13 HABITS of PRO MIXERS 

Three things this channel taught me that absolutely transformed my mix. 1. Boosting makes a mix sound so much more exciting than carving. 2. Just boost 8k. 3. Smash the vocal into a bluey and love your life.

This channel has been a huge help for me as amateur producer. The automation thing has fixed my relationship with the bassist in my band, lol. He does these cool little licks or embellishments in certain parts of our songs that I always failed to capture in their full glory as i'd be to busy trying to EQ everything to make those little moments pop. Now i just automate his bass with a little boost for that section and it pops for the moment then settles back into it's original place. Hardcore Music Studio saved my band!

I find myself going on RU-vid looking to learn something new and I learn less and less these days. But I tell ya. Almost every one of these tips are huge, advanced, will take years to learn otherwise AND matter greatly when working audio.

Great Video - your advise helps so much-

The value you constantly give is amazing bro, thanks!!

Fantastic tips/habits -- thanks for sharing yet AGAIN Jordan.

Excellent habits. Thanks for sharing!

This is some of the best advice and tips I’ve ever heard ,thanks so much for helping teach

I needed to hear many of these tips! Thanks for channel and content.

I dont know how you sell anything, cause you give everything away for free😂 you’ve really unlocked my music with your effective advice and tips. If i were trying to get clients and build my studio up i would definetely get the pps, but thank you for what you give to those of us that dont have disposable income at the moment. Just a no nonsense no frills use your ears appoach🤘🤘🤘

These tips are absolutely Golden. Thanks.

This might be the most valuable mixing video I’ve ever heard.

To extend the garlic analogy a little bit, sometimes it makes sense to spend some time crafting a sauce before you put that sauce onto your sandwich. I think that philosophy applies to something like getting a drum sound; you want all the mics to come together as one cohesive sound before fitting that completed picture of the kit into the song. So in that context mixing things in solo can be helpful.

Best advice ever! Hardest part is actually doing it.. lol. I learned a lot of these things over the years but it took me so long to actually consistently do it. That’s why I love watching these types of videos even if I technically know what is going to be said. It’s inspirational and motivational!

Another fire vid!

I remember an interview with Chris lord alge where someone asked how much of a specific frequency he will boost on a certain instrument. He replied with (and I’m summarizing) “I don’t know. I just do it until it sounds good”. Never be afraid to boost 12 db of something or compress something by 20db! That’s how you can get those aggressive metal/rock sounds

Great to hear these points reinforced again as a reminder!

Grab your free Mixing Cheatsheet to learn the go-to starting points for EQ and compression in heavy mixes: www.mixcheatsheet.com

Inspiration talk from the guy. Keep on the good work. Work from the heart. It pays off

Great info..!!

Legendary tips brother!!!

I swear you give the best mixing tips on here! Thank you! I'd love some content on how you get to work with bigger bands. I've struggled to get out of the local market and I've been doing this for 8+ years now.

Best videos on RU-vid so glad I found you ❤️

Great video

The key takeaway that we can all walk away with is understanding that a lot of these are based on mindset. If you were to have the mindset of a pro and continue to think like one, that alone will be WAY more valuable as opposed to another "mixing tip." Stay committed, stay disciplined, have fun, and you'll be able to reach new heights with your work!

I like when things I figured out on my own make it to the list 😂. Number 2 is definitely it. I’m organized with my work and personal life and it just carried over to making templates. Great advice.

You are Bob Rose of metal mixing ! i really love your videos, those gave me so much inspiration!

"Done is better than perfect." 1) please don't come for my head like that, and 2) this will so help me with my perfectionism.

A good friend/band mate once said that there's no such thing as talent, that it was merely practice. I didn't agree for the longest. The older I get I understand his wisdom at our young age.

Very sound info

Thank you!

Crazy how all this can be applied to video editing. Love the crossover.

This was a great video my friend! Thank you for taking the time to make it [ I know how long it takes to make a video, rendering, uploading, etc ] Your great at explaining things. Can you do a video on adding samples to drums [ kick, snare, etc' ] Was watching your video of you covering your last 15 years of mixing. In the video @16:45, you mentioned that " I started using my own drum samples and stopped using slate or any others ] This comment got me thinking. See I use Superior Drummer 3. I love my drum sound I get from that VST. Love it! BUT, I didn't know how to interpret that comment. So for someone like me SD3 is all I use. Let's say you did a mix for a band and used SD3, did you mean that you use that VST but ONTOP of it [ snare, kick, toms ] you add your samples? Cause you also said " I just figured out how to do it " So if that is the case can you make a video about how it's done. If it's not the case can you explain what you meant please. I dont know if you can type that out here or if it would be better to just make a quick video explaining what you do, or how it's done, and should it be done [ if it is ] on Superior Drummer 3. Thanks again my friend, wishing you the best!

#5 is huge. It's one of the things that kept me mixing in circles for decades. Yes, decades.

I’ve been doing this for quite a long time and still break some of these rules. Lol. You are right about all of this. I have some things to work on.

Automation kills me, but it's something I've been forcing myself to do because, everything you're saying about it is right. It is hard using a mouse though, I must admit. Great tips Jordan!

I have a session that I call, Template Creator and I use it to save in the system location for templates for easy recall. But, I can always go back to the session itself and update any new aux tracks I've created, track presets, I/O, etc and then save again as a template in the system to stay up-to-date with my workflow.

