Mixing In Context Part Two: Don't Solo Your Tracks

Today I want to talk about a very important aspect of mixing in context.

 Putting a track in solo. 

Now, I covered this in a previous post but I think it bears repeating again because people still do this all the time. I used to do this all time. It's a hard habit to break, but when you do you'll be on your way to making better mixes. 

The problem with listening to a track in solo is that no one else will. Nobody listening to your song is going to hear those tracks in solo.
All they are going to hear is the mix as a whole and what all your tracks sound like in relation to one another. This means that your goal should be creating a mix that sounds good as a whole, not tracks that sound great by themselves. 

With that said, there are times where you are going to want to solo tracks. But these times are generally more for editing purposes than anything. For instance, you may have a weird frequency on a vocal track and it's just easier to find that frequency when the track is solo'd. That's fine. Just make sure after you solo that track that you go right back to doing your eq with all the other tracks on. You also may want to do a quick mix of a drum kit so that it's sounding good and cohesive within itself before moving on to the other instruments. 

As you can see, there are always going to be times where you want to break the rules. This is normal and there's nothing wrong with that. But in general it's very important to mix your tracks in the context of the other tracks. This will make your mix sound like one cohesive work and your instruments will sound great together.