Reddit reviews The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production

First of all, you have to decide what you want the focus of the track to be on. You talk about bass a lot, so I guess that's your focus. So start by lowering all faders to the bottom (start with silence).

>When mixing, what are my goals to get my levels at?

Skip to the main part of your song, a part where everything is playing. Raise the fader on your bass channel so that it peaks at about -12dB on your Master channel meter. Now, without looking at any meters, raise the fader of your next most important channel (in EDM, usually the kick) until it sounds good alongside the bass. Then do the same with the next most important channel until all three sound good together and repeat until you've raised all faders by whatever amount.

By the time you're done, you will probably be peaking at -6dB. Don't worry if you aren't, so long as you're not clipping.

Not every part of your song will fit into this mix, but it's a pretty good place to start. Now you get busy with automation in parts like your intro/outro and breakdowns.

>To make my track professional sounding, I'm using a spectrum analyzer, so what do I want the shape of all the levels to be?

Forget about the spectrum analyser. They have their uses, but real men mix with their ears. Professionals mix with their ears. Stop worrying about the numbers (so long as you're not clipping!)

>Is bass supposed to be higher than the rest because it's perceived as lower?

Not necessarily. You might find that your bass fader is higher than the rest, but that's because you made it your focus. It would be different if you were making a rock track, where the guitar or vocals would be the focus of the mix.

>How do I get things like my lead to stand out without squashing hats and other sounds?

We call this "separation," and you do it with EQ. If your leads are interfering with your hats, chances are that they are sharing some of the same frequencies. What you have to do with EQ is separate the frequencies of each channel so that they don't clash. This is where you would use that spectrum analyser, at least until you develop a good sense of frequency with your ears alone. Solo the hats and look at where they peak on the spectrum. Now cut that frequency from your lead with EQ. Don't go nuts, a cut of 5-6dB is more than enough. Now do the same in reverse - look at where the lead peaks and cut that from the hats. The two tracks should now play nicely together without clashing.

By the way, I'm of the opinion that with EDM, where the producer is in full control of the sound design of all the elements of a track, if you need to drastically EQ any track, then it's better to just rethink the sound selection. Why bother trying to force a lead to fit a hi-hat when you have many GB of other hi-hats on your hard drive, or when you have a synth with total control of the frequencies in your lead? It's true, you can't polish a turd, and you can't make two polished turds look good together either.

>Often I test it in my car with a subwoofer and my levels for bass are low but I'm already almost clipping.

It's probably just that other channels have bass information that doesn't need to be there, leaving no room for your actual bass. Since you're now mixing to focus on your bass, this should be less of a problem. To go along with what I was saying about frequency separation it's common to just high-pass filter every channel to about 120Hz except the bass and kick, so that they are the only thing heard in that whole frequency band (which is what your subs are playing).

>I just need like an in depth text resource

My recommendations are The Art of Mixing and Mastering Audio.

• "When in doubt, leave it out." If you aren't sure if you should keep a change you made (tweak a plugin, add a plugin, add a synth, etc) TAKE IT OUT! If you don't, you'll just be causing unneeded buildup.
  
• "Practice makes perfect, but nobody is perfect." If ANYTHING you're doing doesn't sound good, don't look for a special trick! Just keep practicing! That said, you can get stuck in the mindset that your stuff isn't good enough when it might actually be amazing. Be sure to bounce your tracks off people that can offer honest feedback.
  
• "When you mix, pretend you are organizing instruments in a 3D space." A traditional mix engineer pointed me to this book and it has since changed my mixes drastically for the better.
  
• "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." Thanks Picasso, I can't say I like a lot of your art, but there's a lot of truth to this quote when done thoughtfully.
  
• "If you feel stuck while producing, take a LONG break." My own piece of advice from my own experience. I found that when producing for weeks on end, I didn't really end up with much improvement after a certain point. I found that taking a break for weeks or even a month can give you a fresh approach to producing, creating a notable jump in quality. The idea is that you break your old production habits, and develop new ones from simply listening to lots of professional music instead of just your own mediocre work. When you hop back into the studio, your whole approach is revitalized.
  
• "Don't pirate plugins." Aside from the fact that piracy is bad, it changes your perspectives on the plugins and devalues them. I could go on a long rant about this, but basically you tend to carelessly throw plugins on when you pirated them instead of learning what they can do and ONLY applying them in circumstances that need them. EG, you'd be using Pro-Q on everything instead of using your DAW's built in EQ along with other EQs like Voxengo Overtone GEQ and a bit of Pro-Q where it's needed.

Art of Mixing by Dave Gibson has one of the best "layman" approaches to positional mixing I have read. Might be a good start

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

A bit expensive, but it has a large section on EQ that is very good. This book is indispensable. http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Mixing-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

See if you can find "The Art of Mixing" at the library. That book was very helpful.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

This is a great music theory book as well: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Theory-Lifestyle-Paperback/dp/1592574378

No problem I hope I helped at least a little bit.

