The 7 Essential Steps to Balancing Your Mix For Music

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how to achieve a balanced mix that’s punchy, dynamic, and well-rounded? The buzzword among audio engineers is “balancing your mix”. It’s a popular sentiment, but when you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense. Saying you want a balanced mix is like saying you want more money—everyone wants it, but what does a ‘good’ mix really mean? The truth is, a good mix can mean something different to each person.

We need to define what balancing your mix means so we know the goal. Then we need to find out how to get there. But, once you know the goal and what it looks like, then you know what to search for.

Our goal today is to learn how to balance your mix. It seems to be pretty difficult in a live environment to know if you have a balanced mix. Mixing live has a host of challenges and it feels like you can’t gain control over your mix. So let’s define what balancing your mix is and is not and how to achieve it.

What Is Balancing your mix?

To truly understand what it means to have a balanced mix, you need a clear goal. Without a target, you won’t know where you’re headed. It’s crucial to identify the key elements in the mix. For me, balancing a mix comes down to three guiding principles: Space, Energy, and Control (SEC).

SEC Definition

Space in the middle for the important elements
- Creating space in the center of the stereo field allows the crucial elements—like lead vocals, the melodic instrument, and kick & snare—to shine through clearly. Without this space, your mix can quickly become muddy and hard to listen to. The middle is where your audience’s attention needs to be.
Energy to compliment the main elements
- Using tools like panning, EQ, and compression can add energy to the mix, helping to support and highlight the main elements. Even if you have an amazing vocalist, without the right energy around them, they won’t have the impact they deserve. The surrounding instruments should complement the lead elements, ensuring the song feels cohesive and powerful.
Control over your mix
- Having control means managing your gain structure, audio workflow, and compression to avoid random volume spikes. Without control, you’ll spend more time fixing problems rather than enhancing the performance. This lack of control can lead to distractions for your audience, taking them out of the experience.

These principles are my foundation for balancing any mix. With SEC in mind, you can create mixes that accommodate both loud and quiet moments, ensuring that no one instrument overpowers another. Ultimately, your mix will maintain clarity, allowing the lyrics, rhythm, and melody to be heard in every song.

Now let’s define what a balanced mix is not.

A Balanced Mix is Not:

Perfectly balanced levels on every channel
The same fader position for every channel
The same metering level on all of your channels

A balanced mix is not technically balanced. You should hear the elements you need to hear but have enough supporting energy surrounding the main element(s).

Issues With Other Methods for balancing your mix

In live mixing, most of the time, you are trying to solve problems or fixing someone’s tone with EQ that you start noticing there was a 5 dB volume boost to a different instrument. Most methods you see, read, or hear online is mostly geared towards studio environments, where you have time to get everything just right. These methods also don’t provide a sustainable way of mixing that is consistent.

Using VU Meters to balance the Kick and Bass or RMS meters to balance the Vocals and Guitars may work in some situations, but are not practical in live mixing.

It’s also important to know the context you are mixing in. This goes into what is the goal and how you define what a balanced mix is in your context.

Now, let’s get into the 7 steps you need to take to get a balanced mix. The first three steps have to do with mindset and preparation where as the remaining steps are actionable steps.

Step 1: Understanding Key elements for balancing your mix

Now remember what the three principles, or the SEC, of balancing your mix.

Space in the middle for the important elements
Energy to compliment the main elements
Control over your mix

It is crucial to know what the key elements are. If you don’t know what the song is supposed to sound like, how will you know what the important elements are? If you don’t know that the song starts with an electric guitar lead line and the guitar is not heard in the intro, you have already lost your audience. In a church setting this is critical. Because their attention is now drawn to the fact that something is missing and not focusing on worshiping God.

The goal of your mix is to be distraction free. If the audience never mentions the volume or the mix, then you have done your job well. People tend to give negative comments (constructive or otherwise) then they are to compliment you on the sound. It is a harsh reality, but people tend to complain more often than they are to compliment.

Your game plan needs to include knowing what the song sounds like so you know what elements to pay attention to.

Step 2: Collaborating with the Band for the best tone

With decades of experience as both an audio engineer and musician, I have a unique perspective on the musician/audio engineer dynamic. We should honor every person because we were made in the image of God. Volunteering takes time and energy and this should be respected. Above all, God deserves the highest praise.

Psalms teaches us to play “skillfully,” not perfectly, which reminds us that preparation and effort are key. Musicians and engineers alike should strive to put their best foot forward in leading worship.

Building a relationship with the musicians is essential. If you notice something is not right with their tone, ask questions and engage in dialogue to find a solution together. This approach is less confrontational and leads to a more collaborative environment.

Step 3: Productive Soundcheck

Having a quick and productive soundcheck is a time saver. Small to Medium size churches, typically, do not have a lot of time to soundcheck and rehearse. So the process to getting a good mix may seem dysfunctional. However, if you know the goal of the soundcheck and you can establish a method that gives you what you need and allows the band to give you their best.

We need to establish the difference between soundcheck and rehearsal. Soundcheck is to make sure levels are good and the connections are working properly. Rehearsal is the band rehearsing their songs. Rehearsing is also the time for you to rehearse your mixing skills. The key is to have a productive soundcheck so you can move on to the rehearsal.

The Goals During Soundcheck

Every church is going to be different in how much time they allocate to soundcheck and rehearsals. Your goal for soundcheck is to get to the rehearsals as quickly as possible. I will breakdown my method for soundcheck. This helps me realize my priority and how long it should take. You can adapt based on your situation.

