Mixing / Production

Reinvented by a little-known Norwegian production team, a song about not being famous any more made Mike Posner more famous than ever...

The Silent Majority: sometimes the best way to improve a mix is to take a break from it.

PJ Harvey’s long-term co-producer John Parish is uncompromising in his willingness to experiment — even with the world watching!

I increasingly hear people extolling the virtues of a multi-bus system for mix processing, where you mix everything to a handful of parallel submasters, each with its own master-bus-style processing, before passing a mix of all those to the overall master bus. What’s the rationale behind this technique?

I’m struggling to understand what’s really happening when you use different compression ratios. Can you explain please?

The Don Camillo Chor: Our engineer records a choir singing in their practice room, and tries to make it sound like it was captured in a church!

More analysis of tracks from: Drake • The Steeldrivers • Fifth Harmony • Classic Mix: Prince & The New Power Generation ‘Sexy MF’ (1992)

The success of Deftones’ Gore album is reward for the band’s restless experimentation — and for the work of engineer, producer and mixer Matt Hyde.

The Southern Wild: our engineer reminds us that you don’t have to cram every mic signal into your mix just because it’s available.

I was listening to Conor Maynard’s YouTube cover of Shawn Mendes’ ‘Stitches’ and wondered if you could provide any insight into what he used to get that huge, rich vocal tone.

Music from: Zayn • Jonas Blue • Alan Walker • Kendrick Lamar and our Classic Mix is David Bowie's 'Starman'.

Sylvia Massy shares weird recording tips

The sound designer’s role in a big-budget musical is to create an immersive experience for the audience — and keep the cast and director happy too!

Truly an international effort, Lukas Graham’s breakthrough hit ‘7 Years’ was masterminded by a Danish film-sound designer and a Californian mix engineer.

Audio examples to check out yourself.

This month’s band, the Broken Heartbreakers, threw down the gauntlet for our engineer — could he improve what was already a decent mix?

I watched a video by Steven Slate where he demonstrates a ‘top down’ method of mixing drums. What do you think about this idea?

I’ve been reading up about reference tracks for mixing and mastering, and I want to increase both the amount and range...

This month tracks from: D'Angelo, Zara Larsson, Lukas Graham, Mavis Staples and John Williams' Star Wars theme.

Have you ever wondered how to separate a vocal or the instrumental backing from a stereo mix? We find out what’s possible — and what isn’t.