Your Quick Mixing Checklist

Hi friend,

I’m glad you’re here and I’m grateful

you’re trusting me to help you
improve your music. I’ve helped
thousands of home studio musicians
and project studio producers
throughout the years and I’m glad
you’re one of them.

The questions below are intended as part ideas for inspiration, part
practical tips. You can use the questions as you mix to give you ideas to try
on your music, or you can use it as a reference when you get stuck. Also,
because every multi-track is different not all of the questions and tips in this
document will be applicable to every situation. It is up to you to try out and
judge for yourself what works for you.

However you choose to use this document, it’s my hope that it comes in
handy to improve your mixes.

With that said, let’s get started.

Levels and Balance

1. Have you used the 1 dB rule to get the most balanced level across the
multi-tracks? Move each track up or down 1 dB. If the mix sounds better
try another dB until it starts sounding worse. When you can’t move a
track one dB up or down without making it worse you’re as close to the
sweet spot as you can get with only levels.
2. Is the kick drum balanced with the snare so that they are equally loud
and important in the mix?
3. Is the drum sound mixed from the close mics or do the overheads make
up most of the drum sound?
4. Do the tom tracks contribute positively or negatively to the overall drum
sound? Do they need gating to get rid of bleed?
5. Does the bass fit well with the kick drum or are they obviously clashing
when you solo them together? Do minor level changes help or hurt the
situation?
6. Do you need all the guitar tracks that are included in the multi-tracks?
7. Can you clean things up with selective muting to make things
interesting?
8. Have you panned your instruments around the stereo spectrum?
9. Do your pans create an even stereo mix where there’s about equal
“stuff” going on on each side of the mix?
10. Have you panned your instruments in mono to separate them better?
11. Have you grouped or routed your tracks together for easier level
handling and balance later in the mix?
12. Have you made sure your master isn’t overloading from the start of the
mix? If so, lower your track volume until it’s more manageable.
13. Have you listened to each instrument group critically and taken mental
notes on what you need to do to them to make them sound better?
14. Do you know each track intimately so that you can use automation to
bring out every special event in each track later down the line?

After making the best balance and static mix you can, use the following
questions when you’re thinking of new ways to mix your instruments.

Drums

15. Have you high-pass filtered all the drums to an appropriate frequency?
16. Have you added thickness to the kick drum by finding its sweet spot in
the 50 - 100 Hz range?
17. Do you need to boost the 2-4 kHz range of the kick to bring out the
beater?
18. Have you reduced all the boxiness you don’t like by cutting the
frequency range of the drums around 300 - 400 Hz?
19. Does the snare cut through the mix or does it need extra high-mids
around 2 - 4 kHz?
20. Or does the snare sizzle just a bit too much and need a cut in that area
instead?
21. If EQ doesn’t work to add weight to the snare, can you add a bit of
saturation or distortion instead?
22. Have you found the best sounding compressor for each drum by testing
each type you have available?
23. Have you doubled your kick drum, filtered out the lows and
aggressively boosted the high-mids to bring out the beater?
24. Did you use a fast attack compressor on a drum that has transients that
need to be tamed?
25. Did you time the release of the compressor in time with the song by
watching the gain reduction meter?
26. Did you play with the attack and release to control the overall shape of
the drum compression?
27. Did you boost the highs and lows while cutting the boxiness of the toms
to get a punchier tom sound?
28. Have you used parallel compression on the drums with a hard-hitting
compressor that has a fast attack, slow release, high ratio and a LOT of
gain reduction to add punch to your overall drum sound?
29. Have you added a separate reverb to your snare to add some extra
depth to your snare sound?
30. Have you EQ’d the drum reverb to make it sit better in the mix?
31. Have you chosen the right reverb sound for your particular song and
style or did you just slap something on at random?

Bass

32. Can your DI’d bass track benefit from some amp modeling to give it
more depth?
33. If you’re working with both DI and mic tracks, have you made sure both
tracks are in phase?
34. Have you found both the sweet spot of the bass and kick drum in the
lows?
35. Have you added an EQ cut in the sweet spot of the kick in the bass and
vice versa for the kick so they don’t clash in the lows?
36. Have you used a spectrum analyzer to help you find where the best
frequencies are for both the kick and bass?
37. Can a high ratio on your compressor help the overly dynamic playing
style of the bass player?
38. Have you decided whether the bass or the kick will be the king of the
low-end? EQ according to your decision.
39. If you can’t get the snap of the beater through because the bass is so
thick, have you tried side-chain compression on the bass so that it
ducks out of the way of the kick?
40. Instead of EQ’ing all your bass weight in the 250 Hz range, have you
tried adding presence to the 600 - 800 Hz range instead to bring the
bass out in the mix?
41. Have you used parallel distortion/saturation to add some subtle grit to
your bass sound to make it cut through the mix?
42. Have you used a sub-bass plug-in to add extra artificial low-end in case
your bass recording lacks actual low-end?
43. Have you used automation to bring out all the small fills and lines that
the bass player does in a song?

