Let’s take a hypothetical journey today: let’s try to mix a song in our DAW without using any plugins or effects whatsoever. Our goal will be the “no plugin mix”, one that sounds full, clear, and punchy to the listener, but without inserting a single software or hardware compressor, EQ, or reverb.
How would your workflow change if you couldn’t use any plugins? What COULD you do to get a great mix. As you’ll see there are a handful of things you could do.
Set Perfect Fader Levels
The obvious place to start is with volume faders. The simple beauty of multitrack recording is the power to turn the volume up or down of each individual element in a song, not just the entire song itself. A great mix begins with a great static mix and that should be your first goal. Find the perfect fader position for each track in the session.
And by perfect I mean the volume for each track that works perfectly for 80% of the mix. That great lead vocal volume might be great for most of the verses and choruses, but in the bridge it becomes a bit buried. It’s OK. Find the fader level that works the majority of the time and leave it there for now.
What are you listening for? Balance. This is your most powerful tool to get the right balance of each element in the song. I like to loop the song over and over and try to mix the song as if it were live. Try it for 20 minutes without stopping and see what you get!
Pan With Purpose
After setting (near) perfect fader levels your mix should be coming to life. Since we work in a stereo environment we have the luxury of not only controlling each track’s volume, but each track’s placement horizontally in space. Pan pots are simple but powerful tools that give you instant separation. So use them!
For most music, don’t over think panning as if you need to recreate some realistic stereo picture of a band playing in front of you. Your panning moves will be too subtle. What you want is to maximize separation and clarity. I highly recommend LCR panning as it gives you both. Put the central song elements up the middle (lead vocal, kick, snare, bass). Then put the remaining stuff on the far left and right (guitars, keys, harmonies, percussion).
I’m always confused as to why so many young mixers send me tracks that have all the instruments panned so closely together. The stereo image in their mixes is so crowded and narrow, when with a simple tweak of some pan knobs they could open up their mix even wider.
Plugin-Free Sweetening
The final thing you can do to really get a great mix without using any plugins is to go through an intentional sweetening stage. What is sweetening? Simply put, it’s where you go through the song start to finish and make sure every moment keeps you interested and engaged as a listener.
The two best ways to do this are with mutes and automation. To be honest, I don’t think there’s a single mix I do where I don’t mute or delete something. It might be drastic like an entire instrument or track. Or it might be little like two bars of a bass line. But whatever it is, I try to take out what doesn’t need to be there, so that what remains can sound even better.
Also, the modern day DAW gives you simple and powerful volume and pan automation. Use it! This is your chance to take those 80% of the way volume levels and make them 100% perfect. The same is true with panning. Rarely do my tracks stay panned in the same place for the entire song. There is always something that needs to move strategically as the song progresses to keep things flowing. Think like a listener and keep the song interesting.
A Great Exercise
I think everyone should try this exercise at least once. It might seem pointless, but the phantom benefits of working a “no plugin” mix is your awareness for what really matters in a mix: the big picture. And what is the big picture? That your job is to take a bunch of (hopefully) well recorded tracks and simply balance them to a stereo file that sounds sonically pleasing and musically engaging to the average listener.
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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. 
Yes first comment!!!
This is a great article Graham and a lesson that I learned from you some time back. This technique is now a permanent part of my workflow that really helps get things moving in the right direction. I will balance, pan and cut until I am pleased with the mix dry. This is the best test of your, or others recorded material. If there are serious issues with a mix dry, then plugins won’t save it.
The next step for me is to put a little compression on the master to glue the tracks together and enhance the coherency. This is where LCR panning shines because just that little compression goes a looong way in melding your panned tracks together.
Lastly, I stop every 15 to 20 and take my plugins off and give it a dry listen. Gotta make sure I’m not losing my vision or recreating what I already liked instead of enhancing it.
This may not seem like a serious piece of advice to some but to me these simple techniques are constant checkpoints and references to ensure I’m actually mixing consistently and conservatively and not just waving a magic plugin wand over crappy unbalanced recordings hoping that I can find balance and coherency as I go. It’s counterintuitive and will double your time spent mixing. This will lead to frustration and fatigued ears.
Graham I must say from gain-staging to mixing techniques you have been spot on point. Thanks for keeping it simple and actually teaching honestly and realistically. I’m being blessed by The Recording Revolution.
