So you make dance music, its music that’s meant to be played at insanely loud volume levels at clubs and festivals around the world.  So why not crank it up while you’re making it? One big mistake newbie (and in some cases experienced) engineers and producers make is they feel they have to pound the heck out of the speakers all day to get a loud mix.  Wrong! This is not true, in fact, mixing at loud monitoring levels only increases the chances of missing important details and can somewhat disable you from getting a perfect balance. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in turning it up every now and then while I’m mixing just to get a vibe and hear how my mixes will actually sound loud but I also know, if I’m constantly monitoring at a loud db level in my studio, I’m probably going to miss important details in my mix. When you mix at lower levels, you actually hear things more accurately. Here are a couple of reasons its good practice to mix at lower levels.

Ear fatigue

Simple concept, the louder you listen, the faster your ears get tired. If you start your day by mixing at loud levels, you’ll find yourself 30 minutes into the mix session asking yourself questions like “why is the kick so low?” or “I can’t hear the hi hats” and soon after, you’ll be turning up your kick and hats amongst other elements of your track and before you know it you’ll end up with a noisy mess. Mixing at lower levels allows your ears to work for longer periods of time and still maintain a well balanced mix.

Turn it down! (Till you hear almost nothing)

A simple and effective trick I learnt when I started creating music was that by turning the studio volume control down to a point where I could hardly hear any sound coming from the speakers, resulted in me getting a better balance between every single element in my track. At this point, you might be asking yourself, how can you mix a piece of music if you can hardly hear it? Well I can only speak from personal experience but I find, to get a proper balance; mixing at hardly audible levels is key. To do this, all you have to do is turn all your faders down and bring up the kick about half way. Now reach for your volume control and turn it down to where you can barely hear the kick, now start bringing in things like the hi hat, snare, bass line etc. Do this for every element of your mix. Take a short break, come back into the studio and play your mix at a louder level and there you have it, a well balanced mix now ready for processing. This trick also works if you have a good balance but you still feel something isn’t quite sitting right, say the vocal, just turn the volume down again, listen to the vocal track and adjust till it sits right with the rest of the music. Then turn up the volume again.

Sub Level Music