Guitars

44. Have you brought out the brilliance of your acoustic guitar by enhancing
the 5 - 10 Khz region?
45. Have you reduced the shrill cheap acoustic guitar sound by reducing
the mids around 800 Hz?
46. Do your guitars sound small because you’re overdoing the
compression?
47. Have you used complementary EQ on multiple guitar tracks to separate
them in the mix?
48. Have you tweaked/slowed the attack time so that the acoustic guitar
strum isn’t being held down by the compressor?
49. Are you using the “right” compressor on your guitar bus?
50. Do other compressor types sound better?
51. Have you checked the phase/polarity relationship of all multi-miked
guitar tracks?
52. Have you separated all the guitar tracks in the stereo spectrum with
panning?
53. Have you tried a short 100 ms stereo delay with one repeat to create
space around your guitar solo?
54. Do your guitar tracks sound good in the reverb space you’ve chosen?
55. Have you EQ’d your reverbs?
56. Are all guitar tracks high-pass filtered to about 100 Hz (or more
depending on your needs)?
57. Can you add a “double-tracked” sound with modulation or delay to
create a bigger guitar sound?
58. Have you tried parallel routing on the electric guitar with an amp
simulator panned to the opposite side to get a wider sound?
59. Have you used both a short and long reverb on your guitar mixes to
blend both the electric and acoustic guitars together to give them
separation?
60. Have you automated all the guitar licks so that they stand out without
clashing with other instruments?
61. Can your guitar sound benefit from re-amping?
62. Do you need to add a cut in the 900 Hz - 3 kHz area in the guitar group
to make room for the vocal?
63. Can you add a really short slap-delay to add an extra dimension of
rhythm to a fast rhythm guitar track?

Keyboards

64. If you’re struggling to push the keyboards out in the mix, have you
looked at boosting somewhere in the 500 - 1000 Hz range to bring
them out?
65. Have you found the best high-pass filter frequency that gives the piano
enough low-end weight without sounding thin on the lower keys?
66. Have you used EQ automation to make sure your piano sound is thick
by itself but EQ’d around the other instruments and vocals when
needed?
67. Have you cut the low-mids at 200ish Hz and again at 3 kHz to make
room for the other instruments and the vocals?
68. Is your keyboard track unnecessarily stereo?
69. Can you add subtle chorusing or modulation to add depth without
adding too much unneeded reverb?
70. Have you compressed the keyboards heavily with a transparent
compressor that smooths out all the dynamic changes in the
performance?
71. Does your piano need to be back in the mix with heavy reverb and a
low volume on the source track to push it back?
72. In a piano/vocal arrangement, does the piano and vocal sound like they
belong together or do you need to work on blending them better
together with reverb?
73. If you’re using soft synths can you add an extra layer of the same midi
lines to add an extra dimension to your keyboard sound?

