Before Starting the Mix

Before you start the mix, there are several other processes you have to finish. First, the creative process, then possibly extra sound design, then arranging. It’s important to keep these processes more or less separate to go through them smoothly. Don’t dive too deep into the mix early in your creative process, because you may forget your creative idea. Also, if you’re still creating, you can’t make a mix if not all the elements are there. However, it’s useful to keep the mix in the back of your mind while adding or subtracting elements. Adding elements that work well together, or deleting an element that doesn’t work well, has a much bigger impact on your mix than volume, EQ, or any other tool.

Another thing that you can do before the mixing process to make your mix sound better is use high quality sounds and samples. It’s not easy to explain what exactly a high quality sound is, and this depends a lot on the context, but when you take the time to compare sounds, and you develop your ear to hear more, you will find slight differences in quality between sounds. High quality sounds can save you a lot of time in the mix, because they already sound better, so they need less work, and they also usually fit better in the mix.

For an in-depth look at creating a high-quality song before starting the mix, you can check the Creative Production course. For now, let's move along.

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