It’s amazing how much impact a subtle automation move can have on a mix. This is especially true when working with subgroups. If you’ve bussed all of your tracks so subgroups while working in the mix (drums, guitars, vocals, etc) then you can create energy and excitement by simply automating a handful of faders.
Reduce Your Mix Down To 5 Faders Or Less
If everything is routed to about 5 faders, then making fine tuned automation moves is much easier. Today’s video shows you how I like to automate just a few simple volume swells or crescendos on these subgroups, thereby affecting all the tracks in my mix. It keeps things simpler while I try to polish a mix.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Again, curse you, GarageBand!!! One of these days I’ll have the budget to upgrade…
Ryan, move to Reaper, it is cheap and awesome!
great tip Graham… never thought of that.. so simple but so tasteful.
This is it!!!! the secret I have been looking for. I have only been recording and mixing (more like trying to) for just over a year, and my mixes are pretty flat, even, stale, monotone etc etc…..I even did a post on the Reaper forum (which is awesome BTW) about trying to make my mixes sound more like a band.
I toyed with automation early in my learning, but opted to even things out using compression. Never thought of using it to simply make things sound more real….
thanks for this and all the other tips…..I have been watching daily….it is soooo generous of you to share these…..they have helped me tremendously and kept me motivated.
Nice!