Automation is often thought of for varying the volume of a track. Or, at best, for a fade-out effect at the end of a song.
However, this technique that allows you to modify certain settings throughout a piece and is present in all DAWs can be much more useful in many other situations.
Here’s a list of 6 mixing tips based on this method. However, be careful not to overdo it: too much automation can make mixing really complex or even completely unbalance it.
Volume Automation for Arrangement
Let’s start with the simplest: volume automation with a musical arrangement goal.
In a song, instruments don’t all play at the same time. And depending on the part of the song (intro, verse, chorus…), you may not necessarily want to hear the same things — or at least not at the same level.
A useful and easy technique to implement is to automate the volume of certain tracks. For example, by varying the volume of the synthesizers playing harmony lines or, more obviously, by adding +1 or +2 dB to the vocals in the chorus to make the lyrics stand out.
This is the most common use of automation.
Aiding Compression
However, the volume of a track can be automated for needs other than arrangement.
Look at the vocal track below:
Does something catch your eye?
Yes, the first part of this track has a clearly lower level than the second. Of course, compression could help correct this, but it’s likely that only the loud sections would be compressed.
Indeed, those will be the first to hit the compressor, while the quieter singing passages will be barely affected by the compression.
The result is that it’s very likely that the intelligibility of the lyrics is not the same throughout the mix. Similarly, the character of the compressor (if you’re using a colored compression plugin, for example) will not be applied uniformly across the entire track.
This is where automation will help you: you will be able to raise the quiet parts by a few decibels to homogenize the level of the track, and thus the volume level that enters the compressor. The result will be more coherent.
Keep Sibilance Under Control
Last tip regarding volume automation, de-essing.
By default, to eliminate sibilance, we tend to use a de-esser. And in many cases, it must be said, that’s enough.
That said, in some extreme situations, only manually done volume automation will help you keep sibilance under control. Indeed, this allows you to precisely control the energy of each syllable.
In other words, instead of pushing your de-esser plugin in a somewhat unnatural way, you just need to locally correct the level of the problematic syllables.
Equalizer Automation
Of course, it’s not just the fader levels that can be subject to automation adjustments, but all parameters of the various plugins.
A technique I use quite often is to automate an EQ.
For example, you might imagine a situation where you want to give a bit more power to a vocal track in a chorus. In that case, a slight boost (1 dB, 2 dB at most…) in the mids will likely be very useful — just for the chorus, of course.
Tip: to simplify automation, you can use an EQ dedicated to this task and automate the plugin bypass (ON/OFF) rather than varying the gain of a frequency band.
Stereo Image Automation
Similarly, you can also vary the stereo image of a piece.
I sometimes do this during mastering, although it’s also possible to use this technique in mixing.
At least two options are then available to you:
- Automate a stereo image widening plugin (like iZotope’s Ozone Imager)
- Automate a Mid/Side equalizer by changing the equalization or the respective volume of the Mid and Side channels.
Once again, subtlety is key. The idea is simply to introduce slight variations that will make sense in certain parts of the mix only.
Vary the level of SEND effects
Finally, we can also imagine automating the volume fader of the send effects.
For example, to achieve more or less reverb depending on the parts of a song.
Thus, if the guitar plays something slow (a few notes scattered in an intro…), perhaps a marked 3D ambiance will be preferable.
But if it becomes more aggressive and faster in a verse or chorus, then temporarily lowering the reverb level (or the delay) will help avoid drowning out the guitar sound.
In conclusion
As you can see, there is a lot we can do with automation. And not just using it for volume variations, even though that’s probably its most obvious application.
What’s important is to experiment while remaining sufficiently subtle: the idea is indeed to make slight modifications while avoiding destabilizing a mix.
Give it a try on your next mix 😉