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1. Strip down to the bare essentials:
- In an orch/electronic score this might be one bass instrument, a main “kick”, main “snare”, the main melodic instrument (voice, synth etc), the main rhythm instrument (piano, string ostinato, etc. — just pick a single rhythm inst if u can — the one that starts and carries the song/piece!). Now build an amazing mix with ONLY those items.
- Give yourself plenty of headroom during this first step. Turn ur speakers up loud if u like to vibe out loud (i often do, to start!) but make sure the big kick booms or snare cracks or lead instrument — whatever’s driving your mix — isn’t peaking at all. I like to keep a comfy 3-6dB buffer on my meters in pro tools (i.e. -6dBfs, so my loudest momentary peak would be -6dB below full scale / peaking). I always meter in pro tools “classic” mode – but you do you!
- In an orch/electronic score this might be one bass instrument, a main “kick”, main “snare”, the main melodic instrument (voice, synth etc), the main rhythm instrument (piano, string ostinato, etc. — just pick a single rhythm inst if u can — the one that starts and carries the song/piece!). Now build an amazing mix with ONLY those items.