10 Ways to Improve Your Mixing Efficiency by Embracing Your Inner Nerd

Increasing your speed at mixing can lead to better-sounding work, more creativity, and more sessions.

I’ve been mixing a lot these days, and in order to keep up, I’ve had to streamline and improve my workflow as much as possible.

Deep inside, I always knew that time efficiency was a key component of the job. But the more I mix, the more I realize just how important it really is.

The more you can free yourself from doing all the little pesky tasks, the more you can focus on your actual craft:

Being creative, serving the music and—perhaps most importantly—occasionally zooming out from the minutiae of mixing to dive back into the production with a bigger and better perspective on the song.

If you can take 30 seconds to dial in a plugin setting instead of 1 minute and 30 seconds, that is one minute saved on a task that you might repeat hundreds of times or more throughout the mix.

So in that spirit, I would like to share some of the tricks that I’ve come up with over the years to help optimize efficiency while mixing. In this post, I’ll focus on working in Logic Pro and Pro Tools, although these concepts apply to any other DAW as well.

The idea here is not to dwell on the tedium of setting up your sessions and mixing templates, but to suggest some immediately actionable ideas that may enhance your dexterity (and sense of nerdy self-satisfaction) while at work on your own mixes. Let’s dive right in!

1. Organize your plugins

I’m sure anyone who has read this far loves having a variety of plugins on hand. And I’m sure you also know that once you start installing your favorite software suites, plus some new demos, plus the ones your friends installed for their own sessions, your computer becomes crowded with a plethora of plugins. This can become very confusing—especially when all you want to do you is just grab the right tool quickly.

So what if—instead of browsing through long lists of software by manufacturer— you could just search by categories alone? For instance, you can simply grab “Plugins -> EQs -> Scheps 73” in less than 5 seconds, rather than scrolling through brand by brand.

This is a function that has been around in Pro Tools since version 6.9, and it’s accessible in Preferences -> Display -> “Organize Plug-In Menus By”.  To make things even faster, you can also “favorite” your most-used plugins by holding the CMD key (CTRL on a PC) while clicking on them. This pins the selected plugin to the top of your plugin menu for super-quick and easy access later.

Did you know this function also exists in Logic Pro, and to an even more customizable degree? It’s under Preferences -> Plug-in Manager. There, you can create your own categories in the left column, simply dragging your favorite plugins into them to create your own customized lists.

2. Create your own mixing template

There is a myriad of articles and tutorials on this topic, and it is not something not to be taken lightly. There is a reason that top engineers so often start off their mixing tutorials with this. When you start experimenting with a good template, you inevitably begin to understand how much easier and just how time-saving it is to work with one, compared to without.

I use a custom mix template in Logic Pro X, where I route all my subgroups—Drums, Percussion, Bass, Guitars, Keys, Lead Vocals, Back Vocals & Effects—to different channels of my summing box. I could never imagine giving it up now.

For some in-depth tutorials on making your own template right here on SonicScoop, try some of the MixCon walkthroughs featuring mix templates from major pros like Marc Urselli, Bob Power, and Joey Raia.

3. Split your tracks into sub-tracks to deal with tonal changes

Jules de Gasperis in his studio.

One of the first things I do now as I’m setting up my session is to try to identify which tracks are composed of one large region, but should not actually be just one region.

This is most often the case on instruments that vary greatly in the way they are played throughout the development of the song.

Take for instance, a guitar part that was tracked live, in which the verses are palm-muted, but which suddenly opens up during the chorus into a very big, sustained and effected chord strumming pattern. Maybe there is even a third, very distinct sound later on the same track!

Common sense tells you that you probably won’t apply the exact same sonic treatments on all of these drastically different guitar parts. So it’s extremely handy to split that one guitar into several different sub-tracks: GTR_verse, GTR_chr, GTR_bridge, and so on.

This way, you avoid the mistake of trying to get away with using just one track, with countless plugin automations at play. Too often, I’ve forgotten to do this and tried to force it to work, bypassing and un-bypassing many plugins, or automating EQ curves to fit all the different tonal changes. Ouch! Why take all that time, when the results are no better?

4. Reach for plugins that are faster to use

Of course we all know that sound quality should always prevail when it comes to mixing. But in today’s production world, where you can sometimes find hundreds of tracks in one session, there is a big argument to be made for ease-of-use when it comes to plugin selection. And you don’t necessarily have to compromise on sound quality either.

For instance, if you find yourself wanting to throw on a multi-band compressor, would you use a Waves C6 or a FabFilter Pro-MB? Often, the best way to answer this is to ask another question: Which one are you able to set up the fastest?

Personally, I feel that the FabFilter will usually get the job done for me in about half the time of the Waves, with a similar (if not better) sound quality. Also, the FabFilter features a wet/dry function that can save me even more time later on, should I need to split the difference on the tweaks I’ve done, dialing the knob back to 50%.

