12-25-2025, 03:24 AM
I'm mixing a folk-rock track in my home studio, and I'm really struggling with the acoustic guitars and vocals competing for space in the mid-range. The guitars sound either too thin when I carve out room for the vocal, or they muddy everything up when I leave them full. What are some effective mixing techniques for separating similar frequency instruments? Should I be using more aggressive EQ notching, side-chain compression, or perhaps panning and spatial effects to create separation? I'm also unsure about how much compression to apply to the lead vocal to make it sit powerfully on top without sounding squashed.