Sound Mixing Tip 2: Rest Them Ears
If you're concentrating on a song-part for too long, your ears become quickly tired. You will sit there, and you will think: '...nah'; and you will convince yourself everything is fine. But what you've probably done in fact, is over-compensate without realising.
This is one of my weaknesses, I have to say - simply because I get so engrossed I just can't let go until I'm precisely happy... even if that takes 14 hours (cough - or more!).
It can be more troublesome when you're trying to create a complex sound on a synth, or something that covers several frequency spectrums. You can be spending hours refining the sound, when somehow during the process, you'll overly-concentrate on the lower, mid or higher freqiencies of that sound; almost to the exclusion of all others... basically, you lose the wider perspective.
It's usually the higher-frequencies that suffer, meaning you'll more than likely make them more prominent to compensate... of course, you won't realise until you listen-back a couple of days later.
What to do?
- Don't monitor at loud volumes - conversational volume is just fine.
- Do lots of referencing, often: Make adjustments and listen to it with other instruments, AKA: A/B testing.
- Reference with professionally-recorded CDs.
- Try referencing the mix in mono to see if the overall balance of instruments is clear and even.
Have a freakin' break!