If you're not careful, your ears will play tricks
on you.
Case in point: Everything sounds good with a little more high mids because that's where our ears hear the best.
But when you add high-mids to EVERYTHING, don't be surprised if your mix ends up sounding like a harsh dagger piercing your ear drum.
Just yesterday, I accidentally made my mix too
harsh (probably from working on it for too long...).
Through the generous advice of a friendly mastering engineer, I cut out all the harshness from the overall frequency balance, giving more thickness to the lows to make the kick and bass "juicier" (his words, not mine :)
And you'd think that by removing the high-mids from the vocals would've made them vanish underneath
everything, but through some careful rebalancing of the low-mids, with some tasteful boosts in the highs instead, the vocals sounded even better.
Smoother because I removed the harshness. Warmer because of the subjective addition of increased low-mids. And brighter (without harshness), by boosting 10 kHz instead of 3 kHz.
So if you're working on a mix but you
can't turn it up properly without hurting your ears, you're probably making it too harsh.
For more vocal mixing tips, plus ALL of my most popular training, I put together the "Independence Day Bundle" to celebrate Icelandic Independence Day on Monday.
