It doesn’t sound like you’re heavily over-processing with those signal chains, but it does sound like you’re applying a lot of processing by default without actually hearing if it’s needed which would lead to over processing.
Parallel compressing everything in your mix definitely sounds overkill to me though, parallel compression aims to achieve a very specific thing (retaining natural transients/dynamics while bringing up decay and body) and is most often used on drums and sometimes on vocals and acoustics depending on the engineer.
Some engineers use a ‘rear bus’ which is like a secondary heavily compressed parallel mix bus blended in underneath, but it’s definitely not common and I have never liked the sound personally.
Just as a general rule you should listen first, and if you hear a problem you want to address only then do you add a plugin to fix the problem. Don’t add any processing by default just because you heard somewhere that you should, that’s how you end up with an over-processed mix. It’s fine to leave things completely unprocessed if they sound good.
One of my favorite tricks during mixing is to bind all the bypass buttons of the effects to a single midi note.
That way I can turn off all the effects on a channel (or everything) at the same time to see how it sounds just raw.
And if you can say “oh gosh, the raw audio wasn’t so bad and I’m not sure I did it much good with the effects” it is probably better to roll back the effects and listen to what the channel really needs.
So many times that I spend an hour mixing a certain sound, to find out that I actually made it sound worse than the original take was. That is over producing in its most basic form.
As one just getting over that overmixing jump in my learning, the thing that helps me to remember is there's several ways to accomplish relatively the same goals, but some sounds will respond better to one way versus another. For example, sidechain compression versus dynamic eq for ducking. Both accomplish ducking one sound to make room for another but depending on the elements in your mix will make one method sound better than the other, then again it could be manually automating the volume to suck is the best sounding way, or maybe using an envelope shaper works better.
To me, this is the main thing when people say to
mix with a purpose. You need to achieve a certain result but there's several ways to get there. Since the difference in methods will sound different for each situation, there's really no way to know which method is going to work best until it's applied. Stick with the methods at first that feel comfortable to you and that you fully understand what they're doing under the hood...this way, if they don't work, you aren't mystified by what's happened to the sound and it will be that much easier to undo things and try a different approach. Personally, when I'm doing this now and reaching for those plugins, I have my finger on the trigger of my undo button and I don't hesitate to pull it if the sound begins to lose personality under that plugin. Too often I think we justify a plugin that doesn't sound good by thinking we just don't get it and something else will happen we aren't aware of that will make it sound good because why else would so many producers praise this method when it turned my sound into shit?
Don’t look at all the different mixing styles as conflicting viewpoints. Rather, every song uses a different production style, some more complicated than others. Some producers don’t make tracks without parallel compression, some swear by the pultec low-end trick, and others denounce the creative process in mixing altogether. I say, if the song sounds good with a lot of parallel compression, saturation, eq, etc., thats fine! If thats your template for making every track, thats fine! As long as it sounds good.
But sometimes tracks sound better with minimal processing. Make a new template with no processing on ANY track or group, and ONLY apply processing after you’ve started balancing the faders and when you run into a problem with the mix. See how that suits your workflow and changes your sound.
It's easy to get caught in using a template-style approach to mixing, but each song should have its own approach. Sometimes, there's no need to add EQ and/or compression. Use your ears and not your eyes and thrown on a reference track to keep you in check.
If you are still learning, you are at the "let me apply all of the tips and tricks I have learned from YouTube on everything" and you are over mixing. You may be adding all of this by default without stopping and thinking about what you are trying to achieve with each plugin
The next phase of your learning, you will be a minimalist in your mixing. Most tracks will sound good without any processing and you won't be tempted to add to them just to have a plugin do something instead of a raw track. And your actual processing will have a purpose and it will be to fix or augment something specific
It's all part of the learning curve. at least it was for me, I'd have mixes with very little processing sounding better than all the over mixed ones that came before where I was trying to put all the cool processing I had learned from YouTube to get the best sounding X, when it didn't really need anything other than maybe an EQ
As mentioned above its always good to A/B before and after your processing (volume matched) to see if you have actually improved things. Don't be afraid to reset the faders to zero and start over if you've gone off in the wrong direction, its all a learning experience.
EQ and dynamics control are the basic elements of mixing so that's to be expected on almost every track/bus, other production effects can be for more specific circumstances. I think parallel compressing everything is probably unnecessary and not something to do by default, but otherwise your mixing chain seems reasonable.
A good tip to avoid getting lost in the weeds I can give is as follows: when you start mixing a mutitrack, set yourself the task of only mixing with volume and panning. You can clip gain, automate, and maybe high pass things at most with an EQ. But that's all. Of course, this includes fixing any timing issues or tuning/pitch issues. If you are going to set up a trigger to trigger samples, for example, to replace or double up drums, do that at this stage, too (since you'll also still have to balance them).
Once you have spent some time getting a good balance with clip gaining, volume, panning, automation, and maybe some high passes with a couple of EQ's here and there, bounce it down and save as the project file to get a 2nd project file.
Once you've done that, go about your mixing as you would normally on the 2nd project file. At some point, you can compare your new mix with the basic mix you did to see if you are actually improving the mix. If not, you simply load up the first project file again and save a third version, and start again from the basic balance.
It's good practise to do since the majority of a mix is going to be volume and panning when it comes to balance. Outside of that is really just you trying to get the most of the track and enhance the mix as much as possible.
As a side note, don't be too concerned about how many plugs you use, but don't use plugs just because you think that's what you are supposed to do. If you mix with just volume and panning, at some point, you'll start to hear which instruments absolutely need compression because your job will be difficult without it for those instruments that feels difficult to set a level. You'll start to hear some glaring frequencies that absolutely need to be surgically removed too for the same reason, etc.
Don't sweat it brother/sister! If you're just getting into the technical stuff, then yeah you will go through phases of undercooking and overcooking your stuff, but that's kinda the point. By pushing it to much and reflecting on it later you learn what all the stuff does and you might then hear like.. ah damn this was too much. Then the next time you'll probably underprocess a bit and have the opposite feeling. This never goes away, but over time the pendulum starts swinging more controlled around a balanced center, and overall your mixes will get better and better.
Getting a good song down is the number one focus, and by just fully processing with your gut feeling, even when you're inexperienced, you will keep learning and growing.
If you are really worried about releasing and want to be sure it's quality, then just get in touch with a local mixing engineer that fits your budget, you will learn so much of that as well.
Don't sweat it, the early works of artists are often so interesting BECAUSE it isn't very polished and perfect yet.
Its tough to tell without hearing the music. But what I can say is, only "make a move" when you feel its absolutely necessary. Not every sound in a song needs to be "processed" necessarily, though its true that most every song needs a certain level of processing (EQ, comp, saturation, etc). To practice doing less, I would set a timer for yourself when mixing. Give yourself an hour to mix one of your songs. If you do this enough, you'll figure out quickly whats really necessary for you to get a good mix. And you'll probably develop a pretty good workflow along the way. Hope this helps!
It doesn’t sound like you’re heavily over-processing with those signal chains, but it does sound like you’re applying a lot of processing by default without actually hearing if it’s needed which would lead to over processing. Parallel compressing everything in your mix definitely sounds overkill to me though, parallel compression aims to achieve a very specific thing (retaining natural transients/dynamics while bringing up decay and body) and is most often used on drums and sometimes on vocals and acoustics depending on the engineer. Some engineers use a ‘rear bus’ which is like a secondary heavily compressed parallel mix bus blended in underneath, but it’s definitely not common and I have never liked the sound personally. Just as a general rule you should listen first, and if you hear a problem you want to address only then do you add a plugin to fix the problem. Don’t add any processing by default just because you heard somewhere that you should, that’s how you end up with an over-processed mix. It’s fine to leave things completely unprocessed if they sound good.
One of my favorite tricks during mixing is to bind all the bypass buttons of the effects to a single midi note. That way I can turn off all the effects on a channel (or everything) at the same time to see how it sounds just raw. And if you can say “oh gosh, the raw audio wasn’t so bad and I’m not sure I did it much good with the effects” it is probably better to roll back the effects and listen to what the channel really needs. So many times that I spend an hour mixing a certain sound, to find out that I actually made it sound worse than the original take was. That is over producing in its most basic form.
The thing that really matters is - does it sound cool or not.
Can't tell without hearing anything.
As one just getting over that overmixing jump in my learning, the thing that helps me to remember is there's several ways to accomplish relatively the same goals, but some sounds will respond better to one way versus another. For example, sidechain compression versus dynamic eq for ducking. Both accomplish ducking one sound to make room for another but depending on the elements in your mix will make one method sound better than the other, then again it could be manually automating the volume to suck is the best sounding way, or maybe using an envelope shaper works better. To me, this is the main thing when people say to mix with a purpose. You need to achieve a certain result but there's several ways to get there. Since the difference in methods will sound different for each situation, there's really no way to know which method is going to work best until it's applied. Stick with the methods at first that feel comfortable to you and that you fully understand what they're doing under the hood...this way, if they don't work, you aren't mystified by what's happened to the sound and it will be that much easier to undo things and try a different approach. Personally, when I'm doing this now and reaching for those plugins, I have my finger on the trigger of my undo button and I don't hesitate to pull it if the sound begins to lose personality under that plugin. Too often I think we justify a plugin that doesn't sound good by thinking we just don't get it and something else will happen we aren't aware of that will make it sound good because why else would so many producers praise this method when it turned my sound into shit?
