Ideas For The Mix: Sorting & Gain Staging - Pt 1

Initial Setup

 When you're sent a bunch of stems (audio wavefiles) of someones mix and you've been given the task to turn it into an instant hit, things can seem daunting and a little overwhelming. As you import those stems and scroll through possibly 40 to 100+ audio files how do you know where to even start let alone hand the client back a finished two track mix?

 In this short series and rather than showing settings, for Eq's and compressors etc, as so many others have already done, I want to walk you through a mix and offer ideas, some philosophical, some practical  and examples as to how you would find your way to the finished song. It's not about the plugins used, it's not about the settings used, as these constantly change from song to song, it's about getting from raw to finished two track songs.

How and where to start

 This may seem to be the most monotonous and unexciting of tasks but believe me when I say sorting out stems, grouping, colourising, re-naming and finally gain-staging everything is the most important part of starting any mix project. Celebrity mixers (Chris Lord Alge) have junior engineers doing all the grunt work for him, like roadies setting up for a gig, he has them sorting and setting up the mix the way he likes it ready for him to walk in and do his thang! But for most of us we have to do this task ourselves, more is the pity. 

 Laying a good foundation at the start will dramatically reduce time spent on a mix and that is a good thing. It leaves more time to be allocated to actually listening to what your trying to achieve rather than being distracted searching for the other Kick Mic tracks or where the Lead vocal is at and seeing levels clipping etc.

 So lets dive in as I show an initial setup and preparation for getting ready to mix.