The Complete Mixing Masterclass
J. Anthony Allen · Music Producer, Composer, PhD, Professor
A working producer narrates a full real mix start to finish, but nearly eight hours of casual talk tests patience.
A Full Arc, From Empty Room to Finished Track
The course opens further back than most mixing classes bother to go: before a single fader is touched, it spends real time on the room the mixing happens in. Speaker placement relative to walls and corners, symmetry between the two monitors, and the logic of buying "active" monitors that don't need a separate amplifier are all covered as concrete, checkable steps rather than vague advice. J. Anthony Allen even names a reference album (Art of Noise's Seduction) he uses to audition speakers, a small but useful habit any listener can copy immediately. Only after the room and monitoring chain are sorted does the class move into session prep: backing up a project, tracking down stray noise, tuning parts, and grouping channels before any mixing decision is made.
The Toolkit, and the Real Mix at the Center
Once the fundamentals are in place, the course works through the standard mixing vocabulary: panning and the phantom center, subtractive EQ used to carve space between instruments occupying the same frequency range, and a specific trick of high-pass filtering anything with low-end energy, even when the cut is inaudible, to reduce buildup that would otherwise muddy a mix. Gain staging gets a clear rule: pick a reference element (a kick drum, a lead vocal), set it around negative 10dB with the master fader untouched at zero, then balance everything else against it. Reverb and delay are treated as separate tools with separate jobs, with specific guidance such as keeping reverb off individual drum elements but applying it to a drum bus for a sense of distance, or panning a delay return opposite its dry source for width. The compression section follows the same pattern, including parallel compression and a technique for making one "featured" element cut through a mix using a combination of small volume boosts, makeup gain, and effects.
The centerpiece is a full mix built on an actual student track, worked through from a blank session to a finished, club-ready bounce, with the reasoning behind each move explained as it happens. This is where the course earns its keep: hearing an EQ cut or a compressor setting applied to real material, immediately followed by an A/B comparison, does more to teach judgment than any isolated explanation of a plugin parameter.
Where the Runtime Works Against It
At 459 minutes, the course is thorough to a fault. The teaching style is loose and conversational, with long stretches of restated points and asides that add runtime without adding technique. Despite the "works in any DAW" framing, the screen is Ableton Live throughout, and the parallel between what is shown and how it maps to Logic, FL Studio, or Pro Tools is asserted more than demonstrated. For an "intermediate" listing, a meaningful chunk of the early material, particularly monitor buying and room setup, sits closer to beginner territory. None of this undermines the substance of the technique, but it does mean the value density is lower than the runtime suggests, and a more disciplined edit would have made a strong course tighter rather than merely longer.
The standout
The full narrated mix of a real student track, where every EQ cut, compression setting, and reverb decision is explained as it happens, gives the theory an audible before-and-after.
What you will learn
- How to evaluate a listening environment and choose or place studio monitors to get an honest mix reference
- How to prepare a session before mixing: backing up, cleaning up tracks, tuning instruments, and grouping channels
- How to resolve frequency conflicts between instruments using subtractive EQ and a high-pass filter on low-energy sources
- How to set a gain-staging target (roughly negative 10dB off the lead element) and build the rest of the mix around it
- How to apply reverb and delay differently across vocals, drums, and guitars or synths to create depth without mud
- How to use compression, parallel compression, and volume or effects tricks to make one featured element stand out
Best for: Home producers and self-taught musicians who have finished tracks but cannot get them to sound polished, and who want a soup-to-nuts explanation of the mixing process in any DAW.
Skip it if: Producers who already understand signal flow, gain staging, and EQ/compression basics and want only advanced or genre-specific mixing tricks, since a large share of runtime covers introductory ground.