“Water finds its level.”
— Proverb
In music production, when mixing songs, we turn a track's volume up because it isn't cutting through.
Then the track next to it gets lost, so we turn that one up too.
Twenty minutes later, every fader is higher than where it started, the master is clipping, but somehow the mix sounds smaller than it did before.
The Starting Point
Water doesn't fight to be higher than the water next to it; it settles at its level and stays there.
A mix works the same way when every track sits at the level it needs, and nothing is pushing to get on top.
Most of the fights in a mix start with gain: two tracks are too loud for the space they share.
The fix usually starts with turning something down.
The Invitation
Before we touch an EQ or a compressor, do a Save As... "KSBV mix", then pull every fader down and build the mix again from the lead vocal or the kick drum.
After the lead vocal and kick, bring in the snare and the bass instrument. Find the relative balance of the kick, snare, bass, and lead vocal.
Bring in each remaining track one at a time, and stop the moment you can hear it clearly. Never louder than the kick, snare, bass, and vocal
If any track only works when it's louder than everything else, it might be in the wrong part of the song arrangement, or it's in the same frequency range as another part.
The Test
Bounce the original "fader-war" mix you were going round and round on, and then bounce the one we just built from the bottom up in 5 minutes.
Match their loudness before we compare them, because the louder one usually sounds better for the first few seconds.
Then A/B them at a quiet volume, and listen for which instruments we can still hear.
If the bass guitar disappears in the quiet A/B, turn down the tracks around it before we turn the bass up.
The Guidepost
A track at its level gets heard without being loud.
The space in a mix comes from what we turn down as much as from what we turn up.
When nothing is fighting, the limiter on the master has less work to do, and the mix keeps its punch.
Gain staging is the same idea at the start of the chain: each plugin gets a healthy level in and gives the same level out.
The Change
Change the order we mix in.
Set the levels first, with no plugins on, until the rough mix makes sense on its own.
Then add the EQ and compression, and check that each plugin leaves the track at the same loudness it found it.
Put Utility (Ableton Live) or MUtility (any DAW) at the end of each plugin chain, and set its gain so the processed track and the bypassed track are the same loudness. Or do better gain staging along the chain.
The Return
The more often we let each track settle at its level, the less often we reach for the master fader to fix things.
Mixes built this way usually leave headroom for mastering, and they keep their dynamics after the limiter.
That's usually the difference between a loud mix and a big one.
During your next mix, instead of asking: “What needs to go up?”
Ask: “What needs to come down?”
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Song of the Week 🎧
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Listen to how much room there is on this one; every part has its own space, and you can hear all of them at once.
This song came out on Aja in 1977 and went to number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. Rick Marotta played drums, Chuck Rainey played bass, and Michael McDonald sang the stacked backing vocals in the choruses.
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had seven guitarists try the solo, Robben Ford among them, before Jay Graydon played the one that stayed. Graydon played for four or five hours before they chose the take, and Fagen said they felt silly spending that much money on one short blues solo. In 1989, De La Soul sampled this song heavily on "Eye Know".
A great song. Every part had to earn its level, and the solo was no exception.
YouTube Wisdom of the Week 📚
How far up the scale is it possible to go in one lifetime? (David R. Hawkins, Veritas Publishing)
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The Map of Consciousness Explained — David R. Hawkins
Hawkins lays out levels of consciousness on a logarithmic scale of 1 to 1,000. Shame, Guilt, Apathy, Fear, Anger and Pride sit at the bottom; Courage, Acceptance and Reason sit in the middle; Love, Ecstasy, Peace and Enlightenment sit at the top. Each level comes with its own values, attitudes and emotions, and this short clip from the channel that carries his talks takes on the question in its title. In a session, that means noticing which level we're mixing from: a mix done in Fear or Pride usually ends with every fader up, and a mix done in Courage or Acceptance usually lets each track find its place.
Plugin of the Week 🔌
AutoGain Pro is a levelling plugin that keeps a track balanced against a reference signal, either its own internal reference or another track fed in through the sidechain. You set the minimum and maximum gain it's allowed to change, the attack and release are separate for the reference and the main signal, and it can write its moves as automation. Reverse mode turns the track down when the reference gets louder, which works for ducking. Put it on a lead vocal with the music bus as the reference, and A/B it against the plain fader; the vocal should hold its level through the verse and the chorus without us riding it. It runs as AU, VST2.4, VST3 and AAX on Mac and Windows.
Free Plugin of the Week 🆓
A free look-ahead brickwall limiter with one slider for the threshold and one for the output level, plus true peak limiting. Put it last on the master bus, set the output to -1 dB, and lower the threshold only until the loudest hits are caught. It runs as VST 2.4, VST 3 and Audio Unit on Windows and Mac.
Unsolicited life advice for music makers
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