Mixing is one of the most important parts of the music production process. If done properly, a good mix can breathe life into a track and turn a good song into an amazing one, the same way a bad mix can easily ruin the whole listening experience.
In this article, we’ll answer the question “how long does it take to mix a song”, giving you the average prices, times and skill levels you need to get the best value for money mixing and mastering services or learn to attack mixing yourself.
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How Long Does it Take To Mix A Song? (Answer)
An experienced, professional mixing engineer who works with an assistant can mix a song in a few hours and sometimes even a whole album in a single day, whereas for a beginner audio engineer it might take days or even a week to finish just one mix.
The length of a mix session can depend on many different things. The length or genre of the song, the number of tracks, the quality of the recordings, and most importantly, the skill level of the mixing engineer.
Other factors that can influence the length of the mixing process include the quality of the listening environment and monitoring devices, such as the speakers or the headphones that the engineer is using, as well as the length and number of breaks that the engineer takes while working.
Nowadays music can be consumed through many different platforms and devices, such as streaming, CD, vinyl, radio, expensive headphones, cheap earphones, studio monitors, or even Bluetooth speakers. These all sound vastly different, therefore, a mix has to translate well on all playback devices. A professional mixing engineer will make sure to reference the mix through multiple different monitoring devices. This can significantly increase the length of the mixing process; however, it is absolutely crucial for ensuring that the song translates well on all platforms.
Working on the same mix for hours can have an extremely fatiguing effect on your hearing, causing you to lose perspective and make the wrong decisions. For this reason, it is important to monitor the mix at a lower volume and to take a break once in a while. This way you can not only decrease the chance of developing ear fatigue but also after the break you can return to the mix with fresh ears and perspective.
How Much Does it Cost To Mix A Song?
Depending on their skill level, the rate of a professional mixing engineer can range from $200 to $1000, or even $10,000 for one song. Beginner engineers might charge $50-$200 for their work, but often the lack of experience means that the overall quality of their work is nowhere near that of a professional audio/recording engineer.
There are a number of factors that can affect the price of a final mix.
Mixing is not easy; sometimes it can be a very long process, and it is a skill that takes many years to master. For this reason, audio engineers who have decades of experience and worked together with bigger artists or labels will charge a lot more for their work, not to mention, they usually work with extremely expensive, high-quality gear that allows them to hear every single detail in the song and achieve the best possible result.
In addition, certain engineers might charge extra for services like vocal tuning, drum editing, or sample replacement since, generally speaking, these are usually the producer’s job to handle.
Certain audio engineers who own analog hardware might charge you more if you ask them to process your tracks with analog equipment instead of digital plugins.
Should I Pay For Mixing & Mastering Services or Do it Myself?
If you are not an experienced audio engineer and don’t feel confident about your mixing and mastering skills, it is highly recommended you pay for mixing and mastering services. A professional audio engineer can help you achieve commercial quality standards with your music, that you may not be able to achieve just yet.
Mixing requires advanced listening skills, a lot of attention to detail, and takes years to master.
If you’re a producer, I encourage you to constantly practice and learn about mixing, so one day you can mix your own and other people’s songs.
However, if you’re just starting out, it is best to let an experienced professional handle this process.
At the end of the day, you worked really hard on your music, your songs mean a lot to you, so you should aim to release them in the best quality possible.
In the beginning when you don’t have a bigger following yet, or if you make music only as a hobby, you can get away with creating mixes that sound less professional, however, if you take making music seriously and want to turn it into a career, eventually the quality of your mixes has to meet a commercial standard that allows your music to be played on the radio or featured on playlists.
Will Mixing Make My Song Sound Better?
Yes. The mixing process has a tremendous effect on your music. Its main purpose is to create balance in the song, emphasize key moments and prepare it for a commercial release. Mixing will have a huge affect when making your song sound better, provided the songwriting is finished.
The mixing process can involve tasks, such as setting the volume of the different instruments to the right level, correcting issues such as resonances or removing unwanted noise, preventing certain instruments from overpowering each other, pitch-correcting the vocals, or even making space for them in the stereo field.
In addition, since every mixing engineer has a unique style and taste, the involvement of an engineer can add a brand-new flavour to the song.
