Discouraged Re: mixing with my ears

[grino]

Hey producers. I come to you asking for a bit of encouragement and kindness. Have written songs for many years but have only just recently started to try to understand how to mix and compose with the mix in mind. When I watch videos of people who are discussing mixing techniques specifically with using compressors, sometimes it sounds different but most of the time it all just sounds exactly the same to me even on my nicest headphones (Sennheiser 280 Pros).

People always say to mix NOT with your eyes, reliant upon the visual cues of the oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer, but instead with your ears.

But if my ears can’t hear the difference then…

I would love to hear that I’m not alone in this. Tips would also be welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks so much for reading!

[dr_ned_hubbard]

Hey there @grino!
I think a lot of it comes down to training your ears over time to actually hear the differences. I come from a music performance background, and you're trained to "use" your ears in a different manner there than how you use them when mixing/EQ'ing. It took time for me to sort of re-train myself on how to listen.

I would suggest maybe experimenting with using a compressor on your own track - maybe record something with volume levels that purposely go all over the place (from really loud to really soft), throw a compressor on it and play around with the compressor until you get the volume spikes in that track to a more reasonable, normal level. Working with something that has a lot of extremes like that can help you train your ears I think.

One other thing I've noticed is that I think sometimes people use compression when they really don't need to...they just throw it on there because that seems like the popular thing to do, with the exception of using it to create a specific effect (e.g. sidechain compression). It's quite possible that some of those videos you've watched used compression when it really didn't need to be used, and the resulting affect on the track wasn't that noticeable. Remember, it's ok to NOT use compression - it is not always required.

Don't give up, keep working at it - it's gonna take practice but I promise it will be worth it!