How to make time for mixing

Published: Tue, 05/28/19

Let's talk about time.

How much do you have of it?

Probably the same as everyone else: Not enough and wanting more.

So when you're mixing...do you use every minute as efficiently as possible, or do you waste a bunch of time doing nothing?

If you're like most people, you struggle to fit more in. You try to be productive but then you get drained and start watching those random auto-play videos in your Facebook newsfeed (any cooking video from Tasty will get me every time...)

So when you only have 30 minutes to spare in your schedule I bet you waste it away.

And then you wonder why you don't have any time to do any mixing.

Because if you're going to practice your mixing you're going to need at least a four hour block of time right?

WRONG.

You see, there's this thing called the Save Command.

It's this brand new function. It was invented at the same time as the seatbelt, the indicator signal and the toilet flusher.

You know, things people should use all the time but don't for some reason!

My point is that even if you only have 30 minutes to spare you can still get a good chunk of mixing time in if you plan it right.

If you already had a session you needed to start you should AT LEAST be able to get a rough static mix going with faders and panning. And then if you have extra time to spare, start slapping EQ on your busses and start EQ'ing all those instruments together.

Who cares if you don't get it perfect right away. Just wait until you have a new 30 minute block and continue.

I'd even say it would be smarter to do things in small increments as you always approach your mix with fresh ears and new ideas.

So take back control of your time and start using every single minute in your schedule to get better.

Say you had 30 minutes to spare every weekday you could plan them like this:

Monday - Get all the sessions ready for mixing so you have more songs to fall back on for practice if you want.
Tuesday - Do a static balance, panning and the grouping of instruments to busses to simplify your mix.
Wednesday - Overall EQ, both on busses and instrument tracks.
Thursday - Compression and any cool plug-ins you want to try out.
Friday - Add reverb and delay to the mix to give it space.

And presto! You've mixed one song this week. It might not be perfect but it's a lot better than mindlessly watching videos on Facebook right?

Take back your time and plan to improve what you actually want to improve. Mindless procrastination never helped anybody.

And to get even more efficient, Step By Step Mixing combined with Better Mixes in Less Time will help you through the entire process from A to Z, making you a faster and more efficient mixing engineer.

Check it out here: