[jim1960]

The mixes I work on usually consist of acoustic guitar, vocals, & bass at a minimum, and depending on the project, there may be other tracks in the mix as well... background vocals, sax, cello, harmonica, a synth pad, etc. are all possibilities. There's no one way of doing things but typically I'm following this path to some extent...

If no drums are involved (if there's a drum track, that's always first), my usual process starts with the acoustic guitar. I'll eq that to get it sounding right and roll off the bottom end to make room for the bass. Then I'll compress just enough to tame the dynamic range so I don't hear any big swings in volume.

Next up is the bass. I'll roll of the top end first and then I usually use Waves CLA Bass if I want to do some tone shaping. I treat the bass differently depending on the job it's doing in the song. If the bass is basically rhythmic, I want to give it some thump and I'll tend to roll of more of the top. If the bass is doing some counterpoint stuff, I'll want a wider frequency range depending on the notes in play.

At this point I'm concentrating on the balance between bass and guitar. I'm also listening for any muddiness that might be happening on the low mids and I'll adjust what I'm rolling off according to what I hear.

Once the bass and guitar are playing together nicely, I move onto the vocal track. I'll usually eq first to get the vocal sounding its best and then look to see where I can pull the eq down on the guitar to create a little more sonic space for the vocal. If necessary, I'll add a de-esser. Then I'll compress enough to control the dynamic range.

At this point I'll go back to the acoustic guitar track and create a reverb aux track and do the same for the vocal. I'll work the tails, the predelay, the aux faders, and roll off the top and bottom until it sound right to me.

If there are background vocals tracks, those come next and basically it's the same process as the vocals but I'll usually roll a lot more off the bottom and some off the top. If there's more than one voice, I'll get the balance right and send them all to an aux reverb as with the lead vocal. I'll sweep for a sweet spot for the bkgrd vocals and carve out a place for them in the mix.

The order of any remaining tracks will usually go in order of importance to the overall feeling of the song.

After that, I pan what needs to be panned and I adjust levels that are affected if I haven't done that to any particular track when I worked on it, or I want to change how I panned something.

The last thing I do is to listen through several times to hear where there may be some issues. It's usually at this stage that I'll employ some volume automation if needed in a spot or two. Other tweeks can happen here as well. If needed, I may put an eq on the masterbus if I feel it's needed.

I think that about covers it.