The one trick that Big Music doesn’t want you to know!
I was absolutely struggling when I went to do a final mix after writing everything in stereo. For me, it was a whack-a-mole game: Fixing one problem created ten more, bass was unmanageable, highs tended to blare or everything was a midrange soup and I constantly struggled with frequency cancellation.
Above all other problems, music was not portable. It would sound great with headphones, but became a blown out mess on external speakers.
Mono. Just write everything in mono. If the track sounds good in mono, even just the slightest bit of stereo separation makes it sound awesome!
As a perk, it forced me to learn more about compression and limiting and when it is applicable. If something is inaudible in mono, it’s going to sound like absolute garbage in stereo. (It also forced me into EQ’ing nearly every component of a song at first. I am not nearly as aggressive with that now, but again, it opened up new doors that I didn’t realize existed.)
Why, oh why, is this technique not pushed more to hobbyists and beginners? Is there a shortcoming that I am not aware of?
Obviously, this isn’t a cure-all and I kinda framed this post as a magic trick. Its one hell of a teaching tool, if nothing else.
Yeah I forget where I learned this, but I had the same lightning bolt a few years ago.
Do everything in mono and only use EQ for separation. Once you’ve got that sounding great, only then start messing with panning. Make sure to bounce and test the stereo mix in a few different settings (nice stereo speakers, a shitty smart speaker, headphones, car), go back to do some tweaks, rinse and repeat.
Once you’re totally happy with the stereo mix, finally use a master bus effect to sum it back to mono and check for any weirdness that might show up. Remove the mono sum and then bounce into the folder of things that you’ll totally get round to mastering one day. Job done