How do you start your mixes?

[Axell Strad]

Mixing for me starts with three important things:
1) search for gain character which is not crush the voice.
2) search for OH/Amb settings which is not crushing the guitar and voice guys.
3) tweaking for voice which is get on with guitars and cymbals.
These are three things with streaming characteristic that capture all stretching times. So it is important to choose for each own untouched space. After that, you can say the mix is done on 50%

 

[slo77y]

for me my usual routing setup is very important. like the "desk layout". everything is in the familiar spot. that does not mean it gets treated always the same, its just so i dont have to think about where something is.

for me, i have 3 startpoints that developed over time:

(midrange to lows/highs)
1. guitars
2. vocals
3. bass
4. drums

second:

mix WITHOUT any plugins and NEVER touching the solo bus, just balance the dry tracks to each other until you think its impossible to sound better without processing and never touch the solo knob until that time, and start tweaking from there (for example: "there is some crazy 400hz stuff going on, let me see where it comes from" -> fix it -> go back to unsolo and hear for the next problem but always listeing to the full mix)


third:
1 drums
2. guitars
3 bass
4 vocals
5 fx, autmation etc.

 

[zirkonflex]

Funny thing, I recently started to just put some basic ezmix on all the stuff, works great. You get a good general idea of where you wanna go with the actual plugins and how it all sits together, plus putting one or two instances on all tracks takes like 5 minutes or so.

 

[Colin M. St. Claire]

Levels (get em right with the loudest peaking around -8,-6), panning, high and low pass filters everywhere, basic subtractive eq. I try not to solo too much but it's damn hard not to!

 

[EmilDelaRosa]

Really interesting to see how everyone approaches it and I'm glad i'm not alone lol! Thanks guys! Insightful stuff!