October 7, 2017 editorial: comments

Taking Control of Your Mixes

I don’t know about you, but I find mixing to be endlessly fascinating. If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you know that it’s a subject I come back to here periodically. It intrigues me because it requires that you be part scientist and part artist—it’s a mishmash of left-brain and right brain. Plus, it’s really effing challenging.

Mixing reminds me of playing an instrument; you need to work hard over many years to get really good at it. And no matter how proficient you become, you can always improve.

Mixing can also be very gratifying—there’s nothing like listening back to a mix that you totally nailed—it's a great feeling of accomplishment. On the flip side, it can be massively frustrating. When you’re mixing a song, and nothing you try seems to be working, it can feel like you’re beating your head against a wall.

From my own experience, and from what I've learned from interviewing a lot of engineers over the years, it seems to me that’s it’s critical to take the initiative when mixing. You want to control the process, rather than letting it control you.

It’s easy to get focused on the micro aspects and lose track of the macro ones, so it’s important to be proactive, not reactive. Have a vision for what you want to achieve sonically, and keep that in mind at all times. Otherwise, your mix will evolve randomly, and could very well end up a good distance away from what you were hoping for. 

To give you an example, I’m currently producing and mixing an album for an acoustic instrumental band I play in, and I decided it would help give the mixes a "sound" to have the rhythm guitar doubled and panned hard left and right on every song. It meant asking the guitar player to record some additional parts, but it was worth it. I also decided to be consistent from one song to the next about the pan positions of the various instruments. Because I made those decisions, the mixes have a cohesiveness they wouldn’t have had if I’d just let them all "happen."  

Something else to consider as a mixer is that if you want to stand out from the crowd, eventually you need to start developing your own style. Let your creativity flow, and don’t be afraid to try something that’s unconventional. Experiment a little; you never know what you’ll discover. Maybe that over-the-top bit-crushing effect on the snare drum will end up gluing the whole mix together, or perhaps the phase shifter on the vocal reverb will create something really memorable.

One of the beauties of working by yourself in your own studio is that you can take chances and try some different stuff and if it works, great, and if it doesn’t, just revert to the previous version. No one will ever know.

I’ll be back at you with another column on November 4th.