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In a previous article, I mentioned submixes briefly, talking about how vital they are to mixing sessions with large track counts. But submixes can be helpful even if your mixes are on the slim side. A rock tune from an indie band might not be larger than 24 tracks, but assigning their outputs to various submixes can still do wonders for your sound.

But first, what is a submix? Perhaps you’re using them and you’re not even aware of it: Take a bunch of guitars and feed them to the same bus—the same auxiliary track—and you’ve got yourself a submix.

It can go farther: you can set up your mixing template so that all your instruments feed submixes, and then use plug-ins or processing across these submixes to glue elements together on a macro level, priming the palate before it all hits the stereo bus.

What follows are a few ways to go about setting up submixes, from the simplest to the most grandiose. At the end is a trick I use all the time to give my mixes a little more life.

1. Using submixes for specific instruments on a case by case basis

Our first method involves creating submixes for groups of instruments that require group processing, but only setting them as you need them. A submix could be the aforementioned guitars, or a group of vocals all feeding the same compressor. You’d simply highlight all the applicable tracks and assign their outputs to a free, stereo auxiliary channel.

The benefits of this approach include the ability to flavor a whole plate of tracks at once with a single plug-in, as well as a quick means for changing/automating multiple track-levels with one fader.

For acoustic mixes—or small classical pieces where you need to keep it natural—this might be the way to go. Everything still hits the stereo bus without too many interconnecting submixes, but you can still control all the strings (or the fiddles, as the case may be) with one push of the fader.

Here’s the thing: during denser mixes (i.e., rock, pop, hip-hop) you might find yourself in the jam of having one instrument adversely affect another. The bass, for instance, could add undesirable pumping to the vocals. It is precisely to combat this issue that the following method has become so popular.

2. Using 4 submixes (the Michael Brauer technique)

This technique is named and pioneered by Michael Brauer, the famous engineer behind Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, and more. He, like all great engineers, has changed his setup over the years (he actually used three buses at first), but here’s the gist:

Michael reckoned that if he fed elements of his mix into an applicable submix, he’d have the ability to shape the tone, feel, and rhythmic bounce of his mix in a way that always hit an audible sweet spot. Upon divvying up tracks and outputting them to different submixes, he quickly saw he could achieve (and retain) clarity, punch, bounce, and heft; it also helped in achieving loudness, as elements were smartly tamed—compressed, but not spiky. In this way, headroom could be preserved.

The original Michael Brauer Method involves, among many other things, four submixes grouped together by instrument function. The foundation (drums and bass) would get its own bus, while the center of the record (guitars) would get another. It went on in this manner, though it changed from time to time (for a fuller picture of his technique, I advise you to peruse this Tape-Op interview he gave some time ago, and this dissertation on how to implement his methods in the box).

The benefits of this method include a finer—but not too fine—point of control when balancing elements; you need not hunt around for submixes when there’s only four of them. It’s a good balance between the chaotic ramble of no submixes and the confusing panoply of too many submixes. If you’re working on a compatible board, it’s a great way to keep trucking, and if you’re using a summing mixer, this method is perfect to suit the eight-in, eight-out box you may commonly find at lower price points.

Izotope 5 Advanced

In this technique, you might see an SSL-style compressor kissing the needle on the drum-bus with a slow attack and a medium-to-fast release (or auto release, depending on the song); you might also see, on the music bus, some broad-strokes EQ, and in some cases, a little widening to move elements away from the vocal. Compression is usually employed throughout the four buses.

Izotope 5 Torrent

I must confess, however, that I’ve had problems with this technique when it comes to the bass. It doesn’t work for me when low-end information is committed to the drum’s processing, and likewise if it’s relegated to the music bus. Inevitably, the lows will fight some element in either bus, and I find myself wishing the bass had its own channel.