So my advice is to make a habit of weighing your options in terms of time consumption, because once again, every minute saved in dialing-in your settings will add up to a more productive session at the end of the day.

5. Save your own presets

I put this one up next on the list, because sometimes, even though you want to go fast, there are plugins that that can be slower to set up but are worth using anyway.

Sometimes, a sluggish or convoluted plugin can be worth it, especially when it really does offer better sound quality, or will do something that no other plugin in your arsenal can. Fortunately, you can still add efficiency, even in these cases.

In order to offset the time it takes to set these plugins up, I recommend saving your own presets with basic settings that are already dialed-in much of the way, so you only need to fine-tune them later.

One example in my workflow would be the brainworx bx_dynEQ v2, an active EQ that I find to be absolutely great, but to be a pain in the butt to set up! Because of this, I created 3 presets that I usually start from: “Tame harshness 3kHz”, “Tame honkiness 300Hz”, & “Soften treble 6kHz”.

Anytime I start from one of those presets rather than from scratch, I only have to adjust the exact frequency and threshold, saving about a minute of time and precious mental energy which, once again, really adds up over the course of a mix.

6. Find your automation parameters more quickly

Have you every been stuck not being able to find the name of the parameter you want to automate in a plugin or virtual instrument?

Well, there is a pretty simple workaround for this in Pro Tools, that an engineer friend showed me a long time ago: Just put your track in touch or latch mode, start playback, and simply click on the knob you’d like to automate. You will then see its curve (and name) appear in your automation window!

Some plugins actually require you to move the knob for it to appear, while others require a simple click. But either way, it works most of the time, and this technique can be a major a time saver in the studio—especially when some plugins have a list of 50-100+ automation parameters to search through. (I’m looking at you, NI Kontakt.)

7. Know your shortcuts

Okay, so this one is really not so innovative I admit, but no matter how much we sing their praises, the awesome power of shortcuts will always be underrated.

I’ve long had the urge to learn shortcuts for all sorts of programs. Back in the days I was working in a normal-people office, I was seen as “the nerd” for trying to learn every single shortcut in Microsoft Excel! Well guess what: Being a nerd is not so uncool in the audio world, and in a field like ours, you can comfortably boast about your encyclopedic shortcut skills.

For an in-depth walkthrough of some of the most powerful Pro Tools shortcuts on SonicScoop, try the Pro Tools Shortcut Bible: How to Use the 50 Most Essential Key Commands and Pro Tools Shortcut Bible Part 2: Editing Like a True Master

8. Mentally map specific plugins for specific uses

In general, I am a strong advocate for sonic experimentation. Sometimes you might just find the sound of your dreams by throwing a completely unexpected processor on some source. But when mixing, keeping a mental map of what to use and when to use it is very healthy for helping to establish an efficient, forward-moving process.

It’s no wonder why some of the most successful mix engineers keep their huge gear collections dialed in to particular settings. I thought it was weird in the past, but eventually, I realized that if they can afford to use one particular box just for the one function where it excels, why wouldn’t they do so? Think of how much mental space that frees up for making truly creative moves.

While you and I might not to be able to afford to do this with boutique hardware, the point is that you should know what EQ works well on your kick drum, what EQ works for your vocal “air”, what type compressors you want to throw on a bass to add control or articulation, and so on.

For some ideas to get you started down this road, here’s an article I wrote for my Llane Music titled “What Compressor Should I Use, and When?”.

9. Create a vocal sidechain track right away

To help vocals cut through, I like to set up a sidechain compressor on instrument subgroups like keyboards, or guitars, and use the lead vocal as the sidechain input. This allows me to to slightly and transparently duck these supporting instruments whenever there’s singing.

The issue here is that you can only select one track to serve as your sidechain input. So what do you do if your lead vocals are split into many different tracks?

You may have received vocal tracks from your clients, that are already split into many different parts. (“Lead verse”, “chorus vocal”, “bridge” etc.) Or you may have spit up the lead vocal tracks yourself, following the advice in tip #3 above.

Whenever this is the case, the simple solution is to create a separate vocal sidechain track that you can use as a key input for your sidechain compressors throughout the whole song. You can set this up as an aux track, or drag all the lead vocal audio to a new dummy audio track.

All you have to do is select “no output” for this track (or output to sends only) so that it just feeds your sidechain compressors but does not play in the main mix. This way, it’s only there to trigger your compressors, and that’s it!

10. Use a good mouse

Last but not least, one of the key ingredients to being comfortable at your workstation is the quality of your mouse.

I’ve been using a Logitech G500 for years, a type of “gaming mouse” that is not manufactured anymore, but that I’ve enjoyed using for so many years. (It all started in a previous life when I was spending too much time playing video games.)

Do yourself a favor and don’t be afraid to invest some extra bucks on that type of tool. Your work will greatly benefit from it, and you will be amazed at how much you can increase your APMs—or “actions per minute!

Jules de Gasperis is a producer, musician and engineer who lives in Los Angeles.

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