Balance Your Mix in Under 6 Minutes

►► Download my mixing guide for FREE here: bit.ly/3JObNxB
In this video, I show how to rebalance a mix in 5 minutes. Ish 🫠. Very useful if you get lost!
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Cheers, and happy producing!
Will
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#ableton #mixingtips #mixingtutorials #musicproduction

[@Bl4ckbunnymusic]

This is probably the best ever utorial I've found! Biggest was probably the reverb mixing! Thank you mate!

[@EDMTips]

Thank you, I am really glad you liked it! 🙂🙌🏻

[@phadrus]

Great walk through; I preferred the clarity and depth in the re-mix. Would love to see more videos like this. Very very helpful. The static mix is so important to get right and there aren’t enough videos on YT focused on it like this. This is the foundation of a good sounding and loud mix.

[@EDMTips]

Cheers, and I am glad it was helpful!

[@OzgunOfficial]

Nice one man, thanks for sharing!

[@seanconleyy]

Another value packed video Will, as always thank-you!

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, Sean, I am glad you liked it! 🙂

[@Dubsteppah]

This is the most important and useful production video ever, for me, the gain staging volumes is what I needed, thanks, who else needed to hear -12db on the kick and also -12db reduction on the reference? Thanks so much, I am stoked to try this out

[@EDMTips]

You're very welcome, and I am glad you found it helpful! Perhaps you can benefit from my gainstaging tutorial too, if you haven't seen it already?

[@Dubsteppah]

@@EDMTips yes, that's funny you mention that video, I commented on that one months ago because it helped me SO MUCH! More so than any other tutorial ever has!I am 100% sure that your videos are the most useful, and most important out of all the synth-Tubers to watch. You're such a nice person and so easy to get along with, I just love everything you do homie !

[@Alesh22]

every one of your videos are so insightful and helpful! keep it up brother, you've helped me so much

[@EDMTips]

Stoked to hear that! Thanks as always for watching and supporting the channel 🙂

[@DJPastaYaY]

I can always rely on you for great tutorials like this 💪💪

[@EDMTips]

Happy to hear that! Thanks as always for watching and supporting the channel 🙂

[@veetoutas]

Can't wait until you have 1 mil subs. You deserve it. Love from Lithuania

[@EDMTips]

Thank you so much!! I really appreciate the support 🙂

[@ale-wt4xn]

Wow thank you! could you make a 5 minute master video of this track please? so we have the full tutorial on mix & master😁

[@christopherkouri2317]

I'll second that request! Great idea

[@EDMTips]

Great idea, I will add this to my list :)

[@lexflp]

Nice idea

[@devashishpareek5642]

This is the best mixing lessons till date, covering the most important technique🙏🏼🙏🏼thank god you made this

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, and I am glad it was helpful! 🙂

[@allentompkins5119]

Fantastic tutorial. I'm inspired to create a template today! Thanks for the multiple plugin tip as well.

[@EDMTips]

Hell yeah! Go for it, Allen! 🙌🏻

[@maxb4057]

your an excellent teacher, hats off!

[@EDMTips]

Thank you, Max, I am glad you found my videos helpful! 🙂

[@bdeesbeats]

This video is AMAZING ! Thank you so much.👍👍🙏🙏

[@EDMTips]

You are very welcome, glad you liked it! 🙂

[@jthorpe4droid]

Awesome video mate!

[@EDMTips]

Cheers, glad you enjoyed it! Anything else you’d like to see me cover?

[@motry]

That was fantastic! Thank you 😁

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, I am glad you enjoyed watching this 🙂

[@jakebsweet]

Work Fast. Make EDM Tips. Say No! Great Video once again Will!

[@EDMTips]

Cheers, Jake, I am glad you liked it 🙂

[@Lance_G]

Astounding how every video actually teaches game changing principles 🙌✨

[@EDMTips]

Thank you, I am glad you find my videos helpful 🙂🙌🏻

[@Razorider1]

fantastic breakdown!!!

[@EDMTips]

Thank you, I am glad you liked it! 🙂🙌🏻

[@6Litz_]

🎯 nicely done 🙌🏼

[@EDMTips]

Thank you, really appreciate the support 🙌🏻🙏🏻

[@FuChungKu]

Brilliant video Will. The big problem here is if using a Sultan + Shepard track as a reference, it always makes us feel our tracks are garbage in comparison. Proceeded by many hours of clogging up the project with plugins in hope of salvaging something half decent. 😏

[@bobrv8]

I'm pretty certain Sultan + Shepard didn't make great tracks straight away and probably had imposter syndrome. Keep producing new music following Will's tips and you'll get there one day.

[@emf2482]

@@bobrv8 some of their earlier stuff was def shite..in fact the better the ref track the harder you work

[@TheMAU5SoundsLikThis]

Only mix your song when it’s finished - and promise yourself it’s finished, and only mix.

[@DJTwenty2020]

The problem is we will never ever achieve as good masters as professionally mastered studio tracks… no matter how hard you try.. your bass etc will never sound as good. We can get close though

[@reginaldtechno]

Analyse, gain stage, sample swap (drums etc usually kick), EQ and compression. Usually fixes most problems.

[@blupnthr]

Thanks for these videos, I watched most of your videos. May we know a way to cancel harmonics using EQing?

[@timzero]

Nice one Will....saves a bit of faff though if you use Span's underlay feature (set to different colour) to view mix and reference in a single Span instance. Is there a reason you choose to use two windows ?

[@javierjimenezgonzalez6750]

Vaya curso de masterización acelerado!! Para mí si fue record!!! Gracias por compartirlo!!!

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, glad you liked it! 🙂

[@Bthelick]

I personally advise skip the -12 bit. Balance both your track and have the ref at zero or else your setting yourself up to fail when you try to raise the level later. If you balance/mix at zero then you can use any obvious clipping as a sign of mix inbalance. That way once you've stopped all obvious clipping (usually just by managing your sub frequencies correctly) the track will be effectively automatically mastered. That's how I've been releasing for a decade anyway, works a treat.

[@EDMTips]

Surely your mix would be clipping big-time, though (unless you have a limiter on your master channel when balancing)?

[@Bthelick]

@@EDMTips visually maybe. You can get it to a stage where you are only clipping micro transients which are too fast for the ear. (Same as good limiters do anyway) Which is far more transparent than limiting. limiters can react to rogue digital peaks and duck sounds far more obviously than a transient of 50 samples being brightened. I've released un mastered 'clipped' tracks for a decade now, not even in the perverse pursuit of stupid loudness, I just find it's by far the most transparent way. Even if you do decide to out of limit to later it will be having a far easier job and almost not touching the track after you've done this.

[@marksherwood726]

hey bclick - are you saying then that you dont use a final limiter? just mixing to zero point and any overs into the red are fine because that kind of distortion is better than limiter distortion. hope i make sense lol i recently downloaded a beatport track with the exact same thing clipping max 1.5 db in places.

[@Bthelick]

@@marksherwood726 yes you got it, bear in mind that the best 'transparent' limiters (like ozone max etc) employ intelligent clipping under the hood any way. Although what you downloaded off beat port is not that. Once a clipped file is rendered at anything below 32 bit floating point precision that is where the clipping occurs, that file can no longer go past zero. What you are seeing there is reconstruction clipping from either reading the "true peak" level or from it being an MP3 (again see my video for why daws clip) The aim is to only let the drum micro transients over, they should be too fast for the ear, or even benefit from the brightening of the temporary square wave. The groove is still paramount. But be warned I've been a professional for over 15 years it still takes good ear training to pull off (like any good music feat)

[@AforismiDAutoreAD]

@@Bthelick Hi, I'm a your follower subscribed to your channel, do you have a video that explains this process? In this video I didn't understand the process very well. If not, could you make a video with the process you describe in this comment?

[@Dutimus247]

On Span, you can check your mix with others on the same tab. I think Dilby has a vid on it. Pretty neat.

[@EDMTips]

Thanks for sharing! 🙂🙌🏻🙏🏻

[@Dutimus247]

@@EDMTips Thanks for your help over the past year or so. Help me out a ton!

[@OfficialBUDDVH]

Best tips on KZbin . Hopefully you still doing your courses

[@EDMTips]

Thank you! Yes, I am :)

[@larsb.nielsen4481]

Thanks Will🤩

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, Lars, glad you liked it! 🙂

[@ripperthecrooks6428]

I saw somewhere a video where the kick was just kissing the limiter and was also brought down to -12db and you add some drive just before the eq. Anyway I got this habit of setting my kick at -12db. Cool stuff

[@EDMTips]

Cheers, glad you found it helpful! 🙂

[@jorisvdstraten]

SPAN (at least the vst2 version) offers a way to show the reference as a second layer inside the same plugin. You can set it up by routing the reference track to the sidechain input of the SPAN plugin. Might be helpful?

[@KlassOneMusic]

And the key is to do it fast :) I’ve always left my aux channels at 0, reasoning that I’m controlling the send amounts already from each track. Does it still require a bit of fader mixing? Cheers Will!

[@ChamilawarnaJayalath]

great video 🤘need more videos like these, work along with REF tracks cheers .

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, and I am glad you found it helpful! Any other topic you’d like to see me cover?

[@CademanLillywhite]

Picked up a few tricks there brotha, cheers!

[@EDMTips]

Nice one, that's what I like to hear! Thanks for watching :)

[@hitsounds]

lots of great ideas here as I embark on mixing my 45 minute movie soundtrack! Next stop, getting a consistent -12db kick across 45 minutes. First time I've used reference tracks and blimey charlie, it's invaluable - if a little disconcerting how far out my initial rough mixes were! I'm also taking onboard your point about identifying what's 'backing' - I can't resist throwing in lots of extra lines which can be a problem - I realised watching this that I instinctively try to make everything intelligible - I'm going to just treat anything that isn't the lead as backing and bring it right down. Thanks for the tips.

[@EDMTips]

You’re welcome, and good luck!

[@davinciliveproject]

Thank you so much, but i have one question: How the sense to compare an audio spectrum of a saturated and “wet” reference track to an empty initial sound without any saturation / clipper / audio effect in the chain? Is not only a thing about 12 db volume difference between the 2 tracks in front of an audio spectrum comparision, or not ? Thanks

[@na_der]

Excellent vid as usual! 5:12 this boom, is it like bark of dog plugin?

[@EDMTips]

Bingo!

[@AforismiDAutoreAD]

Following this tutorial I see that at the end the kick drum and bass sound higher than all the other instruments. What's wrong with this technique?

[@SalvoMorbiduZzMorabito]

Can I ask you the headphone you are using in this video? it not seems HD650 to me? another thing, what is the configuration of your mac? anyway love your videos! just a pleasure to watch! thank you a lot for it

[@stukedin]

They appear to be HD490 pros

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, glad you found them helpful so far! I am using HD 490 PRO in this vid, but I am still using my HD 650 too :)

[@pushempire2791]

I always ask myself about using reference track: aren't they already mastered? How do you compare a mastered track with a track yet to be mixed?

[@beatskool101]

True Peak or average peak for the kick at -12? I would think its the true peak but things will get really quiet all round.

[@bradparsonsmusic]

Have you guys thought about providing a monthly membership to your site?

[@EDMTips]

Great suggestion, we are working on this right now and will be rolling it to our students this month :)

[@c-level8738]

Another great video, thanks :-). Shouldnt the bass and kick also get a low cut under 100..?

[@EDMTips]

MAYBE under 30Hz, but definitely not 100

[@KlassOneMusic]

This is where your sub bass lives, hence you clean up everything else that don’t belong down there.

[@jazzbolt20]

Was the bus "Bass+Kick" not used in this example?

[@scurturobert9306]

how do you move all the volume faders at once ?

[@nonoon5614]

A great help to the EDM community

[@EDMTips]

Stoked to hear that! Thanks for watching and supporting 🙂

[@lollmvq8365]

You make so great videos I love them. But could you maybe make a video on how to make music like E-Mantra?

[@EDMTips]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will add it to my list and let's see how many people will vote for it! :)

[@lexflp]

Why I never thought like this

[@EDMTips]

Hope you can try this next time you're mixing your track :)

[@STOP-lv9rq]

hi, why does the reference have a depression around 20khz?

[@cliveconcept]

the ref track should be wav or mp3?

[@shadowmaniac78]

The vocals keep reminding me of Fleetwood Mac.

[@EDMTips]

I can hear that!

[@cobusprinsloo]

Thank you, wonderful information. How can I download a reference track from, say, Spotify?

[@EDMTips]

Great question! I usually use Beatport 🙂🙌🏻

[@OhReallyHuman]

I didn't know Bilbo Baggins is a good music teacher. Nice!

[@EDMTips]

Haha, cheers! Bilbo Baggins at your service 🙂

[@artemisnite]

​@@EDMTipsA direct quote from Bilbo! ❤ Thanks for all the many lessons, Will.

[@benjaminfrazer-synnott6640]

You can side chain the reference spectrum to the master spectrum so they r on the one spectrum

[@EDMTips]

Thanks for the tip, Benjamin 🙌🏻

[@razeu482]

The thing that makes the biggest difference for me is bx meter. I use span to balance the mid/side levels.

[@EDMTips]

Thanks, I will check it out. What do you use it for?

[@razeu482]

@@EDMTips For the correlation meter but also making sure the pressure of sound is at -3 which I have checked most other tracks are also.

[@darbomusic]

Nice

[@EDMTips]

Cheers! Glad you liked it 🙂🙌🏻🙏🏻

[@LinasPOfficial]

You made a lot of cuts at 120hz, what about phase shift? There must be a bump in that freq

[@larswillsen]

I've still to learn about AUX .. must admit that I learned new stuff again from this video :)

[@EDMTips]

Stoked to hear that, Lars! Thanks as usual for watching and supporting the channel 🙂

[@jorisboulet8137]

would have loved if we could see the differnt reverbs used

[@EDMTips]

Perhaps in a future another video :)

[@ilmondodifaxe8216]

Your track - 18db the reference a Concorde passed on your head...

