Mixing & Mastering
Turn rough takes into release-ready tracks. Practical mixing and mastering guides covering EQ, compression, levels, loudness and the workflow that gets your songs sounding finished.Start here: The Best Free VST Plugins · The Best EQ Plugins · The Best Compressor Plugins · The Best Reverb Plugins.
-
How to Balance Levels in a Mix
Learn how to balance levels in a mix step by step: set a static rough balance by ear, use fader…
-
How to Mix in a Small Untreated Room
Learn how to mix in a small room with no treatment: set up monitors and seat right, tame bass buildup,…
-
How to Tune Vocals Naturally
Learn how to tune vocals naturally with transparent pitch correction: retune speed, scale settings, manual pitch moves and by-ear tips…
-
How to De-Ess a Vocal
Learn how to de-ess a vocal: find the sibilance frequency, dial in a de-esser, and tame harsh S and SH…
-
How to Glue a Mix Together
Learn how to glue a mix together using bus compression, shared reverb, saturation and smart gain staging so your tracks…
-
How to Use a Bus Compressor
Learn how to use a bus compressor to glue a mix together — attack, release, ratio and gain-reduction starting points…
-
How to Gain Stage a Mix
Learn how to gain stage a mix from input to master bus so every track keeps clean headroom, avoids clipping,…
-
How to Automate a Mix
Learn how to automate a mix in your DAW — volume rides, pan moves, effects sends and plugin parameters, plus…
-
How to Use Delay on Vocals
Learn how to use delay on vocals the right way: dial in timing, feedback, EQ and ducking to add real…
-
How to Use Reverb on Vocals
Learn how to use reverb on vocals with the right type, pre-delay, decay and EQ so your vocal sits in…