MIXING SYNTH POP SYNTHS
In the previous two parts of this series we went through my processes of mixing drums and mixing bass for synth pop. Having established the foundation of our mix with the drums and bass, we can now begin introducing the more atmospheric and harmonic elements: the synths! Of course, the word ‘synth’ could refer to any number of keyboard sounds – it could be a warm pad from a Juno 60, a stabby chord from a Prophet, an aggressive MS20 lead line or even just an electro piano sound. Whatever the case, the various techniques described here can be applied in all sorts of scenarios. Let’s get stuck in to it!
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE
I request wet and dry copies of all mix stems, but I almost always use the wet stems and treat the dry stems as an insurance policy. There’s no use trying to recreate what they’ve worked on and lived with for so long! I’ll request them to print any filter sweeps they’ve applied, but I may break out the filtered sections to new tracks so I can have finer control during those passages.
I spend my initial prep time working out if a synth sound is truly stereo, or if it’s just a mono synth with some kind of inverted phase effect that makes it sound wide but might cancel out in mono. It’s usually easy to spot this; it will sound
