Alex's advice for past Alex, part 1

I’ve been mentoring an excellent young musician for the last year or so named Alex Spencer, who goes by the musical nom de guerre Vince Nevers.

Last week, right around the one-year anniversary of our work together, Alex sent me an email titled “Advice For Past Me.” I think it’s highly insightful, both practically and also as a snapshot of an evolutionary process of learning to self-produce and mix. It’s long, so I’ll divide it into two parts; here’s part 1!

I've been really in my head, in a good way, about some mixing and mastering stuff.

I was referencing my most recent work, and I noticed it was plenty loud, without even coming close to any peaking issues. Around -9 LUFS and -3db true peak. And I thought this was super cool because before I had the opposite — not loud, but still somehow washed out and peaking all over the place. I wanted to share some notes I've taken and practices I've changed that really made a difference — it feels very good to get a track to a high quality standard without once having to address any issues of peaking or masking on the master channel.¹ 😁

1. All audio signals coming in should be super clean and precise. To me, this means making big EQ cuts to my sounds immediately. Never any boosts.² I will have an entire fx chain AND multiple busses to boost frequencies and make it loud and add all the things I want.
   
   The first step is to find the frequencies that are unwanted, and bringing them down to unmask the frequencies I do want. Boosting frequencies as a first step always causes me headaches — and I've been doing it for years! Think of it like revealing a face from behind a mask — are you going to pull the face through the mask? Or are you just going to remove the mask?
   
   This practice also helps me find sounds that are naturally distinct from one another, which I love. I use shelves over bell-shaped EQs 99% of the time. Keeping a tiny bit of those corner frequencies in can give just a bit of character and glue with other sounds. I usually use many EQs on any given sound as well, so there are usually multiple sets of shelves and bell-shaped cuts.

2. Clipping. I always clip on individual channels that contain a lot of transient information.³ This saves so much headroom downstream, and I think was at least 90% of the solution to my constant peaking problems. Before, I was leaving individual sounds untamed, which was causing conflicts and taking volume away from the other sounds in the mix.

Great thoughts; thanks, Alex; part 2 tomorrow! — jamie

1. Alex has put his finger precisely on something here: the more we can address EQ and dynamics issues before we hit the master bus, the better-sounding and more resilient our mixes tend to be.

2. This isn’t how I personally do things; I often do EQ boosts. It’s a great way to get a sound to pop out of a mix. But! There’s not only one right way to work, and Alex’s mixes speak for themselves.

3. I do this too!