Before we get into it, let’s make sure you’re in the right place. Have you ever gotten everything ready for mixing but the actual thought of mixing your song just overwhelms you? Thinking about actually mixing your song feels like climbing up Mount Everest or something? Does this usually lead to procrastination and cause you to sit on a bunch of songs and chasing new beats to write to?

If any of these sound like you, then this post is meant to fix that. It will give you some shortcuts to knock out most of the mixing process. In the last post, we gain staged your vocals. This should have included verses, adlibs, soundfx, hooks, bridges. By doing this we should have a consistent volume on your vocals. But now that your vocals are gainstaged what do we do next?

We start mixing of course. In case you’re not sure where to start with your mix, then this post is for you. I will share two super easy shortcuts that should help you finish your mix pretty quickly.

Shortcut One

First shortcut is my go to settings that I’ve learned from repeatedly mixing my own songs. These aren’t set in stone, just a great starting point.

VOLUME	Vocal Type
LOUDEST	Verses, Hooks
MEDIUM	Adlibs, Harmonies
LOW	Sound Effects

PANNING
Left	Center	Right
Verse Take 01	Verse Take 02	Verses Take 03
Hook Take 01	Hook Take 02	Hook Take 03
	Adlibs
	Sound Effects
Harmony Take 01		Harmony Take 02

After this point when you set the volume and panning close to this, move onto the next shortcut.

Shortcut Two

The next shortcut is all about finding a “professionally mixed” song that sounds SIMILAR to yours. This is called a reference track. Once you find your reference, import it into your session. Bring the volume down to the volume of your vocals. Our goal at this point is to copy what you hear from the reference track. This means you copy the volumes (levels) and panning of the vocals and the beat.


What we’re doing here is copying the mix of world class mixing engineers and copying it onto your songs. This is going to take a lot of listening, pausing, comparing and adjusting. But once you’re done with this, you should have a pretty solid mix.

Just fill these out about the vocals from the reference track if you don’t know where to start. Write what you hear in these boxes.

VOLUME	Vocal Type
LOUDEST
MEDIUM
LOW

PANNING
Left	Center	Right

Copy the settings you wrote above, and apply them to your vocals. After this point you can add the creative sprinkles and twists to make your vocals more unique.

When finished mixing the vocals, then do the same thing for the beat. If you have just the two track beat you can do some basic mixing of the beat. If you want to do an advanced mix and copy all the levels of your reference track, you will need the tracked out files for the beat.

This might take some practice until you get it right, but the more you do this method the better you will get at mixing. As always let me know how your mix comes out!

Until Next Time,