WHAT IS MIXING?

If I had to put it into one sentence, I would say that mixing is both the creative and technical process of taking all of the elements of a song and blending, balancing and arranging them in a cohesive manner in which all of the elements can be heard and sound pleasing to the ear. And if I had to do a short and vague breakdown of the elements involved with mixing in non-technical lingo, you could sum it up as a combination of balancing, editing and adding effects to make sure that the end product sounds good across all listening environments. Seems pretty straight forward right? Well not quite. In order to achieve all of this involves many factors, techniques and processes. You could literally write an individual book on all of the individual elements that make up mixing because there really is just that much to learn. But I don’t want to scare you into not trying your hand at mixing, I just want to emphasize that mixing is a massive subject to cover so allow yourself the time to go through the paces of learning an in depth skill.

There are many fundamental tools used in the mix process but I find these 5 to be the key elements that make up the mix process in a nutshell. 

• Level adjustment, panning and automation
• Effects processing
• Arrangement
• Creativity 
• Editing

While there may be a lot of technical things involved with mixing, in my opinion, mixing is fifty percent technical and fifty percent creative. The trick is that you have to learn the technical stuff before you can get creative. And this is what really throws people off of mixing in the beginning. But mixing is definitely an art form that is extremely expressive and rewarding and is an extremely valuable skill to know for artists and producers.