The first thing you should do before you start slapping plug-ins on faders is to start by organizing everything.

That means:

• Color coding
• Critical Listening
• Balancing
• Bussing

The multi-tracks included in the Mixing With 5 Plug-ins course are actually pretty organized already.

I’ve even multed the vocal tracks and some of the guitars to their separate tracks because I know I’ll be processing those differently throughout the song.

But before I even start pushing faders around I like making sure I organize my tracks so I can fly around the session and know exactly what I’m looking for.

That’s why I use color-coding.

It helps my eyes and brain jump right to the correct track later on in the session when I know I’ll have added a bunch of groups.

It’s a good idea to stick to the same color schemes when you’re mixing so that you train your brain to know exactly what is what in every session.

In my case we'll be labeling it like this:

• Drums and percussion are Red
• Bass is Purrple
• Acoustic Guitars is Orange (nice earthy orange)
• Electric Guitars are Green (which is something I picked up from Andrew Scheps)
• Vocals are Dark Blue
• Keys and random pads and such are Purple

So now that we’ve color coded we can start actually balancing the tracks.

There are multiple ways to start balancing but by simply listening to the song we can see what we hear with all faders up.

In the introductory video to Mixing With 5 Plug-ins I get a pretty good balance in 7 minutes, and you'll watch me every step of the way.

Once I've finished my initial balance I move onto my favorite part of the mixing process, which is simplifying.

By using busses and groups we can really narrow some of the tracks down to a few key groups.

Here's what I do in the course:

• Drums would be one subgroup along with the percussion.
• Bass is separate.
• You can either do all guitars or separate the acoustics and electrics which is what I do.
• The solo guitars will stay on their own.
• Liz’s vocals all go on one bus as lead vocals
• And then all of the backing vocals go on a separate backing vocal bus.

There are a bunch of different ways you can group things together but I’m going for simplicity for now. You could make it even simpler by doing “ALL VOCALS” or “ALL GUITARS” but it really depends on your final goal with the tracks.

The reason for groups is the ease of rebalancing and adjusting each aspect of the mix. If you’re happy with your drum balance but just want the drums a little louder in general it’s easier to pull up one fader instead of moving every single fader on the individual tracks.

You want an aspect of gluing each element of the mix together so it’s easier to visualize, which will also come in handy when you start adding effects. 

Once you've done all that you'll have made the rest of the mixing process so much easier.

Come join us as we continue the mixing process in the next few weeks.

The Mixing With 5 Plug-ins course closes to new members on Sunday so there's no time like the present to start improving your workflow and mixing skills.

Here's where you go next:

www.mixingwith5plugins.com