How Long Does It Take To Mix A Song? (Beginners Guide)
Are you eager to uncover the mystery behind the duration it takes to mix a song? Delving into the intricacies of music production in our latest article, how long does it take to mix a song?
Whether you're curious about the factors influencing mixing time or seeking practical tips for streamlining your process, this guide is your gateway to mastering the art of song mixing fast. Keep reading to unlock the secrets and elevate your music production journey.
How Long Does It Take to Mix a Song?
Mixing a song to creat a so called “mixdown” requires expertise, precision, and attention to detail. The complexity of the arrangement, number of tracks, recording quality, and desired outcome all affect the timeline. By balancing these elements, engineers produce a harmonious sound that meets the desired quality.
How Long Does It Take to Master a Song?
Mastering a song is a crucial step in music production. It ensures optimal sonic balance for playback systems. The time required for mastering varies based on the quality of the mixdown, mix complexity, and genre. Collaboratiion between the mastering and mixing engineers can help, as some things are easier to fix in the mixdown phase.
Mastering a song ussually takes anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours. Mastering a whole album can take multiple sessions.. The goal is to polish and elevate the mix while maintaining artistic intent.
How Hard Is It to Mix and Master a Song?
Mixing and mastering a song is a complex process that requires technical expertise and artistic sense. Mixing involves blending individual audio elements to create a cohesive final mix. Mastering is the final step in preparing mixed songs for distribution.
Both require technical proficiency with DAWs and experience. Novices may find it challenging, but anyone can learn the skills required for effective mixing and mastering with passion and dedication.
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Factors Influencing Mixing Time
Mixing a song is an intricate and delicate art that demands time, attention to detail, and technical expertise. Nevertheless, the duration of this process can vary significantly based on various factors. As a beginner or professional, it is crucial to understand these factors to accurately estimate the time required for mixing a song.
Complexity of the Track Arrangement
A song's complexity affects the mixing duration. Simple arrangements are quicker to mix, while complex ones demand more time. In complex arrangements, multiple instruments, effects processing, and dynamic shifts can make balancing volume levels, frequency distribution, and stereo imaging more challenging. Making sure your arrangements and song structures are reduced to the key components and not overladen, is a great hack so the song has more impact and will help in completing your mix faster.
Achieving a polished final production that satisfies the artist's vision and the listener's sonic expectations requires intricate decision-making processes and meticulous adjustments during the mixdown.
Number of Tracks in the Session
The more tracks there are in a song, the longer it takes to achieve a balanced and polished mix. Each track requires individual attention, and as the number of tracks increases, so does the complexity of mixing. Don’t underestimate the positive effect that removing unnecesary tracks can have! Proper labeling and grouping are also crucial to streamline workflow and enable easy access to specific elements.
The number of tracks in a session also affects system performance while mixing. Hence, your whole system will feel snappier while mixing, so not overdoing it with sounds and plugins is a proven way to achieve the desired mix quality fast.
This is why we limit the Rapid Flow Template to 8 tracks for the core elements of the mix. For one you can then control your track live on stage with a simple controller, and on the other hand this forces you to work with less sounds, but make them great. Once you are past the sketch stage, you can obviously add more tracks, but this hack during composition makes a huge difference!
Quality of the Recording
Good recording quality is paramount in reducing the mixing time. Technical factors like lack of noise, EQing or compressing sounds correctly on the way it, signal flow, microphone placement, and gain staging contribute to a clean recording.
This is also valid if you are only using VST plugins inside your DAW: once you are hearing the sound you imagine, don’t be afraid to bounce it including FX and continue with it as audio. It will free up resources and will make sure you don’t continue working on an element that is essentially done.
Accurate performances during recording and proper organization of files can also streamline the mixing process. Starting with well-recorded material including essential FX saves time and effort during post-production.
Experience Level of the Mixing Engineer
An experienced mixing engineer possesses technical expertise, a deep understanding of different genres, and a keen ear for detail. They can quickly identify problem areas and conflicts between tracks, making quick yet effective decisions to streamline the mixing process without compromising on quality.
A novice mixing engineer may take significantly longer to complete a mix compared to someone with years of experience. Practice is everything.
Desired Quality and Detail of the Final Mix
The quality and detail of the final mix are critical aspects of music production that directly impact how long it takes to complete the mixing process. The level of quality and detail expected from the final mix varies based on personal preferences, artistic vision, and genre-specific requirements.
The mix engineer's expertise plays a vital role in balancing these factors while delivering a high-quality final mix that aligns with the artist's vision. If you are mixing your own music, it makes a lot of sense to separate the composition and mixing process. This supports flow and will often lead to a better mix.
How to Maximize Efficiency in the Mixing Process
Efficiency is crucial when it comes to mixing music. At Rapid Flow we employ a pre-mixed template that already has settings for all the major elements that are proven to work. These feed into a professional mastering chain that has been vetted by a top notch mastering engineer!
As everything is done using your DAWs onboard plugins, you can see exactly how we got there. A well-organized and streamlined workflow saves time, increases productivity, and makes the creative process smoother.
Here are some essential tips to help you maximize efficiency in the mixing process:
1) Prepare your session
Before starting the mixing process, organize your session. Clear out any unused tracks or regions that might clutter your workspace. Label each track clearly and color-code them based on the instrument or sound type, making it easier to navigate your project.
If you are using the Rapid Flow template, this means bouncing all your most important elements to audio and importing them into one of the tracks tailored to the major elements of electronic music (Kick, bass, snare, melody, pad etc.)
