4 Beginners Tips for Cleaner Mixes

Arrangement, Arrangement, Arrangement! One of the most common mistakes beginners to electronic music make is to haphazardly add parts to their song without any sense of logic or order. This leads to muddy mixes with multiple parts fighting for the same frequency space. When you are adding a new part, pay attention to what frequency range it's in to ensure that you aren't putting it in an octave that is going to compete with an existing part. If it does, try playing the new part an octave higher or an octave lower. A well-arranged track can have a lot going on and still sound clean with each part distinct from the others. The cleaner your mix starts out to begin with, the cleaner the end result will be.

Think in 3D
Not having multiple parts playing in the same frequency range is a good rule of thumb, but isn't a hard, fast rule. There are things you can do so that two parts in the same range aren't fighting for space in your mix. The simplest is to change the position of one of the tracks relative to the other by using panning or reverb level. By having one track panned more towards the right, and the other more to the left (avoid panning hard left or hard right, though, as this usually sounds very unnatural), you can have two parts around the same range and still have them sound distinct. This is still a common technique used in mixing multiple guitars in rock music. But don't stop there. Consider also the position of tracks 'back to front' in the mix. 'Wet' tracks that are heavily reverbed have a tendency to sound further away from the listener than ones that are drier, or have no reverb at all. This doesn't quite produce the same degree of separation that panning does, but done correctly it can definitely help two competing parts sit well together.

Subtractive EQ
The biggest trouble area for most mixes is the low end You want the bass frequencies to sound nice and full, but sometimes you just end up with pure mud. The best way to remedy this problem is through judicious use of subtractive EQ. Subtractive EQ simply means using an equalizer to subtract frequencies rather than boosting them. In fact, it is always preferable to cut frequencies than to boost them if possible, because by cutting frequencies you are freeing up bandwidth in your mix, while boosting them takes up more room in your mix. So make a habit of cutting the bass frequencies out of everything in your mix that isn't a kick drum or bass. You might think that sounds like violins or bells or crash cymbals don't have much low end, but you would be surprised just how much there usually is. And even small amounts of unneeded bass frequencies can add up over several tracks and make your low end wooly and indistinct. My default starting point is to use a highpass filter to cut out everything below 200Hz on most non-kick/bass tracks. And on the kick and bass tracks, it's a good idea to roll off everything below 40Hz since most consumer stereos won't reproduce these frequencies anyway. Keep in mind, this is just a starting point - you will undoubtedly need to tweak each track individually to get it perfect. You'd be amazed at how just this one simple trick will clean up your mixes. Your kick and bassline will come through much clearer, and your mix will sound more open, even allowing you to add more parts if you desire.

Keep It Hot
If you are recording hardware instruments, you need to make sure you record them as loudly as possible without clipping the signal (unless you are deliberately clipping it for effect). It's easy to forget that 'real' instruments and mixers emit noise (since softsynths don't have this problem). You want to ensure that your 'real' instrument parts are as far above the noise floor as possible. Simply normalizing your already recorded track is not good enough since obviously, making your track louder will also make the noise louder. So take time to set levels properly and you will minimize any noise issues.

What are your favorite tips for cleaning up mixes?