8 Steps to a Great Mix

This lesson is the foundation for everything that follows. The rest of the course is structured around these eight elements of a great mix — and you tackle them roughly in this order as you sit down to build a mix.

The eight elements

1. Good acoustics — the room itself sounds good.
2. Good sound source — the thing making the sound is good before it’s even miked.
3. Proper miking — the right mic in the right place on that source.
4. Proper gain structure — clean, healthy signal levels into the console.
5. Tasteful EQ — shaping tone with restraint.
6. Transparent compression — controlling dynamics (we’ll touch on gating here too).
7. Enhancing effects — reverb, delay, and the like.
8. Musical balance — the right volume level for each instrument, serving the song.

The hidden ninth: a band that plays well together

Brian’s addition: none of this works if the band isn’t playing well together first. Are the musicians creating space, or stepping on each other? If everyone’s crowded in the mid-range — electric, keys, and bass all fighting for the same frequencies — you just get mud, and there’s only so much a mixer can do.

You can’t polish a turd. If the band sounds like crap, the sound person can only do so much.

Teach your band to spread the frequencies out and play with space. (For that, see the Musical Excellence course and the musician training documents.) A great-sounding band sends the engineer a great signal to work with.

Application

• Write down the eight elements and rate your church 1–10 on each — that’s your roadmap for the rest of this course.
• Listen to this week’s band: is everyone crowding the mid-range, or is there space? Name the worst offender.