While I have heard of mixing with a reference before the course, and could understand why it works, it is not something that has become part of my workflow until recently.
Something that I read early in the research for this post was asking the client for a reference track. It seems such a simple thing to include as part of a brief, but this was not something that I have thought about, and a really good way to judge how close you are to getting a mix right for a client (Messitte, 2022).
The one thing that did confuse me at the start of research for this was the idea that mixing with a reference means mixing to a track that has also been mastered. This is important to know as mastering will increase the levels of the track, so matching the gain from the reference track and the session is important (Messitte, 2022). As Jett Galindo from iZotope also says about mixing with references: “While they still have many qualities worth referencing, one quality you should not chase at the mix stage is level.” (Galindo, 2022).
Reference tracks are a good way to ensure that you match the sonic qualities of the genre that you are chasing. And utilising an A/B with the levels matched will help me to get closer to the kinds of mixes that I am after.
Now it is time to start collecting my reference tracks as lossless…
References:
Galindo, J. (2022) 4 popular mixing reference tracks, and why they work, iZotope. iZotope, Inc. Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/4-popular-mixing-reference-tracks-and-why-they-work.html (Accessed: February 20, 2023).
Messitte, N. (2022) How to Use Reference Tracks When Mixing, iZotope. iZotope, Inc. Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/13-tips-for-using-references-while-mixing.html (Accessed: February 20, 2023).