Okay so here are 5 of my tips to help you improve your songs or productions. These are just my opinions, things that I've picked up over the years, but hopefully they can help you too:

• Simplify the arrangement.

So first off, I see a lot of mixes that come to me that are extremely complicated, with multiple layers of the same sound, or very similar sounds. People think they are getting a fatter or fuller sound but in reality they are often just taking up headroom. If you can say everything you need to say with less elements, then this will make your mixdown process a lot easier. I'm not saying you have to change your song around completely, but if you have 3 or 4 different synth melodies playing at the same time, you can probably refine this a little. A little mental trick I like to do is if I’m working on something electronic, I try to imagine how the song would work if it was just a drummer, keyboardist, guitarist, bassist and singer. Then i try to get rid of the unnecessary parts.

• Use Bus Groups / Sub Groups.

Not so much an advanced tip, but organising instruments into bus / sub groups can increase your control over the mix. You can then have similar instruments sounding more cohesive together. You can then also balance on the channel itself or the bus group. This means you might have 8 groups of instruments (drums, bass, guitars, synths, vocals, backing vocals, percussion, FX) for example hitting your master, rather than trying to manage 50 channels on a track level.

• Improve your monitoring situation.

Often a problem I can hear with mixes (particularly beginners) is a thing as simple as audible but unintended distortion, normally where the producer hasn't been able to hear the problems due to lacking optimal monitoring. I understand a lot of us don't have access to perfect sounding rooms, so if your room is a little small and boxey, I do suggest getting a decent pair of headphones, I've owned Beyer DT770s which I loved, and now Sennheiser HD650s, which I noticed another step up in clarity and found mixes translated better. Alternatively, treating your room if you are using speakers can be done DIY quite cheaply and easily with some Rockwool and will have a surprisingly large impact on the clarity of your monitoring position. Also putting your monitors on stands or pads can help further.

• Back off the bass.

The largest problems I hear with mixes are over cooked bass. Especially with the current prominence of Trap / Grime / Drill / Beats music. Heavily distorted 808 basses are ever present in songs I receive for mixing or feedback. This is partly an issue related to the previous point - monitoring that is not equipped to handle the low end effectively, often due to lack of acoustic treatment and just the nature of lower frequency waves. So my advice would be to turn the bass down a little bit, walk back and stand in your doorway or in the corridor of the room and listen to mix and then you should get a better read of how much bass is in your mix.

• Fix sounds at source rather than with effects such as EQ/Compression.

Effects are wonderful and an essential part of the mixing process, especially EQ and compression, so I’m not here to say don't use them. However I see these used a lot when they don't always need to be - for corrective purposes that could be fixed by tweaking the source. For example, if you have a synth and it could be brighter, maybe adding an oscillator to play an octave higher, opening the filter or changing the waveshape might be a more elegant solution than boosting an EQ to achieve a similar effect. Or If you are using compression to even out some midi synth bass, just go back and edit the velocity of the bass part in the midi editor instead. In my experience if I can fix the sound at the source, it makes mixing the track later on easier.

• Bonus tip: Don't use tools you don't really understand.

Honestly, I think it took me about 5 years to really understand compression, and I'm always learning new bits about how different compressors respond. (I know, I'm quite slow! That or my ears are a bit screwed from spending years drumming without ear plugs!) My point is though, if you don't really know/understand what an effect is really doing, for instance are you just using the compressor to make something louder, without hearing how it's affecting the groove/feel of the track. Stop. You will be harming your mix more than you're helping it. Seriously though, when I stopped using compression just for the sake of it or ‘to get it loud’ then my productions really started to sound better.

Anyway, I hope this helps some of you. Obviously these are just some of my tips I’ve picked up over the years. What worked for me may not work for you, we all go on our own musical journeys. Let me know your thoughts below and if you want more tips or advice around producing send me a DM or visit my site AM Music for more info!