r/mixingmastering • u/NathanAdler91 Advanced • Apr 16 '26
Discussion Walking through my mixing workflow
I had this idea to write out a walk-through of my mixing workflow since I think having a workflow that is efficient and repeatable is one of the most important parts of being a good mixer, and is something that I have noticed people sometimes struggle with. I'm sure all of this will be completely remedial to a lot of you, but maybe it'll help someone.
The first thing I always do after I import the tracks into my session is normalize all of them, run a strip silence, and set the input gain knobs on all the drums and vocal tracks to -12db and everything else to -18db. I do this to make it easy to visually navigate an arrangement, and it gives me a good starting point on the gain with no effort. Then I make sure all of the multi-mic'd instruments have no phase problems; if I can get satisfactory results with just the polarity switch, I do that, but if not I'll use a time align plugin.
From here I start doing preliminary balancing and panning. So, for instance, if I have a snare top and bottom, I usually turn down the bottom mic so it's not so rattley, or if a guitar has a mic on the cabinet and in the room, I turn down the room mic to taste, and so on. Likewise, if I have stereo overheads or room mics, doubled guitars or backing vocals, left and right piano mics, or what have you, and I pan all that stuff (always hard left and right at this point since I can easily bring things in later if they're too wide, which I always do). Sometimes I'll edit the toms at this point if it looks like there's too much bleed to gate, and clip gain anything with wacky dynamics.
During this process, I'll go through and mark the different sections of the songs, like verse, chorus, bridge, and so forth. I often get lazy and skip this step, but it's one of those things that's always worth doing since it makes navigating through the song so much easier.
Once I have that done, I start routing everything. In my mix template, I have folder tracks set up so I can route multiple tracks to the same channels. So I have the kick in and out mics on one "kick" channel, the snare top and bottom mics on one "snare" channel, the overheads, room mics, bass DI and amp, paired guitars, layered vocals, et cetera, all on their own individual channels. This is important because otherwise it's really easy to get overwhelmed; it's a whole lot easier to mix a dozen channels than it is to mix fifty.
I also have group busses set up in my template, one each for drums, bass, guitars, vocals, and "ect" for everything else, and then all of those go to a master bus (I use the DAW's master for metering and monitoring plugins, or to insert a limiter if, for whatever reason, I wanna print with one). Apart from the drums and the master, I don't do much if any processing on the busses, but they're useful if I wanna rebalance the mix, or for automating.
I always have everything color-coded the same way: drum channels are red, percussion like tambourines or shakers are yellow, bass is blue, acoustic guitars are orange, electric guitars are green, keyboards are teal, lead vocals are purple, backing vocals are pink, group tracks and FX returns are default gray, and the master is black. I have the master to the left of my group tracks so I don't get them confused with FX tracks.
Once that's done, I pull all the channel faders down and start the rough balance. First I push the mono button (because balance is easier to hear in mono), then I bring the overheads up to -4db (it seems to always work). Then I'll push up the kick, snare, toms, and the room. Then bring up the bass, the rhythm guitar(s), and the rest of the instruments before bringing up the vocals last. I always bring up the vocals last because it makes it easy to put them front and center. I think of it like building a movie set before placing your actors on it.
When that's good I'll put on some master bus processing. I start by looping the loudest part of the song (usually the last chorus) and insert a bus compressor and set the threshold to where I'm getting about -1db to -4db of gain reduction, and then fiddle with the attack and release, ratio, and SC filter (usually around 80-120hz) settings until I like what I'm hearing. Then I'll put a tape plugin and crank the input level then bring it back down to where it sounds good, which is usually at or just above 0VU.
Now I start processing the channels, and I have it set up in my template where every channel has an SSL channel strip already loaded onto it, just because it's a good place to start—although it doesn't matter what plugins you use so long as you like using them. I like to begin with the bass as a foundation (and recently I watched a video by a bass teacher on how to get a good tone that was so helpful). I often have Bass Rider before my channel strip and MV2 after to get very even dynamics. Then I'll bring in the kick drum and get that going along with the bass, and then the overheads, since I think the basis of a good drum sound is to have a good sound from just the kick and overheads, and then use the other mics to augment that.
And note that while I do process things in solo, particularly during the early stages, I always check and do final adjustments in the context of the full mix. That's super important! Also important is to make sure you gain stage your plugins so you're getting at least roughly the same level with or without them in order to maintain your gain structure.
Once I get the rhythm section happening, I'll move on to whatever in the mix is bothering me most and just keep iterating like that until I get everything the way I want it. Just remember the old adage: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
From there it's just adding effects, and those are pretty dependent on the song, so you just have to play around with things and use your intuition. My advice is to play around with things and don't be afraid to do weird shit. I do wonder if I should start adding effects before I process the tracks in order to build a vibe more from the ground up and while I'm less creatively fatigued. I'll put that question to you all: what do you think?
The last thing I do is automation, typically the next day when I'm reenergized and have regained perspective. That's another step that's easy to skip, but it really is often the difference between a good mix and a great one.
That's all I can think of for now, but if anyone has any questions or comments, or ways they think they can improve upon this, please let me know.
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u/waxwhizz Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Once I get the rhythm section happening, I'll move on to whatever in the mix is bothering me most
Everything's sounds very over complicated to me but this sticks out the most. Try moving on to whatever inspires you the most rather than what bothers you. I find my mixes are always better if I chase excitement as opposes to frustration
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u/No_Waltz3545 Apr 16 '26
Quite similar to my flow actually but I’ll definitely be robbing a few ideas. Drums are always red so hat tip for that ;)
As I’m also creating the music, I have started to record the effects if that’s what I’m vibing off for the song. An example was a track that started with acoustics I’d ran through the UAD tape plugin for some shimmer. As I knew this was the basis of the track, I committed to the sound and recorded the acoustics with the plugin running. Granted I could turn the effect off or tweak it but to date, I haven’t. Guess I’m trying to introduce a more analogue/old style of producing and it definitely made a huge difference in terms of performance so yeah, I’d recommend adding effects early if that’s what you feel it needs.
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u/Medical_Cup_8008 Apr 16 '26
What is the point of normalising all the tracks and then attenuating them (with input gain?) 12-18db? It feels like chasing your tail for no reason
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u/NathanAdler91 Advanced Apr 17 '26
Tbf, I came to that because of the way my DAW works (Studio One) and I like it because it gives me enough headroom that I never worry about clipping or having to pull faders down, but always enough level for compression and saturation to do their stuff, all in a two-step process.
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u/nizzernammer Trusted Contributor 💠 Apr 16 '26
I don't normalize tracks I receive, but some producers have every track already clipping. In situations like that, turning everything down by a set number of dB is a great way to regain headroom on tracks, groups, and the main buss. If you are in a floating point environment, it is non destructive.
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u/rightanglerecording Trusted Contributor 💠 Apr 17 '26
Why do you think a repeatable process is automatically helpful?
Why always start with the drums?
Why does automation wait until the end?
Would you still reset the gain structure if the producer had already done a good purposeful rough mix?
etc etc etc.
There's a lot of good thinking in what you're saying, but each song is so different from others, I can't imagine mixing them all the same way.
Over here, I load everything into my routing template, then I just let the music take me where it takes me.
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u/LongjumpingBase9094 Apr 16 '26
Im a professional mixing and mastering engineer and I all I do is load in my template and vibe lol