Mixing technique and steps for getting there...

[millicent frndly]

first of all I'm no professional... I just wanted to see if I could get a topic going on mixing steps and I wanted to see how you guys handle this stuff and what order usually you do this type of thing. (ie. compressiong before EQ?) I wouldn't think this would take too much time to type up and I'm curious as to how many ways people accomplish basically the same thing. (My reason for doing this is to see if I can reduce the number of steps before I get to the automation side of things..) Hopefully. I'll learn something from this provided some of you mixing gurus chime in and offer up some good info... maybe this will give some novices some ideas but I'm no ace mixer or anything.. so mostly I'm wanting to know how other people handle the early mixing stages. If you have the time, please reply w/ your techniques.

My mixing steps.. nothing is ever set in stone but this is usually the way I begin.

Step one (Panning, Busses and compression)

I usually start w/ everything pulled up. That gets me through the first couple of steps. I get the basic pans for the mix, you know all the good stuff from overheads to guitars and whatnot. Then I set up my Aux inputs, usually a compressor and a delay/reverb for the drums, a compressor and/or delays for the vox, bass and guitars. I try to handle as much of this w/ aux sends as possible and then usually end up adding track plugins later. I don't have alot of money or plugins so I'm just using the digi-plugins most of the time. I usually don't bring up reverbs and ambient noises until I've got the frequecies notched out in step two but I do create the aux sends here. (I need to make a good mixing template but I haven't gotten around to it yet).

Step two (EQ's and Ambience)

This is where I start trying ("trying" being the operative word here) to get everything in it's own little happy frequency zone. I'm not the greatest at this but have got good enough that the mix sounds pretty full. This is something that of course I'll end up changing as the mix moves forward but the basics will stay. This is also where I start bringing up all the ambient stuff that I set up in step one but left out until now. Delays and reverbs, I'll also dabble w/ any flanges or anything else here.

Step three (Break it all down)

Now I'll pull all the faders out of the mix... bring up the kick, snare, bass and lead vox (and the compression faders for each track/group of tracks). Get them sounding the way I want and then start bringing other instruments/drums/whatever into the mix next in order of importance/performance. Every so often I crank everything up to hear the bass and kick and make sure everything works pretty well. (although really, until I make a cd and get it in my discman or the car, nothing is ever really certain). this is also where I start A/Bing w/ a professionally mixed song that I think has the same feel/sound/whatever that I'm hearing for the song I'm working on. Once I get the mix the way I like it and it works good in the car, jambox etc. Then I start automating and bumping the little stuff around.

Hopefully that will help some guys who are new to this... I'd like to hear some other stuff you guys are doing out there for this sort of thing. I know alot of pro-mixers tend to guard alot of the stuff that they do to make a song have his/her sound. But I'm not wanting secific compressor tips or EQ frequency stuff... just the steps you use to get to automation. (or if you're too lazy to do something like that... then how about some advice on what I might be doing wrong although this has worked well for me so far.) I'm mostly mixing my own stuff so I'm kinda limited on mixing other peoples music. Thanks for reading and replying...

chris