Creative Mixing

I love the technical side of mixing. I love turning all the knobs, setting EQ's, messing with compression, and pretty much anything technical in your DAW or on your console. However, over time I've learned that it's important to try risky mixing. What I mean by this is be creative. 

Far too often we get wrapped up in the technicalities and what we are supposed to do. We forget that mixing and music is an art. It's all subjective. No one gets to set a bar and say, "This is what you have to do to get a good sounding mix." Sure, there are great tips and suggestions out there that we would be foolish not to use. But we need to be creative. We need to take risks!

So how do you start being creative?

Break the rules. 

One of the first things you can do to start being creative with your mixes is to break the rules. Don't be afraid to try new things. Focus on the sound of the song, not just the technicalities. Don't be so overly concerned with what your EQ curve looks like that you aren't even paying attention to what it sounds like!

Use creative editing.

Another thing you can do to help you get creative, is to use creative editing. I'm talking about things like automating plugins and panning. For instance, maybe you want the reverb to kick in louder on a vocal when it hits the chorus. Most DAW's let you automate that. Or you want a mono acoustic guitar during the verse but then on the chorus you open it up hard left and right to make it sound huge. There are so many possibilities. Don't be afraid to try things.

Be creative with plugins. 

There is no end to the possibilities of creative effects you can do with plugins. Using things like delay, reverb, and other creative effects will help you add a whole new aspect to your song. You could, for instance, take a vocal and add a ping pong delay that trails off. Or you could use a stereo reverb on a mono track to widen it up. There are so many different combinations you can do, so try new things!

The whole point here is to get creative. It will help you mentally when mixing too. It'll get you out of that technical rut and into the creative mentality, which is really where you want to be. So next time you sit down at your DAW, get in the mindset of creativity, and try something new.