How to Stop Overprocessing and Let the Track Breathe

If you’ve got a mix that sounds dull, or if you’ve still got a long way to go before your mix is done, it’s easy to get sucked into adding plugin after plugin in an effort to get a more exciting sound. We know that compressors make things sound more aggressive, EQ’s make things sound clearer, and reverb units make things sound bigger, but if you add all those to every track you’ve got a recipe for a cluttered mix. So how do you know when to restrain yourself? The first thing to ask yourself is whether or not you actually need to add something to your track, or if you just need to give it some space. Sometimes I find that I add a whole lot of plugins to a track, only to mute all of them and discover that it sounds better without them.

Compression is an easy trap to fall into, especially if you’re like me and like the sound of aggressive drums. But when you heavily compress every single track in your session, you’re going to end up with a very lifeless mix. Instead, you want to allow some tracks to maintain their dynamics while you crush others. For example, if you allow your drums to breathe while compressing the rest of your instruments, you can create the illusion that your mix is moving and grooving even if the instruments themselves are quite static. If you find that things are sounding a bit dull all of a sudden, try bypassing your compressors before adding more brightness or gain to your tracks.

If you’re struggling to develop your ears and determine what to do, try this experiment. Take 15 minutes, go to one of your tracks, and remove every insert plugin. Then, rebuild the plugins for the track from the ground up, only adding the ones that you need. Start with the fader and pan, and then add plugins one at a time, making sure that each time you make a change that it’s a change for the better. If you can’t tell the difference, you probably don’t need it. This exercise will help you develop your ears and break the chains of always relying on chains.

Lastly, reverb deserves a special mention here. Reverb has the tendency to both mask flaws and create new ones, so be careful how you use it. You may find that your tracks sound huge when soloed, but when you add them to the mix they’re muddy. If you’re finding that your mix is sounding too distant or unclear, try bringing the decay time down or using less wet signal. Alternatively, you could try only using reverb on a select few instruments in your mix to create depth without washing everything out.

Remember that the goal here isn’t to use the least amount of plugins possible. It’s to allow your instruments to work together the way that they should. When you do this, they maintain their transient and texture, and the silence between notes actually means something. The more you restrain yourself from over-processing, the easier it will become, and the better your mixes will sound.