For me there are really 3 stages after tracking. I try to keep these segmented so I can move cleanly from one to the next and keep focus and momentum going.
1. Sweetening- This is all about how individual elements sound, general flow of the song, etc. If I'm going to do any of the following I do it at this stage- after tracking and before mixing:
- Removing hum/noise/clicks pops/plosives
- Editing for rhythm
- Comping takes
- Pitch correction
- Sample replacement
- Tone shaping with plugins- clean vs. warm vs. dark vs...
- High/low filters- try selecting all your tracks, holding CTRL, and enabling the ProChannel EQ's low rolloff on a channel, then rolling it up to 200 Hz. Do the same while holding CTRL for the high rolloff at 5kHz. Then slowly add back in the things you know are missing (shimmer in the cymbals, thump in the kick, etc.) Starting with the lows and highs killed completely will mean that you consciously choose what to let back into your mix, and may result in a cleaner product with a lot less work.
2. Mixing- This is less about how things sound and more about how everything feels, gels together, etc. Here I tend to focus on energy and movement. For instance-
- Am I getting too much low end energy from my guitars, where they are fighting with the kick, bass, etc? (Low roll-offs and shelves are great for this.)
- Am I getting too much high end energy from my guitars, where they are just making my cymbals sound like fuzz? (High roll-offs and shelves are great for this.)
- Is the energy of my guitars/synths complementing or conflicting with my vocal?
- Are the movement of the high hat and tambourine complementary? Conflicting? (Usually in this case I pan them opposite each other, sometimes the tambourine needs to be muted.)
The reason I like to think of movement and energy here is that it does a couple of things to my thought process:
- It stops me from focusing too much on how an individual instrument sounds
- It makes me think more proactively about the relationships between instruments. I know, for instance, that if my vocal is too loud and I turn it down I will want to check the snare level afterward since they are generally panned in the center and the energy of each interacts closely with the energy of the other
- It stops me from always thinking I need to turn something up or down. Sometimes I am getting "too much energy" from the high hat because it is very dry compared to everything else. Sometimes I need to filter out a frequency that is bugging the snot out of me (in high hats this varies, but usually focuses around 3k or 8k.) Turning it down might be an improvement, but adding more reverb/room tone, or EQing slighly might be the better fit
3. Mastering- this is all about making everything feel like a cohesive record. The key to doing this well is focusing on the big picture:
- Color (EQ balance)
- Movement (esp. with pop/rock/dance where you may be slightly pumping the master buss compressor for a particular sound)
- Loudness and sound stage (consistent levels overall and consistent amounts of reverb/room tone)
- Low end tightening (this can be hard to do when mixing on headphones or bookshelf speakers, but do your best to keep the low end from being too boomy. This is almost always due to bass, and multi-band compression can help control this a bit)
Of course, now that you have everything tracked, have fun!!!
Peace,
Tunes