Overview of My Mixing Strategy

When I start a mix, I'm usually interested in cleaning up any frequency conflicts between instruments that may have slipped by me when tracking. From there, I try to get a decent level on everything and add a little space before I start smashing it with a compressor and limiter on the 2 bus (the part I hate the least). After my tracks are smashed, I always have to go back in readjust levels and usually thin out various tracks to make them fit better in the mix. My effects are usually messed up too so I have to make adjustments to my reverbs, delays, or any other retarded ideas I came up with while mixing.

Usually, at this part, my mix isn't all that far off the mark, but many times there is something missing. A lot of times the tracks aren't sitting right. Even though, I use all sorts of hidden delays and reverbs, the tracks don't usually feel ?alive?.

Run Every Track Through A Delay

When the mix almost there, but just not quite right, it's time to fire up a delay on an aux send. Lately, I've been using a Waves plugin for this, but you could probably just about any delay. I like to use 2 taps and pan them quite wide. I'll do a tap tempo to get the delay to fit with the tempo of the song. This is a great way of hiding the delay a little bit. Of course, if the song wasn't played to a click and speeds up and slows down, you have to turn the effect down considerably.

I solo the delay aux send and, of course, I hear nothing at first. Then I grab the kick drum and send. Of course, it sounds really stupid being ran through a delay panned very wide like this, but that is the whole point. Then I'll grab the snare, overheads, toms, etc. You have to be very careful with drums because they are transient based instruments. This means that you will hear a pop.....pop...pop. If you were using a RMS based instrument such as strummed electric guitar, the taps of the delay wouldn't be so obvious. So with that in mind, I keep the aux sends on the drums down very very low.

I go through the entire list of tracks until I've used pretty much every track on the session. I want every track to go through this one delay. If you do it right, you can get a nice blend between all the instruments in the delay channel itself. It sort of sounds like your in a bathroom at a live show or something.

Use An EQ To Suck Out the 125-400Hz Mud

After you have a decent mix, in the solo'd aux send, start to blend it into your tracks. You'll probably find that drums have to be down quite a bit. You may also noticed that if your bass is loud in the delay, you'll have mud city. This is certainly not going to do a damn thing for your mixes. So grab an eq and suck everything out between 125-400Hz. I get fairly aggressive with mine. I may suck out 12dB or more. This a trick that is designed to simulate naturalness on the final mix, but that may require some unnatural tweaking and hardcore EQ usage.

Push The Limit, But We Aware There Is A Limit

You'll notice that as you play with the delay send, that some instruments need more or less of it than others. I like to go back to my drums and push the limit. I turn the delay up too loud on the drums until it sound ridiculous. Then I back it down slowly. There is a magic point where the delay seams to disappear. That's the spot I like. I don't want to go any further down than that, though. I want to be right on the edge.

The same goes for vocals, guitars, bass, and keyboards. Push the fader up until it sounds stupid and the back slowly until you can't obviously hear the delay. I usually end up with vocals and lead guitar the loudest in the in the delay, but rhythm guitars sometimes are the primary delay user. You may even find that some songs on drums call for quite a bit of delay and actually sound good this way. ?When The Levee Breaks? comes to mind.

Conclusion

By using just the right amount of delay with the low mud sucked out, you can add lots of excitement to your mixes. You may find that the effect isn't mega obvious, but that's okay. When you turn it off, you'll probably notice that vocal reverb isn't quite right and the guitar doesn't fit right either. However, when I turn it back on, most of these problems tend to go away.

I've used this trick quite often over the years and I find myself using it more and more these days. To me, a mix doesn't sound finished until I use this trick. Some songs call for it more than others. Of course, following the same methodology and then yanking back on the aux return should allow you to knock it down if necessary.

Lastly, there are no rules for this mixing thing and what works for one person certainly won't work for another person. Let me know if this trick improves your mixes. I'd love to hear about it. If you have any off the wall mixing tricks that you'd like to share, by all means send them my way!!