Based on the description you gave of how the mix sounded phase was one of the first things that came to mind. But without hearing the mixes myself it’s kinda hard to say. You might want to consider posting a link to a sample mix so we can listen and try to identify the issue. I would especially try to find a mastering engineer to listen to it because when you master a track you’re specifically trying to listen for flaws that the mixing engineer missed. I’ve mastered songs that had major issues but after a lot of processing I was able to identify what the mix was lacking or needed adding to. If I could I would go back to the original mixing engineer and tell them which areas they needed to fix so I didn’t need to fix the mix as much when I mastered it.

When I mix I try to visualize all of the different frequencies and instruments in a 3 dimensional box in front of me. Basically the space from the monitors to my face. I learned that at sound recording school. The book “The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production” by David Gibson is a great place to start. It looks like this. A lot of people think that when you mix in stereo(as apposed to surround) that you only have left and right to work with. But if you learn how to utilize both left/right pan along with amplitude and phase etc you can creat mixes that have spacial depth as well. This effect is best experienced with headphones on but can also be heard on two speakers.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

Edit: I found the old documentary on the Art of Mixing on YouTube. It’s kind of a cheesy presentation but definitely worth a look. He describes what I’m talking about really good:

https://youtu.be/TEjOdqZFvhY

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454276462&sr=8-1&keywords=the+art+of+mixing one of my many bibles

This baby is terrific:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

Might want to check it before purchasing:

http://exellon.net/book/The%20Art%20Of%20Mixing%20A%20Visual%20Guide%20To%20Recording%20Engineering%20And%20Production%20(1997)%20-%20David%20Gibson%20Mix%20Books.pdf

An easy way to get started is checking out The Art of Mixing. It seemed like I had years invested to no avail for understanding what I needed to be doing/thinking. http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Mixing-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

Your monitors/headphones can make or break you at first, so try and get good flat response monitors or open eared cans like Sennheiser HD600 on up. The HD600 headphones were really nice for mixing and hearing the three dimensional effects from panning and EQing.

If you're using plugin compressors, EQs, and limiters, try Fabfilter before you go too much further. Quality plugins are like quality monitors.

A good mic pre could save you a lot of headaches. I like the Daking Mic Pre One. Around $500, it's an amazing mic pre that will retain all of your sonic qualities and the hipass filter takes out the mud without losing the thickness of your higher frequencies. There's no plugins that can emulate it.

But speaking of plugins, the Waves SSL 4000 plugins are great and will tighten things up for you and give you more headroom.

The Waves GEQ plugin is really good for being able to see your frequencies in real time and make adjustments. You can make different adjustments to the left and right also if you need to.

On that...the left and right ears hear differently. You will need to hipass and boost mids on the right, whereas the left mids can stay flat and your low mids may even need boosting. It may even be hard to tell without some monitoring headphones, so always good to have those.

The ATH M40fs are really good for around $50. Not as 3D as Sennheiser, but will do the trick for getting your L/R balance.

The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production

Rule 1: do whatever sounds right

Rule 2: do it many times, do it a lot and often

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Also, I would recommend "the art of mixing" or similar, e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543348812&sr=8-2&keywords=the+art+of+mixing .

The Art of Mixing is a neat book that really goes into these sorts of spacial aspects of mixing in a very coherent and intuitive way. It has some great visual diagrams that can really help if you're a visual person working in an audio industry.

In short, depth is produced by manipulating frequencies, volume, and acoustic space.

Finally, here's my blog post on the subject:
The Stereo Bus - How to Create Depth in a Mix

edit
sorry - just realized my answer has more to do with how to create depth in a mix more so than tracking

Modern mixing can all pretty much be loosely achieved by following this diagram from this book. Since you don't have vocals, the drums should be the focal point. The bass and atmospheric synths provide a bed for the drums and leads to do their thing upon.

These are three books that got me started, motivated me, and gave me interesting ideas:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1932929002

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1931140456

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0879308605?pc_redir=1409981012

I like to think of mixing like packing stuff neatly into a box, everything has a space so it all fits. The art of mixing book helped a lot! Patience and practice of course.

This one is really good for visual learners: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456

I've read that Mike Senior one, and it is good as an introduction to basics like what is eq, compression, arrangements, etc., but I feel like it is geared toward people who want to make what the author refers as 'commercial mixes', and this, in my view, limits creativity as a way to think about making music and mixing.

I recommend reading the manual for whichever DAW you use, especially the sections on the stock plugins which are included with that DAW.

I do not think that there is any number of things that can make a mix too crowded if you learn how to use eq and compression. You could literally have a thousand tracks eq'd differently and it can sound cohesive and uncluttered. That is an exaggeration, but there really is no limit if you learn the rules and then how to break them. I just started doing both and having that attitude has helped me get comfortable just creating and learning to mix, trying new things.

Follow the great advice so far in these replies, and until you graduate here is some stuff that you can do.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Mixing-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456 - Buy this and read!

Also get a computer/recording software and a few mics and start recording. They don't have to cost a ton of money. Do you play in a band? Or have friends that do? Just start recording and experimenting and have fun!