Weird Monitoring Tricks That Actually Work (Or: How to Make Your Mix Better By Listening to Less of It)
Image by Matt Barber.
Another list of tips and tricks for mixing?!?!? Surely the world needs another of these in the same way it needs more love songs.
Wait…we still do need love songs.
So in that spirit, I’d like to present some less-talked-about techniques that will help you with reframing your monitoring P.O.V. and help ensure your mixes translate everywhere.
These tricks are independent of genre or style, and I’ve come to find them invaluable whenever I’m feeling stuck.
1. Crush It!
Your mix is going to go through multiple steps of dynamic range processing while you are working on it—and likely more steps still, once it leaves your hands.
Mastering, radio, and even some streaming services can and will compress and/or limit your mix before passing it on to the end consumer. If you aren’t careful, the balance and tone of your mix can be heavily altered; A frustrating experience for any artist or mixer.
Some mixers I know preemptively process their mix to remove most of the dynamic range to effectively minimize the damage that can be done later. To me, this is tantamount to burning down your house so you no longer have to worry about whether you left the stove on.
While I do use stereo bus compression, I feel it’s important to keep a useful dynamic range for the song. (How much is enough will depend heavily on genre.)
That being said, there is logic in the “just crush it!” technique that we cause to our advantage—even if we want to keep some life-giving dynamics going in our final mix.
When you get your mix to a place that feels and sounds good, you can apply some TEMPORARY limiting to hear how your mix holds up.
What we are looking for here is how the mix will react to future processing. Throw a limiter on your mix post all other processing and really start to crank it down. Make sure to attenuate your output level so that the new, limited version is the same apparent volume as when the limiter is bypassed. It will become immediately obvious what is overpowering the mix, because sounds that are too loud will distort or make the limiter pump and react like crazy.
A side benefit of this technique is that the results are mostly independent from your room acoustics, as the limiter is reacting to an imbalance that occurs before the listening environment.
Just remember that this processing should only be applied to your monitor path! If your DAW doesn’t have a separate way to process that, be sure to disengage this ruthless mix-crusher before printing your mix.
Pro Tip: It may just be part of the frequency range in a given instrument that is causing the problem and dominating the mix. If the bass is causing the limiter to react in an unpleasant way, but sounds fine when the limiter is bypassed, it’s probably the low end of that bass that is causing the issue. Try reducing the bottom with a low-shelf eq until the mix sounds great with or without the limiter engaged.
2. Filtered Listening
This trick is not only good for creating space in a mix, but is fantastic for training your ears to find problem areas.
A great deal of modern music is absolutely jam-packed with instrumentation that fills up the entire frequency range. Additionally, many virtual instruments are full-range themselves, leaving it to the mixer to filter them down later on to better fit a dense mix. While they may sound beautiful and impressive in solo, they can often be way more than any given production requires and can end up clouding your mix and robbing it of impact.
Much like temporarily applying a limiter to your monitor path can highlight imbalances, you can do the same with a set of filters to more easily reveal areas where masking is taking place, or conversely, where any given instrument is poking out too much.
Since our ultimate goal is mixing is to strike great balances, focusing on a given frequency range can quickly eliminate the guesswork in diagnosing specific issues.
Roll up and down on a high-pass filter and prepare to be surprised. You might not have guessed that the guitars, bass or synth occupied so much space that high up into the frequency range. The same can be true when using a low-pass filter. (…Or for another favorite trick: just listening to the sub).
The bass you hear in the upper registers, or the guitars present in the lowest registers may not sound out of place. However, they may be masking low-level details in the instruments that you want living in those areas, which can lead to a mix that sounds like a cloudy, muddy mess.
The real benefit here however, is to be had by highlighting the midrange using a bandpass filter, or a pair of hi and low pass filters.
While the extreme highs and lows are important, the most critical part of any production is going to be the midrange. The midrange is what will always cut through and always be present on any system. So until some hero comes along and convinces people to stop listening on earbuds, and laptops and phone speakers (bribes? electric shock? public shaming?) we have to make sure the midrange is clear and full. A second set of small, one-way monitors like the famed Auratone can also be great for this, but this monitor filtering technique will help point the way as well; it is always available, and costs nothing.
Pro Tip: This is an excellent technique for shifting your frame of reference and revealing issues and possible solutions. That being said, final mix decisions should always be made when listening to the full range signal.
3. “Separated Stereo”
While much has been said about the importance of mono listening during a mix (which I heartily agree with), I’d like to discuss the paradigm of “separated stereo”.
When properly positioned, the stereo field can create a beautiful image that imbues our music with a sense of depth and width. However, inter-channel issues in our mix can cause masking as well.
Temporarily monitoring only one side of the mix against the other (and then quickly against the entire mix) is a surefire method to solving left to right imbalances.
An added bonus is that this method helps you in understanding how your mix will translate under some undesirable circumstances. If a bar has a stereo set of speakers, patrons on one side of that room will only get half the mix. I have often seen people sharing earbuds (clearly no amount of public shaming will help here).
Please note: This is not an endorsement for making your mix monophonic. Don’t play to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of ways to ensure your mix translates through one speaker or two, without sacrificing width.
What choices do you need to make to have this happen? Separated stereo listening will help you figure that out.
Pro Tip: Try listening to the individual channels through the same speaker. This will help resolve the question of whether the problem is the mix or the monitors, or even in your ears, and will also eliminate stereophonic issues that arise from the room itself.
4. Selective Mute
Often in a dense and busy mix, we find ourselves lost as to where problems actually exist.
While it’s usually easy to tell that an issue exists, with so many interlocking parts, it can be confusing to know where to start trying things. Enter selective muting.
This technique revolves around muting various combinations of instruments to illustrate how the remaining parts fit together, and more importantly, where they don’t.
I find this to be especially informative in regards to masking, and it will often reveal areas where additional editing may be necessary.
Try muting all percussion instruments, or all bass instruments. Mute everything except pads and texture parts. Even try muting all subgroups except your effects returns. You may find a little subtractive eq—or even that cutting a part entirely— can quickly solve your problems.
Pro Tip: Depending on your console or DAW, mute groups or VCA groups can be invaluable here. Take the extra few minutes to set these up as they will allow you to make quick back and forth comparisons, and also help when writing automation or printing stems.
The above tactics can do wonders for your current mix, but are also for educating your ears. Combinations of the above techniques can really help-fine tune your mix at the final stages. By practicing these methods you’re sure to become faster at mixing and at identifying problem areas. And the best part? Each of these methods cost you nothing and don’t ever go out of style. Happy mixing.
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