Mixing is the process of taking your raw recorded tracks and adjusting each track till the whole song sounds polished. Creativity combined with technical knowledge provides a huge range of options to a mixing engineer. Music is about feel. Once a mix engineer has a grasp of the tools, they are better armed to connect to, and extract the emotional content of the song.
Mixing Gear and Setup:
Mixing Console. This could be a traditional analog mix console, or DAW (Digital Audio Workstation – software in a computer), or a combination of both
Monitors: The speakers you use to hear your mixes come in many flavors.
Mixing Environment: The size and shape of your mixing room will affect your mixes. The acoustics of the room and acoustic treatment will have a large effect on the sound coming out of your speakers.
Effects: These can include compressors, equalizers, noise gates, reverbs, delays, and other creative tools. These can be outboard effects units, or software plugins.
Recording Media: Hard drives or tape media if recording to tape.
Your Ears: yes, it might sound obvious, but your ears make the top of the list. Listen to what you are doing and train your ears to hear the nuances of what you are doing. On that note, protect your hearing.
Methods:
Tracking Organization –
Gain Staging – the amount of gain in your tracks matters at every stage of your project. Getting a balanced sounding finished project will be make much easier if you follow
Phase: Knowing if your tracks are in phase or out of phase will keep
Parallel processing: Routing a copy of an audio channel to be used as an effect channel, while keeping the original audio track unaffected.
Track Grouping: grouping together a number of tracks to keep them organized and to simpify the effects used.
Equalization
Compression
Comparing Mixes
Re-amping: playing a pre-recorded track through an amp and re-recording the result as an additional track.