The new album is progressing very well, and since I have it worked on in 'stations', between my demo/reamping, getting the drum tracks in, and getting the vocals in, I like to take the in-betrween time to get the songs set up in a mix template so when the time comes, everything is in place, I'm literally just mixing. I really hate having to gain stage or do any editing when mixing, to me that's all prep work before mixing happens. Unfortunately I don't have an assistant, so that falls on my shoulders.
I dusted off the last mix template that I had, which was from 2017, and realized that I do things a little different these days, so I made a brand new template. My mix workflow is based almost entirely off of using buses to sum elements down until they get to the 2-bus. Each of my individual buses is color coded, and the tracks are colored to match so I know exactly what is where at a glance. All areas of silence are also cut out and I gain stage each track to peak around -14dBFS.
My basic workflow goes:
[track] > [instrument bus] > [VCA] > [sub mix] > [2-bus]
So, all of my distorted electric guitars go to a 'distorted electric guitar' bus, which in turns goes to a general 'guitar' bus which acts as a VCA for automation on the entire group; of course, I also automate each track on a track level as well as on a bus level.
My sub mix is divided by frequency band (low, low mid, mid, upper mid, high) which allows me to add varying degrees of saturation to a specific frequency band independently.
Kinda looks like this:
I dusted off the last mix template that I had, which was from 2017, and realized that I do things a little different these days, so I made a brand new template. My mix workflow is based almost entirely off of using buses to sum elements down until they get to the 2-bus. Each of my individual buses is color coded, and the tracks are colored to match so I know exactly what is where at a glance. All areas of silence are also cut out and I gain stage each track to peak around -14dBFS.
My basic workflow goes:
[track] > [instrument bus] > [VCA] > [sub mix] > [2-bus]
So, all of my distorted electric guitars go to a 'distorted electric guitar' bus, which in turns goes to a general 'guitar' bus which acts as a VCA for automation on the entire group; of course, I also automate each track on a track level as well as on a bus level.
My sub mix is divided by frequency band (low, low mid, mid, upper mid, high) which allows me to add varying degrees of saturation to a specific frequency band independently.
Kinda looks like this: