Mixing is where most self-taught producers stall. The usual symptom is a track that sounds fine on its own and thin, muddy or quiet next to anything commercial. The usual cause is not a missing plugin. It’s doing things in the wrong order.
Here’s an order that works, tool-agnostic.
0. Stop writing first
Mixing a song you’re still arranging is how you mix the same eight bars forty times. Get the arrangement finished — every part in place, nothing you plan to replace — then start.
1. Gain staging
Set the level of every track so it sits well within the digital ceiling: peaks somewhere around −12 to −6 dBFS, with the master comfortably below 0. This isn’t superstition. Plugins — especially anything modelling analogue circuits — respond to input level, and a signal slammed near 0 dBFS gives you no room to add anything.
The related habit: mix quieter than feels natural. Loud playback flatters everything and tires your ears within twenty minutes.
2. Balance with faders only
Before a single EQ or compressor, get the song sounding as good as you can with faders and nothing else.
Start with whatever carries the song — usually drums and bass, or the vocal — and bring in the rest around it. If the mix works at this stage, the rest is refinement. If the balance is wrong, no amount of processing will rescue it, and most “my mix sounds muddy” problems are three parts too loud, not a missing high shelf.
Spend longer here than you want to.
3. EQ: cut before you boost
EQ shapes frequency content. Two rules will get you most of the way:
- Subtract first. If the bass is fighting the kick, cut the bass around the kick’s fundamental rather than boosting the kick. Cutting leaves headroom; boosting eats it.
- Sweep to find problems. Take a narrow boost, sweep it through a track, find the frequency that sounds worst — boxy, honky, harsh — and cut a little there.
A high-pass filter on tracks with no useful low end (most vocals, guitars, synths) clears space for the instruments that need it. Be conservative: sweep up until you hear the source thin out, then back off.
4. Compression, for a stated reason
Never add a compressor because a track “should have one.” Add it when you can say what it’s for:
- Control — the vocal keeps disappearing and jumping out. Aim for a few dB of gain reduction on the loudest phrases.
- Character — you want the pumping, the punch, the glue of a particular compressor’s behaviour.
Rough starting points for control: ratio 3:1–4:1, threshold set so you see 3–6 dB of reduction on peaks, medium attack so transients survive, release timed to the track’s tempo. Then match the output level to bypass and A/B honestly. Louder always sounds better; the only fair comparison is at equal loudness.
5. Panning and reverb
Panning is the cheapest way to fix a crowded mix. Two elements competing in the same frequency range can coexist if they’re in different places. Keep kick, bass, lead vocal and snare centred; move everything else.
Reverb is depth, not decoration. Use one or two send reverbs shared across the mix, not a separate plugin per track, so everything sounds like it’s in the same room. A short room on drums and a longer plate on vocals covers most songs. Less than you think.
6. Check your work
- Listen on at least two systems — monitors and cheap earbuds, or your phone speaker
- Check in mono. Parts that vanish in mono have phase problems, and plenty of playback is still mono
- Reference a commercial track in the same genre, level-matched. This is the single fastest way to hear what your mix is missing
- Take breaks. Ears fatigue in about 45 minutes and stop hearing problems
Leave the master bus mostly alone and don’t try to make the mix as loud as a released record. That’s mastering, and it’s a separate job — ideally done on a different day, or by someone else.