Top 3 Mixing & Mastering Mistakes to Avoid When Mixing Tracks

When it comes to mixing and mastering music, vocals or simply any tracks, many music producers and beats makers make the same mistakes.

I wanted to outline the top 3 mistakes which I made regularly when it came to mixing and mastering my tracks.

1. Over-Powering Volume and Peaks

When I started making music and beat instrumental compositions within my favourite DAW FL Studio, which I still use today, I always believed that mixing the kicks, snares, and the virtual instruments to sound loud and powerful would make the final mix and master sound better. But I was wrong, this just caused huge peaks within my mix and master, the kick sounded distorted, and instruments did not sit in the track correctly, resulting in saturating the whole track composition. 

So looking at the past, the mixing and mastering mistakes I used to make, I would recommend, setting the correct volumes (velocity) for all instruments, vocals, drums and samples, as adding extreme amount of volume on certain sounds can really mess up the whole creative project, making it muddy, overpowering, peak and just sound horrible.

When it comes to mixing and mastering, louder doesn't mean better or clearer quality. 

Using limiters which prevent peaking could fix this issue. TDR Limiter 6 GE is a great limiter plugin and will prevent any peaks within the master mix.

 

2. Over mixing the EQ (Equalization Effects)

Over mixing and over doing the EQ effects can be very easily done, I have made this same mistake in the past, which I now avoid. Adding EQ to instruments, samples, vocals or drums is quite critical for better sound quality, but over doing this, will leave dramatic sound output. For example, I used to add EQ to my synths or pianos, then cut off the low-mids and bass frequencies within the EQ, this made my instrument sound very high in saturation and just provided a very strange sound output. This resulted in my virtual instruments not sounding natural as they were intended, and very strange.

Looking back at this, I never noticed these mistakes, because there was no one to sitting next to me to tell me that I was over mixing my EQ.

This is definitely a strong mixing and mastering mistake to avoid, don't over mix, it will have negative effects on the whole composition.

Sonnox Oxford EQ is a great choice for pro style EQ plugins when it comes to mixing and mastering.

 

3. Overlaying powerful punchy kicks with Bass

This is a common mistake all music producers seem to make when they start off, overlaying powerful kicks with strong bass, both usually starting simultaneously will simply distort the kick/bass point making it sound distorted and muddy. But this was part of the genre style of the track that I was producing at the time, and kick and bass needed to start at the same point.

I never knew this was an issue till after 2 years of producing music, someone told me that my kicks and my sub-bass were simply over powering, and that this mistake was distorting my composition and messing up my mix and master. 

This is when I learned how to use the Sidechain feature, which simply adds an automatic automation which lowers the volume of the bass slightly, this happens when the kick sample plays at the same time as the bass. This made my mixes' lot clearer, made the kick stand out and the bass was nice and clear.

Avoid this mixing and mastering mistake at all point. Messing up the mixing and mastering on kick and bass will simply mess up the whole track composition. I would recommend checking out this cool article which holds more information on sidechain and how to use it, this should help any music producer or sound engineer understand the importance of sidechain within mixing and mastering. 

These are the top 3 mixing and mastering mistakes I would recommend all music producers and sound engineers to avoid at all times. They will do nothing but mess up the whole track, beats or any style of composition, including vocal recording.