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Difference between recording and mixing?

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Topic Difference between recording and mixing?
I'm a musician just trying to learn how to produce my own music. Sounds like a dumb question, but I'm a bit confused on the difference between recording and mixing. I mean, if during mixing, you try and 'fine-tune' your tracks to get them to sit in the mix well and mesh together harmoniously, then does that mean you can just record any old thing so long as the timing and gain is right?

I guess this newb question leads to my main question: what should you strive to get in a recording before starting to mix? And do you record all tracks (ie drums, bass, vocals, guitars) before starting to mix anything? What should I go for while recording and when should I start mixing?
2
Quote:
I'm a bit confused on the difference between recording and mixing.


Think of recording as the act of capturing audio from musicians and/or programming MIDI parts on virtual instruments. In other words, the process of gathering in the raw material for your song. Once everything is recorded, and you're not adding more parts, you can assume that you're in the mixing phase of the process. Think of mixing as the process of making the tracks sound as good as possible, combining them into a cohesive, finished-sounding product, and bouncing (or recording) them into the format of a stereo master file. That being said, there's a lot of overlap. People often do a lot of mixing as they're recording. That is, they add effects to tracks, get rough level balances between tracks, EQ, and so forth. They also change synth sounds and edit parts as they're going along. A lot of times, by the time you're done recording, you have at least a rough mix already done.

Quote:
Then does that mean you can just record any old thing so long as the timing and gain is right?

The answer to that is definitely, "no." Always try to record your tracks with the best possible performance and best possible sound quality. It's true that some things can be "fixed in the mix," but for the most part, "garbage in, garbage out" applies. Make sure you're well rehearsed on your parts if playing an instrument, and spend time getting good sounds before recording (for instance, experiment with different microphone placement). Starting out with good tracks will make the mixing process a lot easier, and the final product a lot better.
3
Gotcha. Thanks for helping clear that up Mike.