Mixing Essentials
A practical mixing course built on what measured studies of real engineers show: balance with faders first, EQ and compress with a reason, add space on sends, keep the low end mono, and check against references at a sensible level.
Start the course6 lessons · 43 min · free
What you'll be able to do
- Set levels and headroom so plugins and the mix bus behave
- Use EQ to fix problems and reduce masking without hollowing out parts
- Set a compressor's threshold, ratio, attack and release for a given source
- Add reverb and delay on sends that sit behind the mix instead of washing it out
- Check a mix in mono, on a phone and against loudness-matched references
Lessons
- 1Gain Staging and the Static BalancePeak vs RMS, sensible headroom in a floating-point DAW, and why a faders-only balance comes before any plugin.7 min
- 2EQ: Cutting, Boosting and MaskingSubtractive and additive EQ, a frequency map by instrument, high-pass filters, choosing Q, and fixing masking without hollow parts.8 min
- 3Compression: Controlling DynamicsThreshold, ratio, attack, release and knee explained, gain-reduction starting points per source, and how parallel compression works.8 min
- 4Space: Reverb and DelaySends vs inserts, 100%-wet returns, pre-delay and decay, tempo-synced delay times, and why most mixes err too wet.7 min
- 5Panning, Stereo Width and Mono CompatibilityWhere to pan each part, why the low end stays central, how widening tricks fail in mono, and how to check correlation.6 min
- 6References, Monitoring and a Mix ChecklistMonitor at a steady level, compare against loudness-matched references, check translation on real devices, and run a final checklist.7 min
Next up:
Mastering Your Music
Take a finished mix to a release-ready master — and know when to stop.