Vocals

74. Does the vocal need weight (low-mids), presence(5 kHz) or air(10 kHz
and above)?
75. Does the vocal sound honky because of too much mid-frequency
buildup?
76. Are you struggling with a nasal sounding vocal? Fix it by cutting slightly
in the 1 kHz area.
77. Can you hear each phrase of the vocal or does it need automation or
compression to make every sentence intelligible?
78. If you have a doubled vocal, does it help or hurt the overall vocal
sound?
79. Does the doubled vocal introduce phase issues when you play both
tracks together?
80. Have you high-pass filtered the vocal as far as you can in the context of
the mix?
81. Do you need to add a lot of compression to keep it steady?
82. Have you tried using multiple compressors in serial with a couple dBs
of gain reduction each time to make it steady while not sounding
squashed?
83. Can you make the vocal tracks more interesting by adding different
spaces to the verse and chorus?
84. Does your vocal reverb fit the song?
85. Would a delay or a slap-echo fit the vocal sound better?
86. Have you used parallel compression on the vocal with a thick
compressor and a low-mid boost to add extra warmth to your vocal
sound?
87. Have you added about 20 ms pre-delay to your reverb to separate the
vocal source from the space?
88. Can you automate effects on certain phrases to make the vocal more
interesting throughout the song?
89. Can you pan the doubled vocal tracks to opposite sides for an
interesting stereo image?
90. Alternatively, can you use an artificial stereo spread to make the vocal
sound wider?
91. Do you need to manually ride the vocal or can you use compression to
make it steady?
92. Have you tried multiple different parallel processing to add diverse
background layers to your vocal sound? For example, two busses with
one heavily compressed underneath and the other one also saturated.
93. Have you filtered out the lows of the backup vocals to make them stand
out without cluttering up the low-mids?
94. Alternatively, have you cut the highs on background vocals to make
them blend in better?
95. Have you separated the background vocals with a different reverb than
the lead vocal?
96. Have you tried out all your fun plug-ins on your vocal tracks to see if
anything creative comes out of it? Think multi-effects and all-in-one
plug-in bundles.
97. Can you use crazy effects to completely change the vocal sound to
better suit the song, or maybe just a small part of the song?
98. Have you cut the most prominent lead vocal frequency range (about
900 Hz - 3 kHz) out of the backup vocals to keep them from clashing?
99. Again, have you EQ’d your reverbs?
100. Have you taken care of sibilance with your de-esser?
101.Is the vocal sound the coolest thing in your song that makes everything
else more exciting because of it?

Effects

102. Do your reverb selections fit the style of the song?

103. Have you added enough reverb to give each instrument a sense of
space?
104. Does your mix sound cluttered because of too much reverb?
105. Do you need to add a separate reverb to each instrument group or
can you find one reverb that fits everything?
106. Can you use delays instead of reverbs to make your mix more in-your-
face and raw?
107. Can you use parallel saturation on the mix to add warmth?
108. Have you timed your delays to the BPM of the song?
109. Do you need to or does it make sense to leave them out of sync?
110. Have you spent time listening to the reverb styles you rarely use, just
in case there’s something there that you can use for the mix you’re
working on?

That’s it for the Quick Mixing Checklist. As an added unadvertised

bonus I’ve added 31 extra questions that have to do with editing and
mastering.

Quick Editing Checklist

1. Have all the tracks been recorded?
2. Have you made notes on which takes were the best?
3. Have you grouped the tracks together that need to be edited together?
4. Have you listened to each take to remember the best performance
nuggets of each take?
5. Have you comped together the best of each take into one bad-ass
master take?
6. Have you decided which instrument you should edit all your other
instruments to?
7. Have you tweaked and nudged all the small timing inconsistencies
away?
8. Have you edited out all the silences that you don’t need between
performances?
9. Have you made all the necessary vocal tuning tweaks?
10. Have you taken care of any cross fades you need between edits to
avoid pops and clicks?
11. Have you de-noised every track that needs it?

Quick Mastering Checklist

12. Is the mix finished?
13. Are you happy with how every single detail in your mix sounds?
14. Are you mastering for a single track release or a full album?
15. If single track, can you do a quick mastering job on the master fader
incase you need to tweak your mix?
16. If album, do you have all the bounces of your mixes and the line-up of
the songs?
17. Have you taken care of all the intro and outro fades?
18. Does the mix have enough headroom to master or do you need to turn
the gain down?
19. Do you have references ready to compare your master to a commercial
release?
20. Did you remember to use a linear phase EQ?
21. Do you hear pumping in your master because of too much
compression?
22. Does the signal flow from each plug-in to the next have good gain
structure?
23. Have you taken care not to over-EQ your master?
24. Are you accidentally squashing your mix with compression?
25. Are you using metering tools to check your peak, RMS and LUFS
levels?
26. Is your master sounding better than the mix or just louder?
27. Have you referenced your master on multiple speaker systems,
including a system with a subwoofer?
28. Does your master have a smooth frequency response with a gentle roll-
off from the high-mids?
29. Are there any specific bumps or under-represented frequency areas
that need taken care of?
30. Have you added a limiter with a -0.03 output level?
31. Have you added dither?

I think that if you keep all of these questions in mind while you’re
mixing, mastering or editing your tracks will significantly improve. I
could go on and on (and I might if I decide to update the list) but these
questions cover all the general scenarios that you might run into while
you’re working on mixing and mastering your next track.

Enjoy your newly improved mixes and I’m looking forward to hearing from
you. If you want to take your mixes even further and learn to create
professional mixes from your home studio, using only the five plug-ins you
already have in your DAW, take a look at my flagship course, Mixing With 5
Plug-ins right here to get started.

Cheers,
Björgvin Benediktsson | Audio Issues