8 tips to improve your mixes in 2025 that won't cost you anything

Last year I decided it was time to get out of the home studio and get some experience sitting behind an actual mixing console. I’m lucky enough to be right on the doorstep of a specialist music production school, Spirit Studios in Manchester, UK. Formerly the studio where The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Buzzcocks, and The Fall cut their first records it’s now a specialist educational facility with multiple studios, editing suites, and its own live sound venue.

As part of my course, Spirit holds regular events, and I was lucky enough to get to sit in on a mixing masterclass with rock and metal producer Romesh Dodangoda, who has worked with bands like Motorhead, Bring Me The Horizon, Bullet For My Valentine, and Nova Twins. In his masterclass, I picked up loads of great mixing tips for my own productions, but the things that really struck me were the bits of advice you don’t really hear in YouTube videos.

It wasn’t so much the content of Romesh’s mix bus that ended up being useful to me, but those sage bits of advice you can only get from living and breathing music production for years that I’ve held on to. The best thing is that none of this advice will cost you a penny to implement, just what you need for a lean January post-Christmas.

Remember to have fun

That’s what we do this for right? To have fun? Ultimately if your music-making isn’t fun, then why are you doing it? Whether you’re mixing your own music or working with others, as the producer or engineer it’s your job to make sure that the experience is enjoyable. It’s not just about sonics.

Having the recording experience be a fun one is what will bring artists back to you, as well as help keep you motivated for your own projects. Everyone wants to feel good about themselves and the music they make, and as the person with the ability to craft music, you have the power to make it a memorable experience.

Don't be afraid to dive in feet first

A few years back one of my friend’s bands asked me to record a song with them. I hadn’t recorded live drums for years and frankly, the thought of doing a full band terrified me. I still did it though, and it remains their most popular song on Spotify. The best lessons are those that you learn by pushing yourself past your limits, so you should never be afraid to do things that are beyond your current knowledge.

Nobody wants to make mistakes, but ultimately these are the things that help us move forward as music-makers. Getting out of your comfort zone is a great way to help you develop as a producer, and the lessons you learn working out how to get around certain issues you’ll face when recording are invaluable. So next time someone asks you to do something you aren't sure about, just go for it. You'll learn far more doing it than watching yet another YouTube tutorial.

Cultivate relationships

You should aim to work with as many people as you possibly can if you really want to expand your skills and get your name out there. Something that often happens when bands get signed is that they take their producer/engineer with them when they get signed. If you made the process fun, why wouldn’t they have someone they know and trust on hand to ensure they make the best music possible?

It’s the same for collaborating with other artists. If they like their track and have a great time with you, the next time they’re speaking with a fellow artist who’s looking for someone to work with, your name will be top of the pile. At the end of the day you never know who’s going to be successful in this game, but ensuring you work with lots of different people in your scene will stand you in good stead.

Be honest about your mistakes

Being honest with yourself and the artists you work with is key to developing your own craft and helping the relationships that will define you as a producer. Whether you’re owning up to a mistake you’ve made or being realistic with an artist on the sound of a particular section of their song, honesty is nearly always the best policy.

If you messed something up on a production, admit it, fix it, and move on. There’s nothing worse than someone discovering a mistake further down the line when it's baked in, and you’re only selling yourself short doing this. The people you work with will come to appreciate your honesty, and being totally honest with yourself about your own work is another great way to develop your skills.

Learn your DAW intimately

The music industry is all about time efficiency. Even at the DIY level, the engineer who can get the most out of a band or artist's valuable time will be the one they’ll come back to. Knowing your DAW inside-out is key to ensuring a speedy workflow, whether that’s learning all the shortcuts or knowing the built-in tools intimately.

Being able to work quickly and efficiently will set you above the other producers in your area, so setting up those mix templates, being well prepared for your sessions, and learning to multi-task can all be invaluable skills. There are plenty of online resources to help you learn your DAW too, so you don’t have to spend any money getting up to speed.

Learn different genres

It’s important to dip your toes into other genres, particularly when you’re starting out. Eventually, you’ll probably fall into a specialism, but gathering experience making all different kinds of music is another invaluable skill. Many genre-specific techniques can be repurposed in different styles of music too, for example, an 808 typically used in hip hop can really add some punch to the breakdown in a modern metal mix.

Listening and mixing different genres is all part of developing your ear for music, and the wealth of different techniques required of different styles will help you become a better engineer. Next time you decide to create some music, why not try and make a track in a completely different style to your usual one and see what you come up with?

Know your monitoring

Buying gear can be a real crux for music-makers when they want to develop, whether it’s a new audio interface or a fresh pair of studio monitors. Ultimately though, learning your existing monitoring intimately is far better value for money. Getting your mixes to translate across various sources whether it's car speakers or Air Pods is essential for any music maker.

You need time with your monitoring to really learn it, so as well as mixing on your speakers or studio headphones you should just listen to quality mixes on them as well. This will help you understand the limitations of your setup, and understanding how things sound on it will help you translate your mixes better. Having multiple monitoring options is powerful too, so learning a pair of headphones alongside your monitors will serve you hugely in the long run.

Keep developing your sound

You’ve got to think in incremental gains. Your mixes might not change much from one week to another, but over the course of a year, you will see bigger changes. The idea is to just make sure that the next mix is better than the previous, even if it’s only a slight improvement.

Your mixes are your business card, and improving them will help you get more clients, or just improve the overall sound if you make music for yourself. Finishing mixes is always a hard one, but the sooner you move on to the next thing, the sooner you’ll find yourself taking steps to improve the sound of your output.

If you want more great mixing and engineering tips from Romesh Dodangoda you can head over to the Control Room Audio Community to learn more about music production.