This comes up a lot. For those of you who want to ask us if we know what we are doing, we will play.
First, I am the sound engineer that mixes and masters all songs that we produce. I have been doing this for twenty-years. I can tell you that mixing is about half technical and half instinctual. You have to have a great ear for musical nuance.
Have said that, I follow a process. I can't begin to explain everything in this process because much of it is intuition. Here are the basics.
If you have a reference track that you want me to use, email it to wes@songwritersportal.com.
1. First, the mixing process. You can't master until the tracks are mixed.
2. Second, I use a reference track that will work with your song. I use tracks from years ago such as Alan Parsons Project and the Talking Heads.
3. I load the reference track and use IZOTOPE Ozone's Tonal Balance Control.
4. I then level match the reference track to the mix.
5. I then use EQ to modify the mix to fall within the target ranges of the reference track.
6. I use other controls within Ozone such as Master Rebalance and Low End Focus to further master the song.
I hope that helps to answer your question