For example, the engineer might replace the drum or guitar sound with a better one that is more appropriate for the genre of the track, or add exciting creative effects to the vocal tracks, such as delay throws.
Although mixing can elevate a track to another level, it won’t be able to turn a badly written, poorly recorded song into a good one. The purpose of mixing is to add an extra layer of polish to a track that already sounds incredible. If a song was recorded poorly, there’s clipping occurring in multiple tracks, the guitar is out of tune and playing out of time, and the noise of the air conditioner can be heard in the vocal track, the mixing engineer won’t be able to fix these issues.
In the world of audio production, it is often argued that you should get the sound “right at the source”, in other words, you should aim to capture the sound in the best quality possible during the recording process, instead of “fixing it later in the mix”. The mixing process only begins once the recording and the production phases are over.
In fact, the reason why professional mixing engineers who work for labels can mix so many songs in such a short period of time is that they work with raw recordings that are very well recorded and barely require any processing because they already sound amazing.
How Hard is it To Mix My Own Music?
Mixing your own music can be very challenging. For this reason, a song is usually never mixed by the artist or the producer, but by a mixing engineer who has devoted decades to learning and mastering the craft.
But why is it so difficult to mix your own song?
Imagine you spent weeks writing a song, a few days recording it, and then another week producing it. By now you have an emotional connection to the song and you had to listen to it so many times that it’s already fatiguing your ear.
Now is the perfect time to involve a mixing engineer in the production process, who has never heard the song before, has a fresh but neutral perspective on it, and can provide you with feedback.
The engineer might be able to detect issues that you haven’t even noticed while working on the track. You know the saying: “Four eyes (on in this case ears) see more than two.” This is why the mixing process is followed by a mastering process so that the mastering engineer can improve on the mixing engineer’s work.
Whenever you’re trying to mix your own songs, it often feels like you just can’t seem to finish it. You always find small details that you’re not satisfied with, the reference track always sounds better, and so you end up spending a week mixing your song, making revisions after revisions. Moreover, since mixing can be a very long process, the more time you spend working on a mix, the less time you will spend writing and producing new music.
It also goes without saying that if you don’t have enough or any experience in sound engineering, you will end up trying to mix your song “blindly”.
Tips For Mixing A Song Faster Yourself
Although mixing can be very overwhelming and take a long time, fortunately, there are many different ways to speed up the process.
1. Create a mixing template that you can load up every time you start a new project.
The prep work that comes before mixing can sometimes take hours, however, by using a mixing template, you can save a lot of time.
This template can include individual tracks, instrument bus groups, effect sends, or even aux channels that are already set up and routed to their corresponding outputs.
Feel free to experiment with creating different templates. You could design a different template for different genres like electronic music or hip-hop if you want to. There’s no such thing as a perfect template that fits every song.
Creating a template may take you a couple hours, but then every time you begin working on a new project in the future, you don’t have to spend an hour prepping the session.
2. Make sure to name and colour-code your tracks properly!
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Using colours can help you navigate your session faster and easier. I for example always colour my guitar tracks red, my drums green, my vocals pink, etc. so that when I’m looking for a specific instrument, I always know which colour I have to look for.
3. Learn the most important shortcuts and key commands!
This is pretty self-explanatory. Using shortcuts on your keyboard can save you hundreds of clicks and minutes of work.
4. Create presets for your plugins!
If you often find yourself using the same setting on your drum bus compressor or a delay setting that always works well on your backing vocals, I would recommend creating your own presets.
Presets can help you speed up your workflow and develop your own signature sound, however, just remember that every song is different and requires unique processing, therefore, you will probably have to make small adjustments to your plugin settings when you load up your presets for a new project.
5. Lastly, use reference tracks.
Comparing your final bounce to a reference track can give you instant feedback and help you identify areas that need improvement.
Reference tracks can prevent you from mixing ‘blindly’, which is a waste of time.
Plugins like ADTPR Audio’s Metric AB let you load up multiple reference tracks, split them into frequency regions and A B between your mix and the reference tracks with just one click.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article was able to give you a short glimpse into the myriad of different factors that could influence the length and price of a mixing session.
If you enjoyed this article, make sure to read our other articles as well!
