Quick Tip: The World’s Worst Mixing Advice
Tutorial Details
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Time: 5 minutes
- Requirements: A sense of humor
How do you weed through all the tips and tutorials and decide which one you should follow for your mix? Some advice given isn’t necessarily what you need, since a specific tutorial or trick doesn’t give you the context in which it works.
If you don’t know that a lush 2.3 s hall reverb should be used for slow vocals and decide to try it out for your bass guitar part you are instantly rewarded with a horrible sounding and muddy mix. Not at all what you wanted nor intended when you decided to follow said advice.
That said, here are some of the worst mixing advice you can get. Be sure to not do any of these things and you’ll instantly have a better mix on your hands.
1. Make Your Mix Uneven
All that panning is great isn’t it? You can pan all your drums to one side and they just come out of one speaker all lopsided and groovy. Be sure to have your mix uneven and unbalanced in your left and right master so that you feel like you’re tipping on one side. It’s a great feeling, especially when you’re listening in headphones.
2. Constantly Add More Volume
Add more and more volume to the tracks so that they’re hot and heavy and overloading the master fader. Ending up with a hot mix like this is sure to give your mastering engineer a run for his money as he tries to manage the crazy mix that you’ve made for him.
If your drums start drowning when you’ve added in the other instruments, just push them up and give ‘em more gain! I bet you it’s going to make your clients real happy to listen to a smokin’ hot mix such as this!
3. Use Your Effects to the Extreme
Who doesn’t want extreme effects on every channel. Pile on the chorus, flanger and phaser to make your tracks sound even more interesting.
Better yet, make sure you both add them as inserts and sends so that you can be sure to overload your boring tracks with some cool modulation, wobble and phase. The more effects you got, the better the song must become right?
4. When in Doubt, Add More Lower Mids!
You gotta have a fat mix! In order to compete in the modern mixing world you better start compensating by adding some lower mids to your mixes. Who wants even frequency distribution anyway?!
The best way to find out which mid to add is to scan the 150 – 250 Hz area with a big broad boost until your woofer start vibrating to the extreme. Back off the volume of the speakers a little bit, but be sure to keep your mid boosts as is because that will definitely rock out the dance floor of whatever club you’re bringing your mix to.
Conclusion
So you got these four mixing tips printed out and glued to the wall above your monitor? Because I’m sure, if you follow these tips then your mixes will not only sound insane to everybody who hears them, you might even gain notoriety for breaking the mold and going your own way. And that’s what’s important in the music industry, making waves and doing your own thing!
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By Björgvin Benediktsson
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This post is not only eye opening, but I am applying it to all my mixes as you read this.
Multiple times.
THANKS for your tutorial but i believe that if you want to be perfectly clear, it’d be better :
First: put the bad advices (in red color i.e)
Second: write (in green color i.e) “you should better …..”
If no, i fear that some guys which don’t follow speak english very well (like me) won’t know
what is good or bad in your sentences.
Think about it
SylvainB
I Agree!
It’d be much better to have:
Don’t Do This: “something something something”.
Do This Instead: “Something Something Something”.
Because: “etc.”
I doubt many newbies will understand EQing, so it’d be nice to explain that boosting the lower mid too much will make your mix sound very muddy etc.
I kind of think of this as an intelligence test.
Ok. Ok. Ok. Before anybody blows his speakers or injures himself by mixing(however far fetched that might sound) I must add that this quick tip is meant as satire, or as a joke.
All the advice is “the worst” that you can have. That said, many mixes have some of these things in abundance, but this tip was meant more as a joke and for comedic value rather than concrete mixing advice.
funny thing is… i can’t count the number of people i’ve met who strictly adhere to one or more of these rules. 2 and 3 are the biggest winners.
you guys are dumb.
we need no DO THIS HURP DURP.
we need not’s and we need more.
the title is “The World’s Worst Mixing Advice” so anyone who knows english should know that this is The World’s Worst Mixing Advice.
In general I would advice people to add more bass. Everyone loves bass. You can never have too many bass.
I think the problem with this post is that is is intended to be humorous and really just isn’t that funny. Concept was solid. Could be better on the execution.
Yeah, and also you need to add 6 layesr of basses and it should be sounds during the kick it will be good and smoothy on the dancefloor and if you will play this in the club, people hair should be stir in the wind from speakers..=)
OMG, you forgot about FL’s Soundgoodizer. You should have it on every channel. On important instruments you can add more than one.
I am a singer-songwriter Tally Koren writing to you today about the launch of new single 72 Names (Hallelujah) which will last for 72 days. Over the campaign I’m exploring the significance of the number 72 in lots of different situations and I would like you to be part of it!
My blog today is about mixing, something that I’ve really learnt the importance of through my years of recording songs. If I take the parable of baking a cake – you can have the best ingredients to make a chocolate cake but if you put too much of one ingredient in, over the others it will destroy it, if you over cook it or under cook it that will make a big difference, and it is the same with mixing – watch my video from the mixing room of making of my new single 72 Names (Hallelujah).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIk0-H9vFjg