[@djrobincooper]

For some reason I can't get 2 spans side by side in ableton now even though I have the preferences set up.... it used to work fine :| now I end up taking a screen shot of the span on the reference and using that instead

[@EDMTips]

Good workaround! 👍🏻

[@VISION-IT]

Offtopic - can you show some hacks how to make cool Filter Effects and so on in Davinci Resolve - eg. for Videographer, Video Transitions .... Davinci Resolve is mainly a Videoediting program - but also has an easy to use , Adio Suite) Maybe you can make a Playlist, Sidechannel or short payed course ...

[@EDMTips]

Thanks for the suggestion, Vision-IT, however, videography is not my strong suit :)

[@VISION-IT]

@@EDMTips maybe it´s an opportuniy ... the situation is for videographer often vice versa ...

[@diegob6729]

What model is the headphone?

[@EDMTips]

These are my new Sennheisers: bit.ly/3UpEB66 🙂

[@synthzizer3324]

2nd issue. Faders are your 2ndary part of the mixing process not the 1st. The actual gain on file needs to be healthy and actually be cranking past -6 on peaks pre any inserts.. All lanes of audio. The faders feed the master use them for mixing into the master.

[@Notinserviceij]

What happens if you use analog modelling plugins that require you to gain stage to -18dbfs for accurate modelling purposes? Apart from that, your comment doesn't make sense Why do you want it louder? You can have infinite gain with in your daw but why would you want to go passed what you are metering? There is no sound degradation

[@synthzizer3324]

@@Notinserviceij I wouldn't go near a plugin with internal calculations engine only being able to handle -18 for it to emulate. DAW sweet spot is not down there either. Why you want to mix down in lower levels and then gain change up the file to reach professional target. Just mix to the real target to begin with. Why people so scared 😱 of zero or even the odd over. Mix to the ceiling use it all up. 20 years ago is gone with float point. So you mix in lower gain settings into what to tell you an over? Some students meter they made to hoax you into the LUFs nonsense so many people have fallen for that BS.

[@emf2482]

really good point on the importance of techniques..so much focus on advanced techniques that won't even matter for 90% of producers

[@EDMTips]

Thanks for the feedback, emf, really appreciate it!

[@1disturbedjunglist]

I prefer your version tbh. More airy. Cant comment on low end as on phone.

[@EDMTips]

Cheers, glad you liked it 🙂

[@Salkinmusic]

Could I send you a demo mix for some feedback? What to fix etc 🙌🏼

[@EDMTips]

If you're a part of the Academy, you can submit your track for a feedback stream! Catch you then :)

[@thedeeprot]

[@EDMTips]

Cheers, glad you liked it! 🙂

[@thekeys_]

Multi plugin windows is not working

[@EDMTips]

Turn it on in preferences

[@seantreyfr]

Now do a mastering video

[@EDMTips]

When you ask so nicely… 🙂

[@TonyFlacco]

Gustaff is coated

[@Bshddhrhrh]

Hi

[@EDMTips]

👋🏻

[@ddddieggggo]

I'm 666! Great video as always, thanks ♥

[@EDMTips]

You're welcome, and thanks for watching and supporting 🙂

[@cMaXeJIJIo]

It was lacking some Charlie Sheen! 😁

[@EDMTips]

😂

[@synthzizer3324]

5th. how a lead type synth is a lead if the vocal is the lead and then treat the synth it as if it's only for accompanying the lead vocal. Should have been recorded as a synth background in the 1st place. Sigh.

[@synthzizer3324]

4th. You cannot just arbitrarily cut cut cut wtf dude. Without critical listening how do you know you are not cutting low harmonic content? Why people think harmonics only glide up in pitch. They go down aswell from fundamentals

[@artemisnite]

Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you start your own KZbin channel where you explain why everyone giving mix tutorials is wrong and why?

[@synthzizer3324]

​@artemisnite but who would be left to give an alternative opinion?

[@EDMTips]

They do, but this is just quick rule of thumb. Most things don’t need content below 100 other than bass, kick, low percussion, vocals at 80 to 100, and piano

[@KcDamusic]

Yes most sound sources don't have interesting information below 100hz also this area get's quite fulland muddy if you don't cut out unessential information. But of course you should always listen if there is information you need

[@thisisyourkarma]

You aggressively want people to read your op but your pro tips you're sp1tting are us3less as f. No listeners give a d@mn 🤡🤡🤡

[@synthzizer3324]

3rd. Throw away the analyzers. That's what your ears are for

[@pablojescobar3400]

55 channels that could have been done in 8.

[@EDMTips]

Would you mind showing me, Pablo? I am always eager to learn 🙂

[@pablojescobar3400]

@@EDMTips Not your mix down dude, the use of so many channels. Automation>extra elements. Its what many like myself did when I first started. Whats your opinion?

[@KanhaPratimaFilms9414258577]

Very nice i will try this today

[@EDMTips]

Go for it, Kanha, and let us know how it goes :)