10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days: Day Three - Automation

We are officially three days into our 10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days series! Today we are going to look at using automation for processing effects and panning to help you add more dynamics and creativity to your song.

Mixing Tip:

Automate your effects and panning to achieve more creativity and dynamics in your songs. 

Automation is a widely used tool. If you don't know what automation is, it's basically automating the level of a particular signal. It is often used for vocal levels. Often times a singer will sing louder on a chorus than in a verse and so the vocals will need to be automated so they are at a nice, consistent level throughout the song. But did you know you can also automate effects?

This means when you have a reverb, delay, etc. on your track, you can automate how much is on that track at a particular part on the song. This opens up the door to a ton of creative options. For instance, let's say your song has a real spacey bridge. You could automate some reverb and delay to be pretty strong at the bridge and then dialed back down afterwards. You could also automate reverb on a chorus to make it a little bigger. You can automate virtually any plugins. 

Not only can you automate effects, but you can also automate panning. This means that you could have a track panned hard left and right for a chorus and go back to the center for a verse. But why would you want to do this? 

It adds dynamics

Nobody wants to hear a song that doesn't have any dynamics. Dynamics are what make the ears pop up and really listen. So how could you use automation of panning to add dynamics? Let's look at acoustic guitar for example. Let's say you recording two acoustic guitar tracks so that you can double them. During the verse, you could have only one acoustic track playing panned up the center. When the chorus hits, you could have the other one come in, and both of them panned hard left and right to really open up the chorus and make it sound huge. This also works with electric guitars. 

It adds creativity

Not only can you add dynamics automating panning, but you can add creativity to the song. Have you ever heard a song that had a sound bounce back and forth between the left and right speaker? That can sound pretty cool, and really surprise the listener pulling them back into the song. You can use panning automation to do this. It's these sort of areas that it's our job as mix engineers to add creativity to the song. This gives you the opportunity to add a little something the listener didn't expect.


Next time you are in your DAW or at your mixing console, think how you can use automation to add creativity and dynamics to your mix.


Looking to get your recordings ready for mass distribution and radio play? Your next step is mixing and mastering. We can help! Check us out at - http://willsterling.net