How Do I Get My Mixes to Sound Huge?

Today I'd like to share a couple tips for how you can widen your mix. Often times when we are mixing or recording we end up with a song that just doesn't sound as big as we want it to. It feels like we are listening to it in a narrow hallway, instead of a big, wide open sound. There are a lot of things you can do to alleviate this problem, but today I'd like to just share two.

Number One: 

Do an LCR mix.

So what do I mean by LCR mix? An LCR mix is a Left-Center-Right mix. It is the idea that when you pan something, you pan it either hard left, dead center, or hard right. Now, keep in mind that this is not a cure-all for your mixes. In fact, there is no cure-all for your mixes. The techniques you use to mix and make your tracks sound better will vary from song to song just depending on the project. However, an LCR mix is a great place to start if you want to widen up your mix.

There are some obvious instruments that should be panned in the center, but in case you don't know, here is a quick rule of thumb:

• Pan the kick drum and the snare in the center
• Pan bass guitar in the center
• Pan vocals in the center

In most circumstances all of those tracks will go in the center. Most everything else, you will pan off to the side. This will most certainly depend on the type of song and how many instruments you have, so don't necessarily apply this to everything. But as a general rule of thumb, this will help widen your mixes. 

Number Two:

Double your instruments. 

In case you don't know, what I mean when I say, "double your instruments," is to do two recordings of the same instrument, and then pan the two tacks hard left and right. This will work very well to widen your tracks, especially on certain instruments. This is a good trick for acoustic guitars and rhythm electric guitars. It not only widens your mix, but lets the tracks you have in the center really shine through. Make sure you don't just do one take and copy it, as you will need two takes with varying frequencies for this to work.

These tips should help you widen your mixes and get your song to sounding a little bit bigger. Again, this is not a cure-all trick and there are times where you will only want to pan something 50% in one speaker or keep an acoustic guitar in the center and so forth. However, on most songs this should help your mixes and take you one step closer to achieving a professional and good quality mix.