June 27, 2018

Mixing a song

Mixing a song

You're about to mix the song you've been recording.  Unless you have a record label footing the bill, and unless you have serious engineering experience, and here are a few things I would suggest.

Let's hear it from the engineer

First off, let the engineer have a crack at making a mix.  At the very least, wait until he* has provided a "rough mix" before you start lobbing suggestions.  Why?

  • Chances are he has ideas, knows the material fairly well (since he's repeatedly heard every part through a microscope for the past how many hours?), and will be relatively quick since he knows what knobs to twist rather than conveying his ideas to someone and hoping they understand and know how to make it happen.  In most cases, the engineer is the only person who has sat at the monitors to hear every track as it has been laid down giving him or her a unique knowledge of what there is to work with when it is time for mixdown, and he's probably has developed some thoughts about the project along the way.  
  • Mixing your own material can be dangerous for the same reason you shouldn't proofread your own writing:  you read what you intended to write rather than what you actually wrote.  
  • You might be pleasantly surprised by what a third-party hand makes of your material.  I'm not saying you shouldn't voice opinions or suggest edits, but try to refrain from getting too picky about how the guitars are panned until you hear the result of what the engineer's mix sounds like.  

Wait.

If time allows, just wait.  Let it simmer.  It's so tempting to lay down that last take, all eager and ready to jump into mixing the project into a final product, but it's usually a good idea to wait a while between tracking and mixing.  (In fact, if you let the engineer have a go at it, you can kill two of these birds with one stone:  you get to wait while he mixes.)  During the tracking process, your mind is prone to focus on all the mistakes you just made and obsess over them, often missing out on listening genuinely to everything else, fixating on insignificant errors and missing egregious ones.  What I have found is a few days after tracking, I go back to listen and usually don't even notice things that were driving me crazy during the tracking sessions, however I do start to notice new things I didn't notice while tracking.  Fresh ears.

Set a deadline.

Songs are never done; you just stop working on them.  If you work on them too long, you'll likely produce the energy right out of it, so you have to strike a balance somehow.  There will never be an end to things you can find to fix; at some point you simply say "done".  If you're spending more time in post-editing than you are in actual recording, it might be wise to consider re-recording parts.

Kill the puppy.  

Be open to the idea of changing things if it benefits the whole project, even it it means cutting a really cool part, or adding one you didn't intend.  It's easy to latch onto an idea because of how it worked in your head or before the interplay of other instruments, but reality usually alters a few supporting facts and you might have to reassess the value of a part in the new context.  Maybe the guitar feedback sounds awesome, but does it muddy up the vocals?  Perhaps muting a couple of instruments in the verse (rather than adding a couple more in the chorus) will give the chorus more oomph.

Step back and try to be as objective as you can, hard as it may be.  Is the crux of the song the vocal hook, or is the song a showcase for the kick drum?  As a bass player, I know well that the role of my instrument (usually) is far from the focus.  I am trying support and not get in the way of the focal points of the song which are often the lead vocals and/or lead guitar.  As cool as it would be for me to slappin'-poppin' wanking, it might work better to simply play the root or [gasp!] do nothing.

KISS

Keep It Simple, Stupid.  There's a reason adages are repeated through the ages.  More and more I aim for less and less.  What is the fewest amount of instruments and least amount of processing I can use to convey the song?  Is this particular part necessary?  Does it really add to the wall of sound or merely add to the noise?

These are far from the only factors to consider, and they don't apply to all sessions, but they are things I encounter time and again.  Hopefully, this serves to benefit your next recording session and give you pause to reflect on how to get the most out of your studio time.

So, now that your song is mixed, it's time to get it mastered...

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* "He" in the gender neutral sense.  A lot of audio engineers are women, and hopefully more each day.  Regardless, "he" reads better than "he or she", drawing less attention to the text and (hopefully) more to the content.

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