Cheers from Baltimore,
Stay Blessed
Thanks J
What about compressing with automation and duplication 😉 Get your kick and snare, duplicate the tracks, detect silence, shorten the resulting clips, add some envelopes, mix with not processed tracks and tadam, we have our own transient designer 🙂
Mixing with no plugins? That’s just crazy talk! 🙂
Great article. I’ve realized that the more I mix and the more experienced I get, I use less and less plugins and also do less and less to the mix. The main plugins I use are EQ, compression, delay, and reverb. Rarely anything else. I always used to go overboard with effects and ruin sounds that sounded good to begin with. I also only use Logic Pro’s stock plugins.
But keep up the great work/tutorials Graham! You’re awesome!
If you don’t have plug-ins (or the hardware equivalents) this is where tracking environment and micing becomes much more important IMO. I’d start by going back to ambient rooms and creative micing techniques. That’s how they did it in the old days. Find a great-sounding ambient room and capture the sound of it. Glynn Johns method on the drums. Room mics in addition to close mics. Distance=depth and all that. Do that and you have your “reverb” without reverb. Then you do the rest with EQ and panning.
How you dare!? if only Joe heard you… You should be ashamed. The obvious place to start is the recording of the instruments itself: always get it right at the source. Remember?
The best way to mix without plugins is to record great sounding tracks. 😉
Great post!
#boom
Great post! Simple techniques are the easiest to overlook but with a few simple moves you can be 80% there. Im more producer than mixer so I appreciate these simple and practical brush n floss reminders/advice.
Great article today! Which brings me to a question. If you were going to add something like compression, and add it on the way in, would you add some more compression later in the mix or is that overkill?
It depends. If it sounds like overkill, it usually is 🙂
Been doing this for a long time, EXCEPT that I do this stage in Mono on a single speaker. I spend probably 70% of my time on this 80%, and in the long run it IS worth it!
I’ve joked that I have a fear of reverb and compressions(not really) but I have always thought that the best way to ruin a mix was to overdo those two.
I used to run sound for fellow bands a long ways back in my years and I remember one of the better local sound guys telling me to let the room do the work before the effects come in (delay/reverb/compression). They fill in the spaces where the mix and room can’t.
I think that translates to when I mix now. I spend most of my time doing what you said above Graham before I go about adding something that could muck it up. I figure that until I have the mostly ideal mix, there is no way I could possibly know where it’s weaknesses are.
…like letting the room do the work.
Great exercise Graham! I try to do this a lot, trying to make the mix sound great before i start to fiddle with plug ins.
But fore once I disagree with you about mute and delete parts. If I’m mixing for a client my job is to mix, not produce. So I think of it this way, Everything thats in the raw material are there for a reason. I think it’s the producers job to decide if a part stays or not. Not the mixer. But if I’m producing or recording my own stuff I try to work this out before it’s time for mix, in the producing phase.
But the best thing about working with music is that neither of as are right or wrong, we just have different views on things. And that’s great isn’t it?
Keep up the good job Graham!
Great post, Graham! I think I’ll try this on my next mix! One thing stood out to me:
“…same is true with panning. Rarely do my tracks stay panned in the same place for the entire song.”
Do you have a post or video on this specifically? If not, could you elaborate? I’d like to see this in action!
Thanks! 🙂
Look up “sweetening” on my site and you’ll see what I mean.
This is a great article. I have currently switched from using all plugins in the box type mixing to mixing everything on my presonus studiolive console which is why i orginally bought the console. My separation and mixes sound so much better than within the computer. However I am still using some plugins such as tape or tube saturation on each channel. I have limited my mixes to 16 total channels since thats the maximum amount on my console. I have been using my DAW as a tape machine, using the processing of the console instead of the computers. Its an old school idea with a new school twist.
I 100% agree.
That’s essentially what mixing is all about: take a bunch of tracks and have them balanced against each other volumewise.
Plugins are just icing on the cake.
Great post!
Best tip ever.
Break out an Auratone, or a Radio Shack Minimus (the $12.00 version of a tiny Auratone) and set it up for doing your balancing in mono.
Used to drag an Auratone around on a big desk we worked on so it was close by.
That way it could be turned up just enough to barely hear it.
Only then do you really know what needs EQ, and where it needs it (speaking more non creatively here)
we’d do everything like this, throw it up on the midfields or the “Refrigerators” to check the mix.
If everything is right, you can hear it all beautifully, and the bottom end can make your chest shudder when when ya crank it.
Graham, do you consider riding faders (gain modulation) as using manual “compression” 🙂
It would be manual compression. But I’m too impatient for that sort of thing 🙂
Hi Graham, need your views on the loudness of the track. How one should take a call on the level balancing issue? Which happens to me quiet often.
Please revert, it would be nice to hear from you.
Check out this: http://therecordingrevolution.com/2011/05/29/5-minutes-to-a-better-mix-limiter-for-reference-part-29-of-31/