Basic Mixing - Volume & Panning

When you have finished recording your music, it is really important that you spend some time mixing it.

Mixing is the process of taking all your tracks and making them sound as good as possible together. There is a lot that goes into mixing, but for today we're going to just concentrate on two main aspects: volume and panning.

Volume
Balancing the volume of all of your tracks is important because you are deciding what are the most important parts of the song for your listeners to hear. If all your instruments are at the same volume, you make it so that people can't hear the best parts as well as you want them to. So, you need to learn to prioritize your tracks and decide which are the most important, and which ones you can pull down a little. A lot of the time, by just making one track just a little bit softer, you make another track stand out a lot more.

Panning
Panning is where you move a particular instrument to the left or the right in your headphones. You do this in order to give each instrument its own special spot in the mix and help it to be heard more clearly. Panning can also be used to make it sound as though instruments are talking to each other. Things like this help to make the song more interesting for the listener.

Certain instruments AREN'T usually panned; these include:

• Bass (drums and basslines)
  
• Snares and Claps

Almost all other instruments are panned at least a little to the left or the right.

Both volume and panning are usually handled through the mixer.

The faders control volume:

The pan knobs control the panning.

To get a better idea about what a professional mix sounds like, lets listen closely to the instrumental of a popular song. Pay attention to how loud certain instruments are in relation to each other and where they are (left to right) in your headphones. Listen to just a minute or two: LINK