In this article, we’ll be discussing a simple yet effective bus or group mixing technique that can help you achieve tighter and better-sounding mixes.
By following this reliable framework, you’ll be able to spend less time mixing and impress your fans, labels, or anyone you send your music to.
We’ll cover the three essential steps to this technique, which include grouping your tracks or routing them to a bus channel, adding in your bus effects chain, and then fine-tuning the glue compressor, tape saturation, EQ, clipping, and limiter.
By the end of this article, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to apply this technique to your own mixes and take your music to the next level.
3 Steps To Master Bus Mixing
These 3 steps will allow you to have a simple framework that you can follow every time you want to do bus or group mixing:
- Group your tracks: Create groups or a buss channel for the bass elements, drums, instruments, and effects tracks.
- Add in your bus effects chain: The general chain that is recommended includes a glue compressor, tape saturation, EQ, clipper, and limiter.
- Enable your effects individually: Make sure each plugin is disabled and then slowly turn each one on and tweak it a little bit as you move through the effects chain. Use your eyes and ears to play with the amount and settings of each plugin until you achieve the desired sound.
By following these steps, you will have a reliable framework to depend on, and your music will sound a little bit tighter and more polished.
Creating Your Bus Effects Chain
The bus effects chain that I personally use involves the following plugins:
- Glue compressor: This catches some of the peaks and does some light compression.
- Tape saturation: This adds a bit of grit and saturates the signal, gluing it together even further.
- Oxford inflator: This saturates things and does some magic to the overall group.
- EQ: This gets rid of some of the low ends and sometimes the high end on the group bus as well.
- Clipper: This shaves off some of the transients, allowing you to bring the RMS value up and increase the volume of the overall loudness of your track.
- Limiter: This brings up the volume a bit and cuts off some of the peaks.
It is important not to just slap on an effects chain and use it. Instead, you should disable each plugin and then slowly turn each one on and tweak it a little bit as you move through the effects chain and enable your bus processing.
You can group together the bass elements, drums, instruments, and effects tracks. Once you have completed the first step of putting all of these particular elements into their own groups or buses, you can get into the actual processing.
For instance, you can use a similar chain on the drum bus and instrument rack.
By following these steps, you can have a reliable framework to depend on every time you want to do bus or group mixing. Spend less time mixing and impress your fans, labels, or anyone you send your music to with a tighter and more polished sound.
