Question of the Week

I'm excited to announce a new post series called Question of the Week! Basically every week I will be answering a question on the blog, that you submit. Hopefully this will help to give you relevant information to the type of issues and barriers you may be having when mixing or recording. Remember to submit your questions to info@willsterling.net. Anyways...let's get started!

This week our question is as follows:

"How do I make each instrument stand out from each other, but also blend? I've tried to mix well but the end product always seems to mush together in an undesirable way. I use Ableton if that helps. Thanks a bunch!"

Great question. Let's start off by tackling a couple of the issues you seem to be having.

The first issue you seem to be having is depth. Depth in a song describes how close and far away a sound seems to you. This is really just determined by how loud or quite a track is. So when you mix, you want to create a good bit of depth. In other words, don't have every track at the same volume level. Allow some instruments to sit in the back and act as layers, while other ones shine through. For instance, if you have a keyboard synth track, those are usually get to have in the background just sort of filling the gaps. But something like a lead vocal needs to sit on top of the mix and really punch through. By spending time adjusting levels and creating depth, it will help each instrument to sit together nicely and not fight for attention.

The second issue you may be having is width. Width is just what it sounds like. It describes how wide your mix is and how you have your instruments panned. If your tracks are starting to sound mushed together than there's a chance you aren't giving them a lot of separation. Try using LCR mixing to create a nice, wide, stereo sound that will help alleviate some of those crowded track problems. But don't forget to check your mix in mono and make sure that it sounds good. Often times panning can make you unaware of a problem that would otherwise be noticeable in mono. So be sure to check every now and again.

By creating width and depth you will give your tracks room to breathe and help them sit better with each other in the mix. Hope this helps!

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