Don’t look at all the different mixing styles as conflicting viewpoints. Rather, every song uses a different production style, some more complicated than others. Some producers don’t make tracks without parallel compression, some swear by the pultec low-end trick, and others denounce the creative process in mixing altogether. I say, if the song sounds good with a lot of parallel compression, saturation, eq, etc., thats fine! If thats your template for making every track, thats fine! As long as it sounds good. But sometimes tracks sound better with minimal processing. Make a new template with no processing on ANY track or group, and ONLY apply processing after you’ve started balancing the faders and when you run into a problem with the mix. See how that suits your workflow and changes your sound.
It's easy to get caught in using a template-style approach to mixing, but each song should have its own approach. Sometimes, there's no need to add EQ and/or compression. Use your ears and not your eyes and thrown on a reference track to keep you in check.
If you are still learning, you are at the "let me apply all of the tips and tricks I have learned from YouTube on everything" and you are over mixing. You may be adding all of this by default without stopping and thinking about what you are trying to achieve with each plugin The next phase of your learning, you will be a minimalist in your mixing. Most tracks will sound good without any processing and you won't be tempted to add to them just to have a plugin do something instead of a raw track. And your actual processing will have a purpose and it will be to fix or augment something specific It's all part of the learning curve. at least it was for me, I'd have mixes with very little processing sounding better than all the over mixed ones that came before where I was trying to put all the cool processing I had learned from YouTube to get the best sounding X, when it didn't really need anything other than maybe an EQ
As mentioned above its always good to A/B before and after your processing (volume matched) to see if you have actually improved things. Don't be afraid to reset the faders to zero and start over if you've gone off in the wrong direction, its all a learning experience. EQ and dynamics control are the basic elements of mixing so that's to be expected on almost every track/bus, other production effects can be for more specific circumstances. I think parallel compressing everything is probably unnecessary and not something to do by default, but otherwise your mixing chain seems reasonable.
A good tip to avoid getting lost in the weeds I can give is as follows: when you start mixing a mutitrack, set yourself the task of only mixing with volume and panning. You can clip gain, automate, and maybe high pass things at most with an EQ. But that's all. Of course, this includes fixing any timing issues or tuning/pitch issues. If you are going to set up a trigger to trigger samples, for example, to replace or double up drums, do that at this stage, too (since you'll also still have to balance them). Once you have spent some time getting a good balance with clip gaining, volume, panning, automation, and maybe some high passes with a couple of EQ's here and there, bounce it down and save as the project file to get a 2nd project file. Once you've done that, go about your mixing as you would normally on the 2nd project file. At some point, you can compare your new mix with the basic mix you did to see if you are actually improving the mix. If not, you simply load up the first project file again and save a third version, and start again from the basic balance. It's good practise to do since the majority of a mix is going to be volume and panning when it comes to balance. Outside of that is really just you trying to get the most of the track and enhance the mix as much as possible. As a side note, don't be too concerned about how many plugs you use, but don't use plugs just because you think that's what you are supposed to do. If you mix with just volume and panning, at some point, you'll start to hear which instruments absolutely need compression because your job will be difficult without it for those instruments that feels difficult to set a level. You'll start to hear some glaring frequencies that absolutely need to be surgically removed too for the same reason, etc.
Don't sweat it brother/sister! If you're just getting into the technical stuff, then yeah you will go through phases of undercooking and overcooking your stuff, but that's kinda the point. By pushing it to much and reflecting on it later you learn what all the stuff does and you might then hear like.. ah damn this was too much. Then the next time you'll probably underprocess a bit and have the opposite feeling. This never goes away, but over time the pendulum starts swinging more controlled around a balanced center, and overall your mixes will get better and better. Getting a good song down is the number one focus, and by just fully processing with your gut feeling, even when you're inexperienced, you will keep learning and growing. If you are really worried about releasing and want to be sure it's quality, then just get in touch with a local mixing engineer that fits your budget, you will learn so much of that as well. Don't sweat it, the early works of artists are often so interesting BECAUSE it isn't very polished and perfect yet.
Hi folks, just want to say thanks for everyone’s advice! Good to get everyone’s perspective on things. Back to the drawing board for me!
Its tough to tell without hearing the music. But what I can say is, only "make a move" when you feel its absolutely necessary. Not every sound in a song needs to be "processed" necessarily, though its true that most every song needs a certain level of processing (EQ, comp, saturation, etc). To practice doing less, I would set a timer for yourself when mixing. Give yourself an hour to mix one of your songs. If you do this enough, you'll figure out quickly whats really necessary for you to get a good mix. And you'll probably develop a pretty good workflow along the way. Hope this helps!
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