You might not believe this, but you only need four plugins to mix music that sounds professional. A lot of beginner musicians think that buying the most expensive plugins will automatically make your music sound amazing.

But if you don’t know how to use those expensive plugins, they’re useless. So all you need to do is master the easy-to-use free plugins that come with your digital audio workstation (DAW).

Jason LaRocca, Grammy-nominated engineer, mixer, and producer who has worked with Jay-Z and Fiona Apple, told us it your choices are more important than the specific tools you use.

“I don’t care what EQ I’m using, I don’t care what compressor I’m using,” he said.

“I’m just trying to get the structure built as fast as possible. …My beginning of the process is just trying to make sure that the building is standing, and that actually takes a lot of work.”

An equalizer (EQ) is meant to balance the frequencies. And it does this subtly.

EQ is more about subtraction than anything else. You typically cut frequencies that sound weird or distracting so that the instrument sounds the best possible.

It’s meant to balance the tones among the different instruments so they cooperate together, to remove overlapping frequencies.

For example, bass guitar and a kick drum are usually in a similar frequency range. EQing the bass can help allow space for the kick drum to punch through.

Compression takes some practice to get the hang of, but once you do, it makes all the difference in your mix sounding professional or not.

At the most basic level, compression brings the quietest and loudest parts of a recording toward each other. The louder parts are made a little quieter, and the quieter parts are made a little louder. This is called the dynamic range. It helps bring consistency to the volume throughout the whole track.

Another thing compression can do is boost the energy of the instrument you’re working with. We’ll get into how to do this below.

Reverb helps create the size and sound of the “room” your instrument is in. By adding reverb to an instrument or vocal, you can make the room size sound bigger. It works well on a vocal take during a big chorus, on an acoustic guitar to add vibrancy, or on a snare drum if you’re looking for more impact.

Reverb can also help blend tracks and takes together. You’re probably recording a bunch of different instruments together, especially if you’re using a home studio or if you’re a solo artist. And when you do that, each instrument can have its own individual natural room sound. Reverb can help blend them together and make them sound like they were recorded all together.

Delay is often confused with reverb but that’s understandable. Delay is sort of like a sibling to reverb.

Delay could also be called “echo.” If reverb helps determine the room size, then delay helps you decide the size of the cave you’re in. In the same way your echo comes back to you, so does delay (at varying levels of repetition).

Okay, now let’s dive into how to use these plugins, step by step.

Whenever you mix, the best order in which to use these plugins (i.e. the signal flow) is as follows:

• EQ
• Compression
• Reverb
• Delay

In almost every case, especially if you’re relatively new to mixing, this is the order you’ll use (assuming you’ll be using all four plugins). And with each plugin, it’s better to make little changes rather than huge ones. That way, all the little adjustments add up to one positive impact.

As you get better at mixing, you’ll learn this “rule” can be broken if it makes your mix sound better. But for now, as a beginner, stick with this order.

Before you touch any of your plugins, start with the gain levels and panning percentages of each channel in your DAW. Try to get as good of a mix as you can with just the gain and panning. Get it balanced.

Really put effort into this step because it’s the most important one. If you can get the mix sounding good without any plugins, then the plugins you do add will enhance the sound rather than fix it.

How you use an equalizer (or EQ) depends on the instrument and its relation to the rest of the elements in the song. But here’s a general overview of how you can use a 4-band EQ:

• High-pass filter (AKA low cut): this removes low-end and low-mid frequencies, which can help de-muddy a mix. Here are some tips for different instruments (will vary widely depending on equipment, space, type of instrument, and within the context of the track)…
  • Vocals: humans can’t hear below about 20Hz, and there’s often nothing in the super low range that’s valuable. Start by cutting at about 100Hz and adjust to taste.
  • Bass: start by cutting frequencies below 20-40Hz and see how that sounds. You still want the low-end, but you don’t want the unnecessary frequencies. You may want to make a notch with the 2 band at the frequency where the kick drum is most present – this creates room for the kick to pop through without the bass being drowned out.
  • Acoustic guitar: I usually start by cutting frequencies below 100Hz and adjust the band as needed. For a clearer sound, cut above 100Hz. For a warmer sound, boost the 200-500Hz range. Or have two layers of guitars and do one on each.
• Middle bands (2 band and 3 band): you can use the two middle bands to reduce unwanted frequencies or boost the nice frequencies. Here are the general steps for using these bands…
  • Narrow the bandwidth of the band
  • Drag the band up as high as you can
  • Slowly sweep the band right and left
  • Play the track while you listen for weird or pleasant sounds
  • Once you find the frequency you want or don’t want, drag the band down until it’s 1) cutting the unwanted frequency by about 1-3 dB or 2) boosting the pleasant frequency by about 1-3 dB
  • You can widen the band a tad to cut/boost a little of the surrounding frequencies
• High-shelf (AKA low pass): the 4 band is the one all the way to the right and it can cut or boost the higher frequencies. Boosting the 4 band often brings out more clarity in the instrument, which can be useful for lead vocals. Alternatively, You may want to cut higher frequencies in an instrument that doesn’t need them, like bass, to make room in the upper range for other instruments in the mix.

If it sounds like you need compression, slap some of that on there after the EQ. If the track needs more energy or if the volume is inconsistent throughout the track, compression can help.

Remember to go easy on the compression, especially if you’re just learning how to use it. Compression is often used on vocals, so we’ll use that as an example.

