by Joe Gilder
A Simple System To get better at anything, whether it’s playing guitar or mixing a song, the name of the game is repetition. But don’t stop there. You need to repeat the right things. When I was learning to play guitar as a teenager, all the repetition in the world wouldn’t have helped me if I didn’t first learn how to play chords. I took a piece of sheet music, looked at the chord drawings above each chord name (the little boxes that showed me where to put my fingers on the guitar), and I practiced them over and over again. I needed a song to play. I needed to know what chords to play, and I needed to know how to play them. I needed a system. That’s what sheet music was for me, a beautiful, simple system that taught me how to play guitar. Mixing music is the same way. It takes practice, but you need to make sure you practice within a system that makes sense and helps you improve. That’s why I’ve put together this short 5-Step Mix guide, to give you a simple system to follow every time you mix a song. This guide won’t tell you what EQ settings to use or how loud to make the snare drum, but it will give you a framework in which you can make those decisions. That’s all mixing is. Decisions. Thousands of tiny decisions that add up to give you a great-sounding mix. All you need is a system to help you make those decisions, a system you can use over and over again on every mix. Follow these five steps, and your mixes will dramatically improve. Ready to get started?