Line Check (5 minutes) – Make sure you are receiving audio to the correct channel and move on.
Setting Gain Levels (10 minutes) – I will talk more about this in Step 4, but this step provides your foundation for balancing your mix. This step is fairly quick depending on how many instruments you have, but it should not take more than 10 minutes.
Get a rough mix (5 minutes) – Turn off all processing and get a rough mix. Try doing this with your headphones if you are able to. Turn the Mains down to about half way (unless your musicians rely on hearing the FOH mix) and mix with your headphones. We do this to get a better understanding of what the mix actually sounds like. If you have a good pair of headphones, then the mix in the Mains should not be that much different when you turn it up. You can still make adjustments as needed.
Add Processing (30-45 minutes) – This is normally done during the rehearsal, but this will take up most of your time. But if you want to cut down on the time it takes to process each channel, then follow my Baseline Series to get starting points for EQ and Compression for each instrument.
Re-balance Your Mix (5-10 minutes) – After all of these steps have been completed, re-balance you mix and turn up the Mains and enjoy.

Step 4: Set Correct Gain Levels before balancing your mix

Now to the more practical steps of balancing your mix. Setting correct gain levels is the foundation to your mix and how easy it’s going to be to balance your mix. Not having proper gain structure, or worse having inconsistent gain levels, messes up your mix and you will have difficulty achieving great results consistently.

Read my post on “Gain Structure: 6 Steps To Get The Best Results” and download the Gain Structure Guide to know what levels you should be setting gains for each instrument.

Having a consistent level to aim for will serve multiple purposes.

Your hardware will react properly because the instrument will be at line level
The settings on your plugins and processing don’t need to change because you are sending the right amount of level to them every time.
It provides a standard for you and your team to follow for consistent and great sounding mixes.

Step 5a: Fader Levels

The next step is to get a mix with the faders. I would suggest having the mains to around have volume and mix with your headphones. This idea can be controversial, but there are multiple benefits for getting your initial mix using your headphones.

Everyone starts to get ear fatigue after a certain period of time. Lowering the volume will save everyone’s hearing.
You will hear what the instruments actually sound like and you can make better adjustments
Most likely, you would have (or you should have) listened to many mastered mixes with your headphones so you should know what a polished mix sounds like. You can tailor your mixes to sound as close as you can.
By the time you raise the volume of the Mains, you will have a better idea of what the room is doing to your mix, instead of mixing for the room.

I like to start my mixing with the rhythm section, then go to energetic elements, then finish out with the vocals. It will look like this:

Drums/Percussions > Bass > Electric Gtrs > Acoustic Gtrs > Keys/Synths/Pianos > Strings/Remaining Instruments > Vocals > Effects

Step 5b: Balancing Master and Band Levels

You also want to have the right balance of where the faders are positioned between the instruments and Mains when you are mixing. Ideally, you want the Mains to be at 0 dB and your instruments to be close to 0 dB as well. I will be writing a post on how to know if your PA’s are too loud, but until then, Let’s find the right balance.

I would suggest that you would want to get all of your faders to match each other as much as possible. That is to say that if you need to have your Mains at -10 dB, then try to have your instrument faders at the same range.

Having the faders you are mixing above the -10 dB area is good because you have finer control over the volume of each element in the mix. Also, if your faders are in the same range than it is easier to locate instead of have some high and others low.

Step 6: Panning

If you have a Mono PA, then I would suggest switching to Stereo immediately! This will make your mixes so much better. You will get some people that say ‘Mono mixes are better’ or that ‘you should mix in Mono’. If you have a great stereo mix, it’s going to sound great in mono. If you are a beginner, then it might be beneficial to periodically check the mono mix just to make sure nothing stands out too much.

People seem to forget that humans don’t naturally hear anything in mono. Everything you hear is in stereo. You have two ears pointing in the opposite direction. Your ears are designed to hear things differently.

The point is you should utilize panning. Pan the Toms hard to each side, pan your stereo inputs hard to each side. Make the right electric guitarist sound a little bit more to the right and the left guitarist more to the left. Spread out your mix as evenly as you can to make room for the middle for what needs to be heard.

Step 7: The final test to balancing your mix

Here is the final test to know if your mix is balanced. After you have done all of the previous steps, now is where we get to fine tune the mix and make it perfect.

Remember my three elements that involve Space, Energy, Control (SEC). This method will make sure you are in the right place for balancing your mix. Here are the steps

Move the fader up to where you can hear it above the other elements.
Bring the fader down to where you can barely hear it, if at all.
Toggle the Mute button on and off
If you notice that something is missing when you mute then instrument but when you turn it back on, there is new energy, then that instrument is perfectly placed in the mix.

Do this process for every instrument and backup vocals. The Kick, Snare, and Lead Vocals should be balanced with each other. The Lead Vocal needs to be heard, but the Kick and Snare keeps the timing.

The Vocals should be heard clearly but not overpowering compared to the rest of the band. In some situations, you may have to sacrifice a little energy for the vocals to be in a comfortable volume for congregants.

Conclusion on balancing your mix

Now that you understand the key principles behind balancing your mix, it’s time to put these steps into practice. By focusing on the key elements, collaborating with your band, and applying these practical techniques, you’ll be well on your way to achieving a mix that not only sounds balanced but feels professional.

Remember, a balanced mix isn’t about getting equal balance of volume. It’s about finding a place for each element that provides enough energy to make the song come to life. It’s about crafting an experience where the audience can focus on what’s important without distractions. With practice and attention to detail, you’ll gain the confidence to mix live performances that sound great and leave a lasting impact.

Make sure to sign up for more professional tips and advice on audio production. Leave a comment and let me know what you think or have any questions!

References

Resources

Gain Structure Guide