Here’s the general way to use compression on vocals:

• Set the Attack to 3-6 ms.
• Set the Release to 100 ms.
• Set the Ratio between 2:1 and 4:1.
• As you play the track, pull down the Threshold until the Gain Reduction averages between 2-7 dB.
• Then use the Makeup Gain (or the track volume if your Compression plugin doesn’t have a Makeup Gain control) to turn up the gain, leaving about 3-6 dB of headroom.

These are simply guidelines, not rules. The setting will change based on the instrument, performance, and context within the song. So adjust the parameters within these ranges until you get what you’re hearing in your head. A lot of mixing is experimenting, in case you haven’t picked up on that already.

Reverb can add space and depth to your mix. But it can also muddy the mix, so go easy with it at first.

I suggest bussing your reverb (AKA using an “aux channel” or aux send”). Bussing is when you send a copy of the audio from one track to a second track, then apply an effect (like reverb) to that second track. So then you have the dry channel with no effect along with the wet channel with an effect, both in the mix. (Every DAW can do this, so I suggest checking YouTube for instructions on how to bus channels in your chosen DAW).

Bussing reverb gives you a lot more control over the reverb’s intensity within the mix. Plus, you can add the same reverb sound to multiple channels at once. This way, you can adjust the gain level of the reverb bus channel to make it more or less present. Therefore, helping you tame the reverb so it doesn’t muddy the mix.

Lastly, delay can help fill out an instrument and, in turn, the whole song.

Delay is an effect that takes a little experimenting with in order to figure out what sounds best. But, like reverb, you should bus your delay effect using the steps above.

When using delay, here are some general tips to get the best sound:

• Don’t overdo it.
• Apply delay only to tracks that are not panned at all (this allows the delay to show you its full potential).
• Bus your delay and only use one delay plugin per song.
• If your song feels empty or dry, adding delay can help fill it out with its repeating nature.
• A ping-pong delay can help transition from one section to another.
• If you need more delay, don’t just turn it up — try adding a second layer of delay instead.

Once you’ve got what you think is a good mix, bounce the song and listen to it on multiple different sound sources. Take it to your car. Listen on your earbuds and your bluetooth speaker. Listen on your studio monitors and a pair of crappy speakers you got at a garage sale.

This will help you tame and/or boost elements of the mix so the track sounds good no matter where you listen. Now, mastering will also help the song sound good regardless of the sound source, but it’s best to do your best with this in the mixing stage.

Now that we’ve covered the more technical side of mixing, here are some general mixing tips to take in…

After you’ve produced the song and before you start mixing, take a break from the song for a day or two so you can come back with fresh ears.

Then during the mixing process, take a 15-minute break every hour. Your ears can get fatigued. Your brain can start to tune out certain elements. For your own sake, take a break.

If you make an adjustment that improves the sound of the song yet breaks one of the above “rules,” keep it.

The main goal with mixing is to make the song sound as good as it can. And “good” means that it makes you feel some strong emotion(s).

Before testing your final mix, turn the overall volume way down, until you almost can’t hear it.

Then gradually bring up the volume and pay attention to what you hear first. Ideally, the main elements popping out at this low level should be the vocal, kick, and snare.

As helpful as this post is, it’s not your only resource for learning how to mix. Or at least it shouldn’t be. This guide is only meant to get you started with the basics of mixing.

I want you to continue to get better at mixing, which is why I’m going to give you some of my favorite videos on mixing.

The first video I want to share comes from WickieMedia, which provides a lot of audio engineering tutorials. In this one, called “The Basics Of Mixing Music,” they cover the philosophy of mixing — the main idea and goal.

It talks about how you should mix your song as if the band is on stage. So it involves panning instruments left and right in proportion to each other, paying attention to the balance of high, medium, and low frequencies, and using volume to create the illusion that the drums are in the back and the singer is up front.

It’s super helpful. If you’re fairly new to mixing, check out this video.

The next video I want to point out is “The Basics Of How To Use EQ.” This short video shows what a few Professional Mixing Engineers say about how to use (or not use) EQ. Very insightful.

Another video that’s a must-watch is “How To Mix Vocals” from Graham Cochrane. Cochrane runs the well-known website The Recording Revolution, which helps DIY musicians create radio-ready songs.

What he’s great at is simplifying things for musicians who may not be familiar with an idea. In the below video, he covers two ways to mix vocals.

While we’re talking about Cochrane, I might as well mention another one of his videos on mixing, “How To Mix A Song From Scratch.”

This one takes you through the process of mixing an entire song, start to finish.

After you’ve watched the other videos, you can check out “Mixing Vocals To Sit Properly In Your Mix,” which is a bit more technical than the others.

But it’s from respected award-winning engineer Warren Huart, so you can trust it.

What’s the point of learning how to mix music when AI can do it for you? Why not just pay a low monthly payment to one of the many AI mixing services and get unlimited mixes?

Because AI mixing has not developed to the point where it can give you what you may need (at least not yet).

Dana Nielsen, Grammy-nominated engineer who’s worked with SZA, Rihanna, Adele, and Bob Dylan, agrees.

“I think that, at the moment, it seems like while those results [with AI mixing/mastering] are impressive and valid and cool and interesting, the ability to really fine-tune things…you’re limited,” he told us.

He said that artists who can afford to hire a mix engineer can have a “more tailor-made” experience.

“However you want it, we got your back,” he said.

And if you know how to mix the music yourself, you don’t have to try to explain to someone else the vision you hear in your head. You can just make it happen.