Send only the tracks you want to be mixed. 

Bounce a rough mix.

• Most engineers like to have your rough mix as reference. With all of your processing on, bounce a mix to include. Rough mixes help your mixer hear your emotional response to the song. 

Turn off your processing

• The reasoning behind not sending heavily processed tracks to your mixer is so they aren't inhibited by the compression and EQ or other effects you have "printed" or bounced to the track/stem you are sending. However, in some cases, you've worked hard to define and shape a special sound and that shouldn't be ignored by your mixer.  It is beneficial to send this to the mixer as well as some premixed material such as background vocals and drum loops. Still send the unprocessed file in case something isn't working.

Label your tracks clearly

• ​Short and simple is usually the best. Titles like Kick In, Kick Out, Snare Top, Lead Vocal or abbreviations like Kick O, Snare T, T 1, Vox (vocals), EG (electric guitar), RTM (rhythm) are common and help easily define what instrument the track is. Pro Tools in particular imports the file name right in to the track name, so the shorter the file name the better. No need to include the song title in the track name but more on creating folders for your tracks below.

Export Stems (How to linked below for your DAW)​​

• FL Studio 

• Logic 

• GarageBand 

• Ableton 

• Pro Tools 

Labeling 

• Properly labeling your folder is simple and can be done with just the song title and indicating they are the files for mixing by including "multitracks for mix" or similar, but perhaps the most efficient includes other information that your mixer would want to know. I prefer a folder labelled like this: Song Title 120bpm Cmaj. This label tells me the song key and tempo for the song I'm about to mix and that information is useful for a variety of advanced mix techniques.

​​Send your files in a .zip through file sharing website.

• Compressing your files before you send them is super important for several reasons. For one, it makes your file size smaller, making the download time shorter. Secondly, it makes sure that your files can’t accidentally be altered in any way and provides a record of what you sent. I personally keep the .zip files that are sent to me, so that I can always go back to EXACTLY what was sent to me. Because the files you’re sending will likely be large, they won’t fit in an email. For large, one-time transfers like this, I personally like to use WeTransfer, but any cloud-storage will work just as well.

Communicate Your Deadlines & Needs.

• ​Communicating your deadline will help your mixing engineer schedule their time. If I know I have a week to mix a song, I might take two days on MIX1 so that I can come back with fresh ears on day two and get MIX1 a little closer to the final mix. But if I know you need to have the song finished in three days, then I know you need MIX1 today.

Send Clear Mix Notes

• While different engineers have different things they want in mix notes, the following are a couple ideas to help you communicate as clearly as possible. 

• Keep all your mix notes in one place, like an email chain for each song. When you text your mix notes, it makes it hard to go back to the last round of notes and address those things.
  Giving specific times for your notes is extremely helpful, particularly when describing specific events (ie. “Is that a pop I hear at 2:16?”). 

• Try to use language that is as specific as you can. While most engineers have PHDs in translating client terms into technical fixes, a kick drum being too “blue” means different things to different people.