2) Use templates
Creating templates for different types of projects or genres that you frequently work on is an efficient way to speed up your workflow. Templates can include pre-set channel strip settings, common effects configurations, routing structures, and even basic EQ or compression settings tailored to specific instrument groups.
After 25 years in music, we realized starting every track from scratch and not leveraging settings that led to great results in the past is not the most efficient use of our time in the studio. The agile principle “Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.” is something we live by.
3) Set up busses and sends
Utilizing busses and sends in your mix can enhance efficiency by allowing you to apply processing across multiple tracks simultaneously. For example, send tracks that require reverb to a dedicated reverb bus and control the amount of reverb effect from one central location on each track that needs it.
4) Establish a logical signal flow
Creating a clear signal flow within your mix helps maintain organization and simplifies troubleshooting when needed. Ensure that each track's output goes directly into its relevant group or bus so that you can easily control overall levels without adjusting individual faders extensively.
In the case of the Rapid Flow template we send the channels to the “super channel” that handles live performance FX, and this goes to the mastering channel where clarity and loudness are achieved.
5) Utilize keyboard shortcuts
It is absolutely essential to familiarize yourself with keyboard shortcuts specific to your digital audio workstation (DAW). These shortcuts allow you to perform various functions quickly without relying solely on mouse movements or menu navigation.
This will significantly speed up your workflow. In order to help you with this we have created free 5K desktops showing the key commands for Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, FL Studio and Logic Pro. Learning new key commands is then a matter of flipping to your desktop and back to your project to apply it. After a few weeks these will become second nature.
6) Gain staging
Pay attention to proper gain staging throughout your mix session to prevent unnecessary distortion or interference introduced during the signal chain. Properly setting levels at each stage gives you a better foundation for processing and maintaining clarity in your mix.
Many plugins model the behavior of analog devices which were calibrated to perform best at 0 dB on a VU Meter. This equates roughly to -18 dB full scale! (FS) We usually aim to have our levels around -20 dB FS to -12 dB FS on the channels, depending on their importance and around -10 dB FS on the master channel without FX applied.
We know this sounds counterintuitive, but try a mix with this setup once and you will be shocked by the difference it makes. It will also leave ample headroom for a mastering engineer to apply outboard FX. If you want to hear how this sounds immediately, just download our Rapid Flow template that is setup this way.
7) Work in stages
Consider working in stages instead of trying to polish every aspect of the mix simultaneously. Begin by balancing levels and panning, then move on to EQ, compression, effects, and final touches. Breaking down the process into manageable chunks allows you to maintain focus on specific aspects while maintaining an efficient workflow.
Many people also start with drums, the add bass etc. While this is a proven approach, we generally recommend to start with the kick and bass to have a reference to mix against and then add the most unique elements of your track.
A good way to describe their relationship of a well mixed kick and bass foundation is that the they are “fighting for your attention”, with the kick winning by a small margin. We then recommend adding the sounds that most inspire you or captivate your imagination, as those are the sounds that will make your track stand out, it is key to get these the room they need.
Then fill in the gaps (if needed) with the remaining supporting elements. As a general rule of thumb, with the mastering FX bypassed, kicks in our template peak around -12 dB FS on the master and basses around -22 dB FS.
If the subs are mixed well (remove excessive low end) this will likely lead to good results in mixing and mastering
By implementing these strategies learned during our training as a sound engineer and real-work experience producing music for over 25 years into your mixing process, you can drastically reduce the time spent tinkering with individual tracks and focus instead on achieving a professional-sounding mix.
Remember that efficiency is not about rushing through the process but rather finding ways to optimize your workflow without compromising quality. Getting professional results fast is what we are about at Rapid Flow
Frequently Asked Questions
How Long Does It Take to Perfect a Song?
The time to perfect a song depends on its complexity, the number of tracks, and the desired quality. Achieving a seamless blend requires meticulous EQ adjustments, precise panning, and strategic use of effects.
We have done a lot of the heavy lifting for you in the Rapid Flow template. It offers a great starting point that will lead to a great mixdown, or your money back! Balancing technical precision and artistic interpretation is crucial while striving for excellence.
How Long Does a Professional Mix Take?
Experienced engineers work efficiently without compromising quality. Quality should not be compromised for speed. Mixing can take several hours to multiple days. Priority should be given to quality over speed to achieve an exceptional final mix.
However, there are many steps that can be abbreviated, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you do a mixdown. Top notch engineers such as Chris Lord-Alge famously has dedicated channels on his SSL mixer and outboard FX pre-set, for every major sound of the songs he works on as a starting point.
In essence he use a “hardware template” that allows him to get great results fast. If you look at videos of famous engineers mixing, you will see they often deploy preset plugin chains to certain sounds. This is a similar approach.
How Could I Save Time Mixing Music?
- Establish a consistent routine for every mix
- Utilize grouping and bussing for similar tracks
- Familiarize yourself with keyboard shortcuts in your DAW
- Use automation to add dynamic movement and variation
- Explore mixing plugins and tools, the visual mixer system from Izotope is a very interesting tool.
- Leverage mixing templates to save countless hours, especially while mixing
Conclusion: How Long Does It Take to Mix a Song?
Mixing a song can take different amounts of time based on various factors like track complexity, session track count, recording quality, and your level of experience. Recognizing these variables is critical to accurately estimating the time required for mixing and setting realistic expectations.
Engineers can streamline their processes by implementing efficient workflow techniques and using tools such as mixing templates while maintaining high-quality results.
Rapid Flow provides electronic music mixing templates designed to jumpstart engineers' workflow. These templates include pre-configured channel strips, routing setups, and fundamental EQ/compression settings, live performance FX and a mastering chain, reducing setup time and allowing you to focus on making more creative decisions faster.