3 Easy Ways To Instantly Ruin Your Mix - And How To Fix It

Best channel ever!
Thanks Ken good reminders!

That 3rd one is very common I believe. Most of us are ready to jump in and tweak everything quickly to get that FAT sound. It's easy to put the plugins IN rather than taking them OUT.

Nice!

I used to put LOADS of plugins on the vocal chain. depends on the vocal, sometimes I’ll have 3 other times I’ll have 6. But there used to be a time where I’d load it up way to much and I can definitely tell a difference between then and now. Another great video, thanks for the tips!

I've been guilty of doing No.1 a thousand times...never understood why my mixes didn't get as loud as other mixes on the radio or whatever...once I understood balances (and also the drastic effect that low frequencies have on your peaks), I've never encountered that issue again. And my mixes sound even better now, too! ...of course I don't need to mention that No.3 has also been on my list of thousand-fold repeated mistakes...using a plugin to fix a problem when you don't actually know what the root of the problem is, that just leads to more problems. And there it is again...learning the basic skills instead of running after every trend or shiny object without understanding the basic principles of the craft. Who hasn't been guilty of this in one form or the other? :-P

The song you dessed is in the new nascar game i think!

Thank you ken!!!

Always gems when it comes to Ken, his knowledge & Mixing Night...Thank you for sharing. =)

I am very light on plugins like you Ken. Ccuz I have no money to buy them ahaha

Ken you could take some of the questions answered in your live telecast and post them as single videos. Some of them very valuable.

Man, thanks Ken for all your vids. You are a real bro.

Hey Ken. I appreciate these videos! They are really helpful and I appreciate you sharing this information regularly.

Good stuff! i've been guilty of all 3 in the past and shake my head thinking back lol. I wonder what mistakes I don't know i'm making now that I'll laugh at in a few years :D

Good advice Ken, cheers!

Great points...love it

Too many plugins lol. Thx Ken you're a gem.

Great video👍🏽

whoa, the vocals for the Lahzarus song sound just like Brandon Boyd from Incubus

Hello Ken, thanks for sharing the knowledge. You say that using lots of plugins is bad, but alot of us amateur mixers dont have the luxury to mix professional recorded material. I sometimes
have to mix a vocal take that sounds like its recorded with the cheapest piece of shit you can buy, so in some cases using lots of plugins is a must to clean up the shit..

I would gladly see you mix a bad recorded song (especially vocals) to see how a pro tackles the same problems us beginners face.

Subbed. Great channel Ken. I like yourself tend not to have a load of plugins on but I do mix through plugins on my mixbus. Cheers.

Thanks Ken, great info here! I tend to go fairly light on plug ins generally, and let the heavy lifting for reverb and delay, compression happen from outboard analog hardware gear, still seems to sound better to these ears!

One thing that is worth mentioning- it's easier to go with very limited amount of plugins if the source tracks are right. On more amateur level I would say that very often there is much more rescuing required. But I got your point anyways ;)

I break only one rule from this video, and I use a channel strip on every channel I am using, but it is only because it colors the sound, and I want that consistent color in the whole mix. However, I will use only a channel strip, a buss compressor on the master buss, a reverb, and a delay in my aux busses. 4 plugins for the whole mix.

I agree with not using much compression on my mix bus. I often don't use any. My new goal is to do all the compression before it even gets to the mix bus. If it sounds worse with any compression on the mix bus I have been successful. I think many mixers are lazy and just want to use one compressor to fix all the problems and glue it together and fix problems but this is dumb and lazy.

This is goldmine :)

That is gold, Ken, again! 
Thank you for sharing your wisdom.