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Mixing your song
What is mixing?
When you made a recording of your song(s) it may already sound great but not yet like any of the commercial songs you find on vinyl, CD, or streaming services like Spotify. This is where the mixing process starts, and this is one of the most important steps in music production. Mixing is a specialized job that requires years of knowledge and experience. Audio mixing is the process of joining all individual tracks (e.g., (background) vocals, kick, snare, guitar, bass, keyboard) into a single cohesive stereo track. The joining of these tracks is a creative process that involves many decisions and audio processing, and it requires much work to have the individual tracks sound well together. During mixing, each track’s frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are considered, adjusted, or enhanced. It also involves adding effects like reverb, delay, distortion, and others. In addition, vocals are generally improved by optimizing their pitch, reducing excessive prominence of sibilant consonants, and reducing plosives. Mixing may involve some editing (e.g., improve timing, remove noise) of the tracks, and generally automation of volume and effects is used to allow for more complex mixes and to ensure that the individual vocals and instruments stay audible within the stereo mix.
Prior to mixing you (and your band) already went through the creative, intensive, and time consuming process of composing, lyrics writing, arranging, and recording. Therefore, the decision of handing over your recording to a mixing engineer for the next stage may be done with mixed feelings. However, being a musician myself and having played in live bands for many years, I am familiar with this feeling and will treat your music as it was my own. Prior to the mixing process we will discuss your aims with the song, and once I have a draft mix you can of course provide me with feedback. From my experience with mixing projects, I know this approach works well.
My approach
I mix completely in-the-box (i.e., on my computer) using Cubase and industry-standard plugins. This provides me with virtually unlimited possibilities to provide you with a very high quality stereo mix that is also suitable for the final stage of mastering. Moreover, it allows me to quickly recall the mix session for making further revisions based on your feedback.
Prepare for mixing
This is the easy step. You must provide me with the individual tracks of your recording. Each individual track should be provided as a 24 bit / 44.1kHz (or higher) a WAV or AIFF file. Just put all these audio files in a zip archive and send them to me by email. You can use WeTransfer if the zip file is very large.
In addition, it is helpful if you have a rough mix to have an indication of how you envision the tone of the different instruments and the balance between the instruments. If you don’t have a rough mix, then we will discuss prior to mixing.
What do I offer?
If you have a recording (of your band) that needs to be mixed (and mastered) then drop me an email to inquire about the possibilities, or contact me via Fiverr if you prefer. If you have multiple songs to be mixed I will make you a special deal.
I will provide the final mix as a 24 bit / 44.1 kHz stereo audio file (uncompressed wav file) and as a a high quality 320 kbps mp3 reference file. Other files can be provided as part of my mastering service.
If you are not satisfied with the first draft mix then let me know within 2 weeks and I will be happy to provide you with a revision based on the comments you provide on the mix.
Pricing: see Fiverr
You can review some of the work I did [here].
