How To Improve Your Mixes and Masters In Less Than 10 Minutes
... Without Expensive Plugins or Hardware!
If you are an audio producer and want to improve your mixes or masters, I have something special for you.
Today I’m going to share with you the #1 technique I use in all my mixing or mastering sessions.
If you want to improve your mixes and masters, after you listened on time to the entire song and made some notes about the techniques you think you should use to improve it, the first thing you need to do is to apply an equalizer and cut the bad or ugly frequencies.
Let me explain.
First, you can use a stock EQ from your Digital Audio Workstation.
But, I recommend using a transparent equalizer, that is - one that doesn’t apply too much or any coloring, …and that is if you have such an EQ in your secret toolkit.
If not, just use a stock plugin, you’ll be just fine. But, I’ll show you one EQ I like to use in such scenarios and how I use it. Here I have a stereo mix from Wamlo.
Let’s listen a bit.
As I said, after you listened to your mix one time, the first thing you want to do, whether you’re mixing or mastering, is to apply some subtractive eq. One of the EQs I like to use for these particular scenarios - is bx_digital v3.
If I would have the entire mixing session - I would put the EQ on the mix bus and start cleaning up the mix. In this case I have a stereo mix, for mastering, therefore I’ll put it on the mastering bus. But you can use this technique in both cases, mixing or mastering. After you listen to the song one time, pick the busiest part of the song - that is where the most instruments are playing and start searching for bad frequencies.
Let’s say this is the busiest part of this mix. The next thing you want to do is to search for the bad frequencies. In simple terms, bad frequencies are those frequencies that you don’t like hearing or bother you. So, let’s find them and cut them a bit.
Now, let’s adjust the volume of the plugin after applying it, because as we cut some frequencies - we got a slightly lower volume. There you go.
Bypass the plugin from time to time to hear if what you are doing - actually improves or not your mix or master. Now, depending on what you are listening to right now - you can hear that we are on the right path.
Next, as a quick bonus technique - you can and should take this technique to the next level. If you can, and your EQ has this option - clean the MONO and the Stereo section of your mix separately. Let me show you how.
So let’s say that, so far we took care about the center part of the mix, or the MONO SECTION. Now it’s time to repeat the same process on the stereo section. Let’s bypass the plugin and hear if there is a difference. And you notice as we cut some frequencies, the processed mix is lower in volume, so we’ll have to compensate a bit for the lost volume.
So there you have it. We cleaned the mix a bit and you can hear that with these tiny eq cuts - we improved just a tiny bit the mix. And in mastering, it’s all about - adding tiny improvement steps which brings you to polished masters.
The thing is that, you won’t need to use this technique on every mix, because if you have a great mix to work on, you won’t need this. On the other hand, on some mixes you will need a lot of cutting, for example, but in this case, as the mix is already pretty good, we made only some tiny adjustments.
My advice is however - to check every mix using this technique and then move on to the next step.
So, this is it. I hope this strategy will help you in your mixing and mastering journey.
Until next time, Stay Cool and Make Great Music!
-Adrian Milea
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