About low level monitoring : I think what comes into play is more the Fletcher-Munson curve (basically, your ears have a different EQ curve depending on SPL), than the monitors. Moreover, I also thought for a while that monitoring quietly made me less dependent of the room I'm in, but that's wrong acoustically speaking : the room interacts the same way at any level, it's just that we cannot perceive it as much at low volumes because the room reflections get lost in ambiant noise. Just my 2 cents :) Thanks a lot for your videos Jordan ! Love the garlic analogy !

Hey!!! Great video. Can I please request a video?? Please can you do one where you go through exactly how you use sample replacement? - Which software - How to choose samples - How to keep it phase coherent Thanks!

Okay, I love that garlic analogy. Jesus that is spot on!

So True 👍

Got bitten by #6 a few times before I learned that lesson, and still have old projects that I would love to remix but don't have the VI patches any longer to properly do them.

Actually there's one thing to do in solo: gating (if necessary) and reverb equing (at least for me when I use a mid-side eq for cleaning it up)😅

4:24 #6 tip do you do this as you go or after you are done mixing. Just curious as to your workflow process?

I have little idea for HABIT #10 - Push things to find the sweet spot: make practical A/B mix of same session between brave mental of "The Pusher" and scared mental of "The Puller" - or something like that, you figure out the name titles - but anyway, to demonstrate how drastically different mix will sound with just a little mental attitude shift to either not fearing to push it vs. wanting to keep it safe. Think of this as bit of slapstick comedy style to contrast that difference, or so. My 2 cents. Peace.

My computer makes me have to record every track again as an audio file. I can only have so many plugins before it starts crashing, so I have to put the plugins I want on each track, then set the input of a new track as the output of the one with the plugins on and record it. Takes fkn hours and hours, but once it's done, I've got a mix that will play without any plugins being used on any instrument, leaving the CPU free for the main vocals and anything that might be needed on a bus. At some point, I'll probably record the buses as stereo tracks too. Then I have minimal tracks to balance and mix. Near the end, I might just have 6 tracks on some songs, 'Drums', 'Bass', 'Guit Rhythm', 'Guit Lead', 'Vox M' and 'Vox B'. It's annoying though, I'd like to be able to have an amp sim on every guitar track for instance, but then I'd never finish a mix! Something that I had to really learn to do though, is label each track before recording anything, then if I need the raw clip again, I'm looking in the folder for "Guit Run 1", not "Track 17 recording 1", or worse, having to play the clips until I find the take I'm looking for! 🙂

haha this is genius "if this were cooking it would be like trying to decide how much garlic the dish needs just by tasting the garlic by itself " bravo!

7:31 - 'Do you suffer from chronic back pain?'

Do you think its a good idea to get NS10’s for someone who’s also producing?

Tip 12 is the KILLER ....🙂

#4 your ears also go into protection mode at 85db and so you don’t hear everything as accurately as well

Number 6 & 8 are majors keys.

I love the part about going around and around in circles with your mixes. And not making a commitment. As your girlfriend also thought. Yet here you are! As she now knows who you are sleeping with and it's him! Jimmy… Jimi Hendrix! And she never thought you, that way? But I digress. The key here is, committing. I have been committed… Throughout my entire professional life. As you may have surmised. Nevertheless and ipso facto. It's great being committed! Anyone can do it! It doesn't take a genius! Even your dead grandmother would agree. And so… There's this old technique called, flying blind by the seat of your pants. And not going down in, subsonic flames. When you have 10 million people listening live to your mix. And you've never heard or listened to the band who you are currently mixing. With 10 million people tuned in. For an MTV, summertime satellite broadcast. All live. All totally terrifying and professionally intimidating. Because I've got, 24 up to 48 equalizers. Already tweaked, into general probable EQ. And in 20 some or more, dynamic range limiters and noise gates. On some arbitrary, instrument inputs. And then to top it all off. I don't get any sound check. My sound check is the, first 60 seconds. Of the first, number of the set. Been given no direction. By the band or a producer. And hope that, their fans, friends, family members, all tell them they sounded great on the radio! And so my work is sort of like, a supersonic fighter jet. Going to the corner minimart to pick up a sixpack. It's so fast. You are back before you have left. And can listen to your live, rock 'n' roll mixing efforts. Using what we call, time dilation. And your smart phone. It's already gone, well beyond, Alpha Centauri.. But you get to replay it, here. I wonder what, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will do? When it discovers. The melody it wants to create. Would be a copyright violation. What then? Simple. Donald Trump is discontinuing it. So there is no discontinuity. From his protuberance. And since he has, Elected. Not to drink. We will have to approach him, rectally. Non sequitur R us RemyRAD

Addendum: Name your mix files. A "FINAL" mix is rarely a final mix. Bounce out alternates (bass+1, vox-1, keys+2, Instrumental, TV Mix, etc). Be specific. And *listen* to them before sending to mastering.

I disagree with the whole "never mix in solo!" fad. Of course you want your EQ and levels to blend with the entire mix, but there's a lot of things you can't hear that are possibly ruining the rest of the mix unless you solo it to find out. I solo every track many times throughout a mix and it's never failed me. Don't be afraid to use that solo button just because a bunch of random RU-vidrs told you it's bad. It's there for a reason

do you _ever_ make bad content?

I find myself going on RU-vid looking to learn something new and I learn less and less these days. But I tell ya. Almost every one of these tips are huge, advanced, will take years to learn otherwise AND matter greatly when working audio.