Reply To: Where do you start?

[Anonymous]

I guess that I am the only one that does not use templates for mixing sessions. I think they always force me in the same direction and doing the same processing. It is somewhat boring if you ask me because you do not give yourself the room to discover new and exciting things. Do I lose time by always starting from scratch? Probably I do, but not more than one or two hours.

Anyway, I always start with the drumkit, soloing every microphone and add some corrective EQ when it is needed, the same with gates & compressors. I try to do this within two runs through the whole track and then moving on to the next track. If I am done with that, I start to work on intensively on the lead vocal and the backing vocals. After that, I search for instruments that "work together" and send them to a subgroup. Then it is time for a break.

I put all the faders up and the lead vocal +/- 3dB above everything else. Most engineers start with all the faders down. I used to do that as well, but I forced myself to do it the opposite way. Because that was something very new, it took a while to feel comfortable with this way of mixing but my results are better than before so it's worthwhile trying.