There is more to getting a professional sound on your audio mixes than just listening to reference tracks and not giving up on trying to get your songs to sound like those reference tracks.  What are some things that you can do as your working on your mix to keep moving it in the right direction?

One thing you can do is to clean up your audio tracks.  A lot of tracks have dead space in them between sections.  Maybe an instrument only comes in on the bridge or there is an instrumental turn around where there are no vocals.  The first thing to do is to cut out those dead spaces on those tracks where nothing is being played or sung.  Simply use your razor or snippet tool and cut them out.  Dead space is simply going to add extra noise to your song that you don't need and can become distracting.  Plus, your plugins will process all that dead space and will alter it typically creating even more noise. 

Usually a good thing to do is to add a small fade in and fade out to the remaining sections to get rid of any pops.  This can be a tedious task, but it will make a big difference in how clean your mix sounds.  Another way to achieve this is to use a gate on your track.  You can adjust it so it essentially automatically turns off the track until the volume threshold is reached and it turns on.  This can be a quick and simple fix, however, I prefer to manually splice up the tracks so I have absolute control.

Once your tracks are cleaned up you will have a much easier time mixing your song and using your plugins because there will not be as much noise to muddy up your mix.

At Magic Room Music, we always go the extra mile in cleaning up tracks and getting them to sound amazing.  Contact us today about how we can help you with your next recording project!