Mixing Instruments

With a solid bass-and-drums foundation laid, layer in the rest. As each instrument goes in, the constant question is: is it clashing — with the bass and drums, with each other, or (the big one) with the lead vocal that’s coming? You’re always leaving frequency space for the voice.

Keys

They sound great flat — but with a bass guitar going too, they can be thick. A broad shelf around 300 Hz thins them and naturally brightens them so they don’t compete with the bass. (A separate pad on the same channel can be very thick — thin it so the bass stays clear; boosting that low range puts it right in the bass’s way.) Keys often arrive already compressed, so unless the player is constantly changing patches, little or no extra compression is needed.

Electric guitar

Most players now come in via a modeling/direct device and are already fairly compressed — so compress lightly or not at all. The tone here is great; just pull a touch of low-mid (~200 Hz) for clarity. Guitars are hard to EQ because they swing bright to dark moment to moment — in live sound you find the best compromise rather than EQing every section. The player brings his own delay and reverb as part of his tone, sending a stereo feed, panned wide (broadcast).

Working live with no soundcheck time? Instead of soloing, nudge a channel up in the house (and dip something else) just enough to hear what you’re doing — players on in-ears won’t be affected much.

Acoustic guitar — the “bad engineer” demo

Brian deliberately does it wrong first: crush it with compression, then hack at the EQ to fix the problems the over-compression and over-EQ created — ending with every band moving the same direction.

If every EQ band is going the same direction, reassess your EQ and probably start over.

Done right: EQ first, then compression. Light high-pass, a touch off the muddy low end, tame the piezo zing up top, mild moves across the bands — then a gentle ~3:1 compressor. You can’t make a piezo pickup sound fully mic’d; do your best. Note too that context dictates EQ: solo, you’d EQ the acoustic full and rich; sitting in a full band, keep it more upper-register so it fits (pull the high-pass back if a song starts with just acoustic).

Pads and percussion

• A pad track glues the whole mix together — lower its lows a little so it sits up high; often no compression needed.
• Percussion (shaker, tambourine via overhead mic, plus drum-pad sounds): treat as a percussive element, blendable with the drum foundation. High-pass it (it’s all high-pitched). “Percussion isn’t necessary, but it’s the ear candy that makes it feel finished” — like reverb.

A mix is never static — balance for the moment

When everything’s in, you should be able to hear each instrument; if you can’t, that’s a volume issue (helped enormously by players not overplaying — keys light up top, guitar leaving space). But “everyone audible” is only the starting point. The real job is to highlight whatever’s making the song work at each moment — a guitar line here, a keyboard there — while the rest stay present but less prominent. The acoustic may start a song prominently and intentionally fade back as the chorus grows.

Not everything at the same level all the time. The engineer is never static — he’s massaging the mix for what makes sense at that moment.

Application

• Layer one instrument at a time and carve space rather than boosting everything up.
• Try the “bad engineer” exercise on a channel to feel what over-compression and same-direction EQ do — then reset and do it right.
• Pick one song and plan which instrument should be most prominent in each section.