The one trick that Big Music doesn’t want you to know!

I was absolutely struggling when I went to do a final mix after writing everything in stereo. For me, it was a whack-a-mole game: Fixing one problem created ten more, bass was unmanageable, highs tended to blare or everything was a midrange soup and I constantly struggled with frequency cancellation.

Above all other problems, music was not portable. It would sound great with headphones, but became a blown out mess on external speakers.

Mono. Just write everything in mono. If the track sounds good in mono, even just the slightest bit of stereo separation makes it sound awesome!

As a perk, it forced me to learn more about compression and limiting and when it is applicable. If something is inaudible in mono, it’s going to sound like absolute garbage in stereo. (It also forced me into EQ’ing nearly every component of a song at first. I am not nearly as aggressive with that now, but again, it opened up new doors that I didn’t realize existed.)

Why, oh why, is this technique not pushed more to hobbyists and beginners? Is there a shortcoming that I am not aware of?

Obviously, this isn’t a cure-all and I kinda framed this post as a magic trick. Its one hell of a teaching tool, if nothing else.