The Ultimate Guide to Mixing

This is a guide to the essential ideas of audio mixing, targeted specifically for computer-based producers. The internet has an incredible wealth of information on this subject, but it is scattered across a disorganized body of articles and tutorials. Our goal with this course is to consolidate of of the most important information in one place. This guide will not tell you about mixing techniques on how to track vocals or what frequency to boost to make your drums really knock. On the other hand, this does not assume that you are making club-oriented dance music. Certainly the advice in here is applicable to mixing electro house or hip-hop, but it is equally applicable to mixing ambient. But it is worth mentioning that dance music as a whole does pose special mixing challenges, such as the tuning of percussion tracks and the achievement of loudness, and these challenges are given adequate time, since they are relevant to many students. This course assumes that students have a very basic prior knowledge of the concepts of mixing. You should know the way around your DAW. You should know what a mixer is, and what an effect is, and how to use them. You should have at least heard of the terms compression, equalization, and reverb. You should have done some mixdowns yourself, so you know how the whole process works. But that's really all you need to know at this point.