Common mistakes when mixing: overused plugins and techniques

[Chicken Drummy]

Ignore anyone who says, producers hate me for revealing their secrets.

"Producers hate this one trick!"

[Bombadil]

Thanks, I was thinking of this:

[pluginnow]

I'll point out another mistake:
Pan an instrument too hard left or right, with no possible room for verb and not compensating it on the opposite channel (for example, a delay).
This will result in an instrument that psychoacoustically will be located very very near to the left (or right) speaker, with no space whatsoever.

[t.o.t.s.]

Biggest newb mistake is not reading the manual for anything.

[Vortifex]

Unnecessary compression
Excessive sidechaining
Unbalanced EQ
Elements not given space in the frequency spectrum & stereo field

[plexuss]

Ignoring the fact that "saturation" is distortion and adding to the mix because it sounds loud and fat (and bad)

Excessive loudness, anything over -16 LUFS with 1 dB of headroom is going cause ISPs in reproduction

Lack of using the stereo image in intersting ways - boring soundstage

Not considering the benefits of rendering at 96/24 for all the benefits

Not understanding that there is more to project sample rate than nyquist

Now you got me started...

[heyheycnv]

Quantizing
Beat mapping
autotune
pitch correcting
comping takes
spectral compression

[pluginnow]

Ignoring the fact that "saturation" is distortion and adding to the mix because it sounds loud and fat (and bad)

Agree totally.

I hate saturation, all of it!
To my ears, it just decreases the fidelity of a mix. And in so many terms that are out of the scope of this topic.
I don't care if the best (or not) producer likes it. They usually came with a with a Lo-Fi and 1990' argument, especially because of its "warmth"..

[whassup]

OK kids,
and all the really deeeep pro produca tricks are available in my Patreon!
There you will find all my courses and a free break down of how Madonna wrote "Let it be" for Michael Jackson on her Nintendo.

[pluginnow]

AI boots will love your post.

[bmanic]

In my experience, the most common noob mistake is trusting bad monitoring blindly. As a noob you wont probably even know what good monitoring actually sounds like nor will you know that you can train your ear to become more accustomed to your bad monitoring situation (be it headphones or speakers in a room) by simply training yourself to listen carefully to a few select reference tracks on multiple systems. This means doing active listening, not passive. It means you actually actively "talk to yourself" while listening.. meaning you internalize "Now I'm listening to the vocals and how they are placed within this awesome reference mix". "Now I'm listening to the drums individually within the mix". "Now I focus on the bass and how it sits together with the kick and other bass / low-mid prominent instruments". "Now I'm listening to the high frequency noise spectra of cymbals, effects, reverb washes and sibilance".

Once you've trained your ear for a while, mixing and making actual good decisions, becomes much easier.

Same goes for knowing your tools. The worst advice is to blindly follow "rules" by some random youtube talking heads, or even seasoned professionals. You get pretty much no relevant information from them until you've learned the basics and experimented on your own.

Instead of watching tons of youtube tutorials in mixing, spend that time on using and abusing your basic mixing tool set. EQ, compression, saturation/clipping, reverb/delay and most importantly your level faders. Start practicing by doing very quick rough mixes. Do not spend much time on each. Instead do many of them. This will increase your understanding of mixing much quicker than spending hours upon hours on fine tuning a single mix. There's no point in sweating over the details when you are starting out. It's a complete waste of time. Worry about the nitty gritty details later.

And a little bonus tip: NEVER spend tons of time on a single part of an instrument that annoys you if it sounds otherwise fine in the majority of the mix. Simply automate that one trouble spot with an EQ, level or compression and immediately move on. This seems to be a very common pitfall for noobs. They get stuck on a single phrase, a verse or a bridge or even a chorus and try to balance it from there and then leave all the settings static. Automation is the key to a professional mix. Usually if I see a beginners finished mix I may not see a single automated control. Sometimes you see one or two. Professional sounding mixes have tons and tons of automation all over the place. The cohesive nature of a complex professional mix is entirely an illusion. Things are constantly being changed and moving. If you have a song with 60 tracks, I expect to see at least 20 automation lanes..

[HcDoom]

I get a lot clinical and sterile sounding tracks for mixing lately - and I noticed (asked clients) that they all over-do Soothe and equal plugins, thinking if they remove all the "weird" resonances that instruments / mix will glue better. :/

[Aloysius]

Training your ears is essential. Start with the basic commands, such as sit and stay. All training should be reward based. Giving your ears something they really like will mean that they are more likely to do it again.

[gearwatcher]

Believing binary, non-negotiable advice like "always eq after compression, never before" has any merit in reality, or comes from a point of authority and not mere cargo cult practices.

[Uncle E]

Believing binary, non-negotiable advice like "always eq after compression, never before" has any merit in reality, or comes from a point of authority and not mere cargo cult practices.

The reason EQ is better after compression is because the compressor will need to be adjusted any time the EQ is changed.