Add Timeline Markers

• Press the down arrow right above the tracks, and select markers +
• It should add a markers track
• As the song plays, use Option-Apostrophe to add a marker

Lay the tracks

• Lay as many tracks as necessary for beats, vocals and rap
• Color the tracks as necessary to identify/group them easily
• Record/Mix in mono, stereo brings width and mono is centered. Easy to identify where things are wrong in the audio

Organize Mix

• If the beat is already mixed, it can be routed directly to Stereo Out

• Aux channels: Route the output of the verse tracks to a bus, i.e. aux bus . It will be used to add certain effects and mixing plugins for the verse tracks at a single place. Route the rap tracks likewise to a different bus. This will allow us to mix rap tracks slightly differently. Basically, create a bus/aux by grouping all similar vocals together.

• Sub Mix channels: The output for all the Aux channels above can then be routed to a new bus i.e sub mix bus. There might just be one of these sub mix bus, mostly to apply a common effect across all vocals, etc, but there can be multiple if necessary. The output of these sub mix buses is routed to the Stereo Out.

• Effect Channels: It is also better to set up time-based effects like delay and reverbs as separate channels instead of applying them on tracks or aux channels. For example - There can be three channels for reverbs - short reverb, long reverb, medium reverb. Their output will be sent to the sub mix channel.

Gain staging

Do this essentially for each track

• Add the Utility > Gain > Mono plugin
• Go to the loudest part for the particular track, using the knob in the Gain plugin, balance the gain averaging in mixer meter for the track so it is mostly around -18dB, and peaking no higher than -6dB.

Note: To speed things up, you can add a gain plugin with a -5dB in each plugin, and then copy it over to each track with Alt + dragging over the gain plugin from a already-added track. And then you can monitor the levels for each track in the mixer by looping over a high part. You can also speed up the entire track using Varispeed.

Bug with Varispeed Engaging varispeed makes the audio track go silent. Must be an app bug.

Balancing

This is all about adjusting the volumes and panning of the tracks so the tracks sound balanced. This might seem like a simple step, but don't overlook it, or else you'll be spending a long time counter-acting the imbalance through other ways in the coming steps.

EQ

Frequency ranges

Base > Low-mids > High-mids > Treble

Techniques

• Boost: if you bump up the frequency at a certain range
• Cut:

Types

• Filters (notation: increasing line):
• Shelves (notation: two lines merge to one):
• Bands/Bell EQs (notation: like a bell):

The "Rented that car a minutes ago" would be an example of what was possible through the sweeping filters.

Notes:

• Linear Phase EQ is good for the master bus or to the submix bus because with normal EQ even if you boost it at 200 Hz, it will still propagate throughout the entire frequency range. But with Linear EQ, it doesn't propagate that far.
• Single EQ is great if you just have to apply EQ to a specific frequency range like the Base or the low-mids, without touching the entire frequency range