In this article we consider ways to get out of a rut when mixing. Is there any truth in the old adage that a mix is never finished, only abandoned? Surely it doesn’t have to be that way! These might help if you get stuck.

We’ve all been there, particularly when mixing our own material. If a mix doesn’t come together quickly you can start to feel that you are squandering your clear-headed objectivity (if such a thing is even possible) and the initial positivity and self congratulation of how great this track is going to be starts to evaporate, condensing down to a stubborn “that’s too much, now it’s too little” over specific details. Welcome to mix Purgatory! Lots of mixes enter, some never leave. Here are some ideas to get back on track.

Use A Reference

This has to be the first item on the list, it’s such a universally recommended course of action that I won’t spend long it. Use reference tracks and set them up in a way which makes referring to them easy. I can’t recommend ADAPTR Metric AB highly enough. It provides all the tools you need for effective mix referencing including comprehensive metering. To do the first of a few namedrops of pro mixers which will populate this article Mike Exeter, regular contributor to the blog and a man who knows his way around a good mix nominated this plugin as the single best thing you can buy to improve your mixes. Try it.

Call A Friend

So many of us work in isolation. Many projects are written, performed, recorded and mixed by one person without it ever hitting another set of ears. While some people seem perfectly comfortable, It’s my idea of hell. We’ve all become so much more comfortable with remote collaboration and rather than sending a file to someone whose opinion you trust, why not use one of the many solutions availble to share a high quality stream. Audiomovers is popular with some of the Production Expert team but if you are in the position to, you might even consider sharing a listening experience with someone else “offline”.

We must all have had the experience of hitting play with someone else in the room and without them even saying anything, just the presence of another sentient being shifts your perspective enough to help you see the solution, or at least properly identify the problem. For some reason it doesn’t work when the studio cat/dog walks in the room, which is odd because their hearing is better than ours…

Even if you dislike the opinion your co-listener shares, ideas generate other ideas and I’ve always found that if I’m going round in circles I just need an external kick start to get back on track.

Bypass Plugins

I call this doing the “Al Schmitt” - Referencing the great man is a shorthand for simplicity. Before Al Schmitt collaborated with Leapwing Audio on a signature plugin, I heard a story that there was a running joke that an Al Schmitt plugin should automatically disable all the other plugins in your session!

We’ve all tried to fix issues by throwing plugins at the track. We published an article Are You Using Too Many Plugins? in which we discussed whether a lot of plugins on a single track was a red flag that there as a mix issue which hadn’t been correctly diagnosed or treated, resulting in over use of plugins which don’t successfully target the issue. There are of course occasions when 6 inserts on the bass is perfectly justifiable but still…

If you’re not sure you’re heading in the right direction with your mix, just bypass all the processing and ask yourself honestly whether you need to step back a few paces? If you are working in Pro Tools try the following keystrokes:

Select all your tracks, deselect your mix bus if you like by Command clicking on the track with your 2 bus processing (Control on a PC). Now hit Shift+2+3. This will toggle all your plugins on selected tracks in and out of Bypass. If you aren’t using Inserts F-J you don’t need to hit 3.

If your gain structure through your plugins is properly set up there shouldn’t be much of a jump in level. Level jumps are unavoidable with limiters on the 2 bus. This is why I exclude that track from the selection. If you think you’ve overdone it, to track down a problem just reduce your track selection and keep bypassing.

Listen From Outside The Room

Perspective is everything when it comes to mixing and for most of us our ability to perceive issues decreases the longer we spend on tasks. This is why taking breaks is so important and why so many people recommend using a mastering engineer. It’s not because they are better than you at mastering (although they probably are) it’s because the aren’t you.

Listening from outside the room is a very old trick and it works. If you need to shift your perspective on your mix, physically moving somewhere else in the studio will do it. I’m not sure there’s a definitive explanation for why this works but I’m convinced that it’s to do with moving beyond the “critical distance” from your monitors. Once you move beyond a certain distance from your monitors the level of indirect, reflected sound equals, then exceeds the level of direct sound from the monitors. In a treated mix room you’re probably best off just standing outside the door.

The point of this is that “big picture” mix decisions can become easier to perceive with so much of the detail pushed back. Balancing the vocal with the track or getting the snare sitting right can become easier from outside. This is something remote control of DAWs from iPads has really helped with.

Andrew Scheps once told a story about how he had a speaker routed to his console which was off on the other side of the studio, facing away from him. He used this to shift his perspective without having to leave his seat. Try streaming to a wireless smart speaker if you want to move the audio rather than yourself!

Mute Some Things

How appropriate this is for client work very much depends on the client but mixes which don’t come together are very often the victim of poor arrangement. With the restrictions of limited track counts effectively gone, if we want to add a 25th track it’s not the issue it used to be back in the days of tape. Like any technology whether or not this is a good thing depends on how you use it and if things are getting muddy in the verse, consider whether you should be reaching for EQ or the mute button?

A story I’ve heard several times about Nashville mixer Vance Powell is how on receiving a mix one of the first things he did to improve it was to mute nearly all of the multiple layers of guitar tracks. It’s a simple approach but it works. It’s self-evident that for something to stand out it needs space in which to stand and it is not the case that more necessarily equals more.

In arrangement terms this can be as simple as if you want something to make an impression, take it away. Then when you bring it back in it really counts. For example set up a “big mute” moment - a couple of beats of silence before the chorus drops, or lose the guitars for the first four bars of the verse. If you have the creative freedom available in your project to make changes like this why not use it?

Buy Something

We seem to spend a lot of time on the blog berating ourselves for being too acquisitive and occupying ourselves buying new gear, particularly plugins, rather than concentrating on what is really important - like working with the tools we already have. This is true but there is a counter-argument that a new toy can inspire, change our thinking and in the best cases represent a fundamental change in our tool choice. As long as new purchases aren’t distracting you from what you’re doing and you’re not spending money you can’t afford to “waste”, then a new tool can sometimes kick us out of creative ruts.

Whether it’s something which becomes a new go-to in your mix template (hello Cinematic Rooms…) or something which you only use once (try our free plugins page for some guilt-free downloads) sometimes changing things up a little can be inspirational. Just don’t let your mixing session turn into a shopping trip!

Most importantly if you feel you’re starting to get bogged down in a mix, stop and change something. Whether it’s as simple as getting a drink to something more drastic, unless you’re one of the few people still mixing on an analogue board you can save your session and get straight back to where you were if you need to, so change things up and get that mix finished.