group, forcing all the different elements of a mix to gel with one another. I also fine tune any volume automation if necessary. Sometimes automated elements can get lost when you start tweaking bus processing and thus may need some tweaking at this step.

IMPORTANT! It is very easy to over-do this step! Keep it quick, subtle and true to the vision you developed in Step 2. This is NOT the time to re-mix the whole thing!


Cheers!
bM

[mjolnir]

making music has gotten harder for me during recent months
i can barely concentrate
i got shoved out of 32-bit stability into the world of 64-bit which is fine except my most user-friend DAW for MIDI is 32-bit only.
but my OS is 64-bit and sometime the 32-bit VST crash everything. the 64-bit stuff is okay but those are for my weaker DAW.
but my 32-bit DAW is vaporware and the 64-bit DAW never experiences any fixes for it's faulty MIDI.
meanwhile, i can't think of any tune ideas and my mixing skills went out the window while i was struggling with life.
i lost most of my tunes during a tragic loss of my portfolio.
the best days of my musical career and education are in the past.
and something like anxiety and sadness combined gets to me.
i yearn for the musical happiness i used to have but those days are gone and i can't afford most of the brand new fancy stuff and wouldn't know what to do with it anyhow.

[lobanov]

making music has gotten harder for me during recent months
i can barely concentrate
i got shoved out of 32-bit stability into the world of 64-bit which is fine except my most user-friend DAW for MIDI is 32-bit only.
but my OS is 64-bit and sometime the 32-bit VST crash everything. the 64-bit stuff is okay but those are for my weaker DAW.
but my 32-bit DAW is vaporware and the 64-bit DAW never experiences any fixes for it's faulty MIDI.
meanwhile, i can't think of any tune ideas and my mixing skills went out the window while i was struggling with life.
i lost most of my tunes during a tragic loss of my portfolio.
the best days of my musical career and education are in the past.
and something like anxiety and sadness combined gets to me.
i yearn for the musical happiness i used to have but those days are gone and i can't afford most of the brand new fancy stuff and wouldn't know what to do with it anyhow.

You are changing. Your life is changing. One day you will find completely new things. Or you'll catch old things you think you know in a perspective you aren't able to imagine right now. Transformations aren't easy.

May be, try to find completely new instruments that will work for you? Find them, learn them, use them... Start from scratch.

EDIT: There are plenty of free stuff, you don't need money at all.

[lobanov]

It makes sense not to change (revolutionarily change) your workflow when you have things that aren't done yet. But if you have changed it try to adapt yourself to the actual circumstances. This is the first thing to do.

[mjolnir]

thanks guys. it is indeed a struggle.
to be a bit clearer, I get good MIDI recording and quantizing from Windows 32-bit energyXT (no fuss at all)
and good audio slicing from Linux Cockos Reaper (but wonky MIDI issues).

Reaper's mixer layout is kind of wierd to me, but it does work. EnergyXT's mixer is more conventional and makes more sense to me, but I have troubles loading some VST's in EnergyXT unless I cherry pick each one. Reaper seems to load all my VST's and my Linux LV2's and stuff but it's a little overwhelming having so many kinds of plugins sometimes. And I still get crashes on some older plugins.

Last but not least, I like some of the demo VST instruments, but they sure do bite me when the demo trial time runs out and they inject noise into the project. For a while I was just freezing past that, but I can't always do that, and it's harder to do that in EnergyXT.

I'm tempted to buy myself some kind of hardware early next year if I can because I can input in steps faster than in MIDI or WAV tracks.

FL Studio demo works okay but I have difficulty with the interface.
LMMS works really nicely, but I can't get it load any VST's and there's not quite enough clipboard features of the MIDI and items. FL Studio is more advanced than LMMS. But I really love how LMMS and EnergyXT autoquantize my MIDI input correctly.

For a while I tried AKAI MPC software, but it was hard for me to comprehend the interface and then they seemed to stop offering the download/install anymore. lame.

Anyways, that's how it is these days on my system.
If I could just concentrate better it'd be okay. maybe.
I can't even read music notation anymore or play chords and improve like i used to be able to do.

about 10 years of homelessness messed me up.

[Uncle E]

You can buy used Maschine hardware for cheap and sometimes they come with the software license. It feels like using dedicated hardware, has a great auto-quantize, is great for slicing, comes with lots of plugins, and works pretty flawlessly.

[mjolnir]

thanks Uncle E

I probably should get a better controller. I just have mini keys that are kinda hard to play.

Tonight I re-installed EnergyXT and the workflow is easier for me than Reaper and similar to LMMS which I like.
I'm kind of ticked off because the old 32-bit eXT is more stable in some ways than the EXT64 (64-bit) and because I have to reinstall all my old 32-bit VST favorites and use those instead of my recent 64-bit installs. It's frustrating because I went through all this years ago when 32-bit was standard and 64-bit was abstract still. Back then, I had plenty of favorites and they were okay. These days, I got used to 64-bit in the wrong DAW. etcetera etcetera
it's hard to explain.

Anyways, I think this will work out because I'm slowly getting more work done better in eXT as I re-learn it.
I'm still keeping LMMS and Reaper and even FL Studio for the step editor.

I think once I get enough versatile samples and some staple VST bass synths, then I'll be okay.

[Uncle E]

I feel your pain. I've had to re-invent my setup at least 10 times. Sometimes it was difficult and didn't get me much further ahead than where I was before, but there were other times when the transition periods resulted in some interesting stuff that wouldn't have happened any other way. A DAW can be the greatest happy accident machine ever.

[mjolnir]

I feel your pain. I've had to re-invent my setup at least 10 times. Sometimes it was difficult and didn't get me much further ahead than where I was before, but there were other times when the transition periods resulted in some interesting stuff that wouldn't have happened any other way. A DAW can be the greatest happy accident machine ever.

I can relate to that too. I think you're right that it can be good to rebuild.
I got a really good feeling about my home studio again.
I feel like a beta tester sometimes though LOL