Music Lesson: Mixing Techniques

And there we have it, really. So I've got to obviously fine-tune it a little bit. Let's come in and have a little look.

Step-by-Step Process

1. Reviewing the Track
   I'm going to come back to the beginning and just start to include a little bit more variation here. I will grab this little section and double click.

2. Reversing Section
   I'm just going to reverse this part kind of just before the breakdown section.

3. Adjusting Percussion
   Also going to kill some of the percussion. That as well.

4. Saving Changes
   Give it a save as well.

5. Cymbal Crash
   Copy my cymbal crash over to really highlight the big changes in the track.

6. Adjusting Baseline
   Bring the baseline up a little bit. If I can delete a few bits, no. Just trying to keep the variation happening.

7. Fading Out
   Fade out here with the volume as well. So let me just grab the track volume here.

Volume Automation

What I want to do is click a couple of times while my mixer and track volume are selected and do a little fade out of the hang drums.

• The first thing to do is to pull down this node here.
• I was quite comfortable with that volume level.
• So we're now fading out in a very, very linear way.

Introducing Curves

Now, what I'm going to do is introduce a curve by pressing down Alt and then just popping in a curve like so. This will create a nice gradual fade out.

Final Touches

1. Dropping Elements
   Let's just come back here and maybe start to drop some of these elements in the final section.

2. Shortening Elements
   I think maybe it's time to shorten a few elements here. Selecting this entire region, I will grab this region above now and just move this in.

3. Removing Hang Drums
   In fact, it's actually quite nice without the hang drums there.

4. Volume Automation
   I've brought the automation volume down and it has stayed down for this part. I actually quite like that.

5. Deleting Unwanted Sections
   I'm going to delete this so that now we just have some of the strings, the bass, and some of the percussion.

6. Fading Out Elements Again
   What I might do as well is just start to fade some of these elements out.

• Let's bring on our track volume here and just play some fade out.
• I'm going to use Alt again to get a little curve happening to make things sound a little bit more natural.

Conclusion

Okay, so I'm happy with that. The next stage now really is to start mixing the track and just make things sound a little bit more polished.