Refreshing a Mix

When you produce a song you're listening to the same sounds over and over again. By the time the track is finished your ears can be exhausted. It's possible to complete a mix, but it's likely that it won't be as good as it can be. A common phenomenon is when you finish a song and come back the next day and hate it. The reason this happens is because you gave your ears a break and came back to a fresh mix. There are four ways you can refresh a mix without having to take a break.

The first is to bounce between volumes. Produce and mix the best you can quietly, then see how it sounds loud. Do a little bit loud then go back to quiet. This lets you easily distinguish the levels between each track of the mix. Make sure that you use the same volumes going back and forth. It's also useful to listen to your track with the volume extremely low. This can show you what is sticking out most in the mix, and how much of a difference there is between each channel. If you use speakers, mixing like this is also useful because it won't be affected by an untreated studio.

If you were listening to music with headphones on, you could remove it from your right ear and hear just what's being played in the left channel. If you were listening to music through speakers, you could cover your right ear with your hand but your left ear would still hear what's being played from the right speaker.

This leads to the second way to refresh a mix, cycling headphones and speakers. When you're listening with speakers you are able to process the song through the middle and sides. The middle is the center of the mix, the sides are the space where tracks are panned left and right. With headphones you process a song through channels left and right. You still hear the middle of the mix, but whatever is panned will be felt a lot more than with speakers. A track might sound good through speakers, but with headphones on it might not feel right. Using both headphones and speakers allows you to be precise with how you pan.

The third idea behind refreshing a mix is to switch from stereo to mono. Mono places everything into one channel. It gets rid of all panning and puts everything into the middle. This is another way to set apart the volumes of each track. Typically, I'll set a song into mono to see how the melodic tracks compare with the drums and bass, the rhythm section. I also like to start the song in mono, do what I can, and then switch to stereo and go from there. This can be a great way to quality test your mix, you know you're finished when it sounds good both ways.

The final method is to swap the channels. One way you can do this is to flip your headphones around. Or if you're using speakers, face the other way while you listen to the track. You could also simply swap them in your program. This is straightforward but it allows you listen to the track from a different angle.

Those are 4 ways you can refresh a mix and keep your ears from getting tired. I hope that this makes sense and can be used to make better mixes. If anyone has another idea, or a correction, let me know.

Thanks for reading! Check back tomorrow around 3:00 p.m. for a write up on my favorite beats off of A Tribe Called Quest's first album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.