STOP MIXING

My Studio Gear List:
--------------------
I personally purchase my gear from Sweetwater and have for over 12 years -- these are affiliate links, meaning you can support my channel by using Sweetwater. The reason I trust Sweetwater is because they have the BEST customer support I have ever seen, two year warranty, free shipping, and they have they best reputation in the industry. You will never see me recommend buying pro audio gear from Amazon

--------------------
Logic Pro X: (use the app store)

Sample Libraries / Plugins I HIGHLY Recommend:
_____________

[matt_nyc_audioengineer]

I'm a professional freelance mixing and mastering engineer and this is pretty much spot on. I mix ALOT of projects and 70% or more have little to no hope of sounding "radio ready" and it's because it's a bad song or the recordings are terrible. We can only fix so much and that should be because we HAVE to, not because a producer wanted to cut corners. Good advice and video!

[tobebuilds]

Thanks for laying this out. You've helped me realize that what I want to focus on is ONLY singing + songwriting, and production to a lesser degree.

I'll have to team up with producers + engineers. And that's okay.

[andidrogynous]

I love how Nathan James Larsen and Make Pop Music release their vids in the same five minutes. I always know when one will be released as soon as I see the other

[DurshMusic]

That's exactly what I was thinking today 💖 well explained 🙌

[ThatGuy-Official]

Very true. Sound selection is HUGE. If you pick the right sounds and produce them effectively you may not even need to "mix" in the traditional sense because your sounds will already fit together. It becomes just a game of adjusting volume.

[unclemick-synths]

Great video. For years I wondered why my 4-track Portastudio productions were my best even though I knew so much less back then and it was because there was no possibility of fixing anything in the mix. I had to arrange the whole thing and plan the recording before even hitting the Record button.

[tr_sanzbeats]

I applied this, and what I do, is to take a reference track, and produce it until it can sound as good as the reference, after that, I mix it and master it according to what I think I should remove or add. Maybe some techniques in mixing would make it more clean and nice, but this techniques would be developed throughout the process and time. So I really support your position 💪🏻

[geniusondrugs]

working on dropping my first song later this month, and boy oh boy have I spent hours and hours on watching tutorials on vocal mixing and everything around it these past few days.
Edit: just now got to the part where you admit to almost never spending much time on mixing, and woooow I really needed to hear that

[mrbass]

Thank you for reiterating this in my brain

[heartshinemusic]

Some good points. The first step is most important! If only there were as much (quality) songwriting tutorials as there were mixing tutorials. Too many bad songs are getting produced and mixed. People should focus much more on the first step: creating a great song. And that takes more effort than most are willing to put into in. But it's the most worthwhile, and ultimately the most rewarding, step of the process. There's no use in producing and mixing bad songs. It's mostly wasted time and effort.

[Bthelick]

I'm with you all the way, I haven't panned a synth, or compressed a kick drum etc (literally) in years. Once you train your ears, you start to pick you sounds/recordings with an ear for the final production better in the first place. Once you develop a 'minds ear' from experience (and a good listening environment helps too) your mix just forms itself from the choices of sound and arrangement. Just like mastering, there is no need for a formal mix process any more. I make 2 tracks a night and release them the following week. I have several hundred tracks released professionally, and of those I have the data and control over, I can tell you the better mixed ones aren't the better performing ones. Like you say the average listener does not care, when egos get caught up in these technical conversations its easy to forget your not making art to please other engineers. (unless that is the sole purpose of your brand haha but then you wouldn't be watching this)

[DubFreakuencies]

This is very true. Its easy to get caught in the mistake of fix it in the mix.

Im sure some people can relate to the fact that sometimes, with very little work you have a song that sounds polished and translates, and one wonders why? Inadvertent good sound selection and arrangement, which means its possible to do it with very little mixing.

I do mostly dawless jams, and the "mixing" is basically good sound selection, levels and filters, which means again its possible.

BUT, an accurate monitoring system is essential, to check if actually something sounds right or wrong.

[xAudio]

very true. focus on the music and having fun and the rest will sort itself out when the time is right

[Jcjenxnc]

I love these videos! You explain things really well.

[nickyadeniyi]

You are incredible Nathan, seriously. This is facts, and if anyone out there is like me, I only really care about the production, period. So this is encouraging and motivating. You’re basically shifting the focus of creating back to just that: creating.

Can’t thank you enough.

[progrocker]

Great video! Sometimes it's difficult to know when you're engaged with tone selection (i.e. production) vs tone refinement (i.e. mixing). For example, should a guitarist decide which amp blend to use during production, or is that a mixing decision?

[Heathen-Sun]

😅 I feel seen. I feel like my motto is “writing songs is easy, production is hard.” But from watching this I can see what one of my problems is. I am always trying to mix while working in production and then back track because it starts to sound weird and I don’t like it. Then I get befuddled by going back and removing the things I had already done and it takes up soo much time.

[TheTMR]

Great Tips... This is the only mistake I was doing but my Son Produced a song with simple acaustic guitar that sounds great

[felixnotkjellberg]

this is what every new prods should watch...few months ago i watched Arcando's twitch stream and mentioned that the only important thing to do is adjusting volume and find good samples. i tried and it worked so well! big thumbs up Nathan!

[howzr]

Being a drummer has helped so much with my production and I encourage everyone producing to learn drums as much as you can! Along with everything else but man if you can’t create a nice groove on drums then your tracks aren’t going to be as amazing.