The affordability of computer recording and editing software has enabled legions of home recording enthusiasts to record their own music without having to venture into expensive professional recording facilities. User-friendly programs mean that recording tracks onto a computer's hard drive is a relatively simple affair, even for a novice, but taking these individual tracks and mixing them to form a cohesive song is a little more complex and requires adherence to a few golden rules, along with plenty of hands-on experience.

Clean Up Your Tracks

Isolate and play each of your recorded tracks, listening for any obvious audio problems like clicks, pops and buzzes. These often occur at punch-in points and will add unwanted and distracting noise to your mix. If the problems are too severe, it might be worth re-recording the part. Such problems will only become more apparent the more you listen to them, and you will be listening a lot during the mixdown process, so if you can edit them out with your recording software, do it now.

Evaluate Your Tracks

Just because you spent considerable time working on, and executing a part for a song, doesn't always mean it belongs in the mix. Try to be brutally honest with yourself when listening, and ask yourself if the parts are really improving the song or simply adding noise to it. Sometimes removing part of a recorded track and just having it come in at certain spots in the song can make it more effective; other times, simply removing it completely can unclutter a mix and let the song really breathe.

Rhythm Section

Getting a good drums and bass mix will give you a solid foundation on which to build. Starting with the drums, pan the overhead tracks hard left and right, with the kick and snare drum remaining in the center. You can slightly pan the hi-hat and floor tom to give a nice, natural stereo image of the drum kit. When you have a balanced mix of the drums, gradually bring in the bass guitar track, keeping it centered, and raise the level until it meshes nicely with the drums. If you have a little trouble with the kick drum and bass guitar sounding a little muddy, you can experiment with adding and subtracting a little equalization (EQ) in order to carve out a little space for each of them to sit. This will give you more low-end clarity and punch to your mix.

Guitars

Panning is especially important when it comes to making guitar tracks heard in the mix. If you have two electrics, pan one mainly left and the other mainly right; this will give them separation and help enhance the stereo image. If there's an acoustic guitar track in the mix, try cutting its low frequencies. They'll not be heard anyway, since they'll be competing with the drums, bass and electric guitars, where these frequencies are more beneficial.

Vocals

Bring up the lead vocal and leave it panned to the center. Use effects like reverb and delay sparingly. Adding more of these effects tends to reduce the definition of the vocal and will move it further back in the mix; a drier signal will give it more presence. When the level of the lead vocal sounds right, bring in your background vocals. Experiment with the panning and EQ to give them a little separation from the lead vocal.

Fine Tuning

When making final adjustments to EQ and effects settings, make sure you do so while the full mix of tracks is playing. If you do this while tracks are isolated, you'll not get a true picture of how these adjustments are affecting the mix as a whole. Whenever possible, try cutting EQ rather than adding it; you'll be creating more space for all of the instruments and voices.

To Compress Or Not To Compress?

When you finally have a mix you're happy with, you have the option of compressing the whole mix to give it a little extra sonic punch. Whether you should do this or not depends on the purpose of your recording. If you're putting together a demo to use to solicit gigs, compressing your mix is worthwhile. If you're going to be putting together a CD to sell, you'll be sending out your mixes to be professionally mastered, in which case you're better off leaving the mixes dry. Once you add compression, it's there to stay, and you'll make the mastering engineer's job more difficult. Remember they have access to high-end compressors, and using them is their specialty.

Source:

20 Tips on Mixing

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