5 Mixing Mistakes – Fix These for A Clear Mix

  Speaker 1 Here are five mistakes that you can fix this week to improve the sound at your church. These mistakes are really easy to make, but they’re also really easy to fix. And so after you watch all five, go check out your sound console and see if you can apply these and you’ll immediately have a cleaner and clearer mix for your Sunday service. The first mistake is improper gain structure. Setting the gain correctly on every channel is critical to getting a great sound at your church.

Speaker 1 And so what you want to do is you want to make sure every channel is dipping in the mustard. You want to dip it in the mustard. And what I mean by that is the input signal coming in should be mostly green. On your little metre there, you should see mostly green. And at the loudest moments, you should see a little bit of yellow at the tip.

Speaker 1 That’s why it’s called dipping it in the mustard. And what this translates to on digital Soundboards is about negative 16 decibels. So every single channel coming in on your board adjusts the gain until you see negative 16 decibels or just a little bit of yellow at the loudest points of playing or singing. That will give you a proper gain structure with which will make everything sound better down the line really quickly. The reason this is important is if it’s not enough gain, you’re not gonna have enough resolution or quality to your signal.

Speaker 1 There won’t be enough detail there. If it’s too much, it will be crunchy, distorted or clipping overdriven. It’ll be crunchy and nasty sounding. So you wanna get it just right in the Goldilocks zone, which is negative 16 dB. So this week at rehearsal, go look at all of your metres and make sure your gain structure is set correctly.

Speaker 1 That will immediately improve your sound. The second mixing mistake people make is that they boost frequencies before they cut frequencies. You actually want to flop that. You want to cut the ugly frequencies out before you boost any frequencies using your equaliser knob. Sometimes we want to hear more top end frequencies or some low end frequencies, but instead of boosting those frequencies, first cut some of the other frequencies and see if that fixes the problem.

Speaker 1 It’s always better to cut before you boost, and what you want to do is get rid of the ugly sounding frequencies first. That’s going to immediately clear up your mix. How do you do that, Alex? Well, you use a method called boost sweep cut. Using your equaliser, boost a set of frequencies up above the line like a little mountain peak and sweep them across all the frequencies in your signal.

Speaker 1 When you Find a set of frequencies that sounds ugly or unpleasant to your ear. Then take that little mountain peak and dip it below the zero db line on your equaliser. What that’s doing is it’s removing the ugly sound that you were hearing when you boosted it. You identified that’s the ugly frequency. And then when you cut that frequency, you’re now cleaning up your signal by, by removing it completely out or at least lowering it down.

Speaker 1 That’s the boost sweep cut method. And I encourage you to use it to clean up all of your channels. That’s going to make your whole mix sound cleaner and clearer. And some of the most common problem frequencies are around 200 hertz. That’s where you’re going to get some of the muddy unclearness.

Speaker 1 And around 400 hertz can tend to sound boxy or plasticky. And there are others. And that’s why you want to sweep across all of them to find the ugly ones and try to cut four first. Then if you need to, you can boost. That’s the second mistake.

Speaker 1 The third mixing mistake people make is that they don’t EQ their reverbs. Yes, you should EQ your reverbs. Just like your signal can have ugly frequencies, your reverb also can have a lot of ugly frequencies. And you don’t actually need that for the reverb. Reverb is mostly about the top end.

Speaker 1 And so what you want to do is use a high pass philtre to philtre out a lot of the low to low mid frequencies of reverb, maybe even all the way up to the mid frequencies of reverb and even EQ any other parts of the reverb that that don’t sound pleasing. What you really want is just sort of that spacious upper frequencies from the reverb to bring out the high end. You don’t want to muddy up the low end, you just want to bring out some accents of the high end. And so EQ your reverb and that will help clean up your mix as well. The fourth mistake people make in mixing is that they use panning.

Speaker 1 Wait, Alex, isn’t panning a good thing? Yes, it is. If you’re mixing for broadcast, like your live stream, or if you’re mixing your in ear monitors, you should be panning. But but in your actual sanctuary in your room, you shouldn’t be panning too hard left or too hard right. Most church sound systems are not set up for stereo mixing.

Speaker 1 They’re either a mono PA or they’re a left right PA with only two speakers and that means if you put the guitar all the way in the left speaker, none of the people on the right side of the room are going to hear the guitar. Or if you put this vocalist all the way on the right side, then no one on the left side is going to hear it. So in your room, if you’re mixing front of house, that’s your room, then you shouldn’t be panning too hard. Maybe gently, maybe tiny bit slightly, or maybe not at all. Okay, so don’t do panning in your room.

Speaker 1 Yes for your ears, yes for your broadcast live stream mix, but not for your room. That’s the fourth mistake. If you like these tips, then you’re gonna love our brand new mixing for worship course which we just released. It’s gonna give you an eight step framework that will show you step by step how to build a perfect crystal clear mix at your church every single week. No matter what Sunday soundboard you’re using.

Speaker 1 Even if you’re a complete novice, we break it down in super simple to understand language and we show you a deep dive on all the fundamentals of audio and then how to put it together into a perfect undistracting mix every single week. And the principles we teach you in this course will improve your broadcast mix, your front of house mix, and your in ear monitor mix. So you can use it in any context. It’s going to improve the sound. We’ll also give you a printable cheat sheet that you can keep by your soundboard that has all the recommended settings for each instrument so that you and your sound guy can get a better mix faster every single week.

Speaker 1 And we are running special launch launch pricing on this course this week only. By Friday the sale will be ended. It’s 55% off, so it’s only $179 for this 23 video lesson course. The cheat sheet plus we will give you all the audio files from the course so that you can practise what you’re learning on your own. So grab that right now while you can to get that 55% off.

Speaker 1 Discount links are in the description or the show notes, so make sure you grab that right now. Mixing mistake number five is improper mic placement. Did you know the closer you have a microphone to a sound source, the more low end buildup you have, which leads to muddiness. So for your vocals, if all of your vocalists are kissing their microphone and they’re holding it too close to their mouth, you’re going to have this huge low end buildup called the proximity effect and you need to actually have them move that microphone two finger lengths away from their mouth and that will immediately lower the proximity effect. The same thing can be true if your mic is too close to your snare drum or if you’re miking your electric guitar amp and it’s too close.

Speaker 1 Proximity effect will always be a problem if your mic is too close to the source, so just put two finger lengths between there and that will immediately solve the muddiness that you’re hearing in your mix and it’s as simple as moving your mic back just a little bit. So those are five simple to fix Mixing Mistakes if you want more help to get a better mix at your church, I highly encourage you to take advantage of the special offer we have on our brand new Mixing for Worship course, which will give you a foolproof eight step process to getting a perfect mix every week. No more guessing, no more twisting knobs, no more pressing settings and hoping it’s just going to sound good. No more feedback. Learn the fundamentals of great audio that will improve your mix no matter what console you’re mixing on.

Speaker 1 Even if you’re a complete novice, grab that course before Friday to get your 55% off. I hope this video helped you see you inside the course or in the next video. God bless.