The Mix is a Medium

Mixing usually gets lumped into categories with other elements of the recording process. You know, studios offering "mixing/mastering" services, the guy who mixed the album gets credit for "engineering" or "producing". I've been given credit for producing albums where I was never in the room when anyone was recording.

It's always funny to me, but I guess people don't really understand what happens in the mix and how big of a deal it is to the final product. It really can make or break an album. I've heard (and even worked on a few) projects with massive budgets that either rushed or skipped the mix process that in the end sound pretty embarrassing. On the other hand, I've heard albums with essentially no budget where people have taken their time and the finished product sounds really great.

The thing is, mixing is an artistic medium. The song and all of its recorded parts become your palate of colors. The impact of the music, the spectral balance between all frequencies, the dynamic range, the size and depth of the sound field; these all become elements that the mixing engineer carefully manipulates in the mixing process. A skilled mixer can pull out the best elements of a song and present them in a way that feels natural and true to the music... or not. A mix is more then good vs. bad. Any given song can come out of the mix process a dozen different ways, each good in its own way.

I have always felt that the key to a great mix is it's transparency, so to speak. The best mixes I have heard initially dazzle me with their sonic beauty, but then seem to disappear as I get lost in the song. These mixes let the music speak for itself and don't try to impose an artistic direction on the music that it doesn't naturally call out for.

A little abstract and obscure, I know. But you likely know what I'm talking about if you love listening to great music and, by extension, hate listening to garbage.

Next time you are listening to a piece of music that you feel is really great sounding. Listen to how the recorded parts are arranged in such a way that it supports the natural artistic flow of the music. It may be a lush string section that envelopes your whole head in it's soft swells. Or it may be a piercing guitar part that jumps out at you hits you in the middle of you forehead.

You can learn to appreciate a lot more music out there if you listen not just to the music itself, but the medium it is presented in.

Trying to copy a mix...

Ever tried to perfectly copy the mix of some project to the artist's "favorite album" 'cause they asked for it to sound "just like so-and-so"? Trying to simulate what you hear on a well recorded album is actually a pretty good exercise for learning how they got that sound and to train your ears to hear things in the studio. For example, most people start out mixing (for the first time) with the bass too loud the drums too quite and the vocals kind of buried under it all. Comparing your crappy mix to a beautifully mixed album in a similar genre will show you that your balances are way off and you can start compensating and training your ear in the studio to get closer to the finished product with out any referencing.

The problem with this process is that, ultimately, you will be mixing to copy the sound of a mixed and mastered album. The result will be that you get your balances to where they sound ok (usually with a lot of compression) and then you have your mix mastered (usually compressing and limiting it some more) and all of a sudden your mix sounds flat and squashed.

Bob Katz speaks to this problem in his book, "Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science." He notes that the albums that we reference our mixes to are mastered and have a greatly reduced dynamic range in comparison to music that is only in the mixing stage. So, we compensate to try and match the sound, over compress, send our stuff to mastering and end up with a really squashed finished product. Obviously a mastering engineer with good ears will know to lay off the compression when the music is already so flat, but the damage is still done since it is unlikely that the material will leave mastering with no compression or limiting. Bob Katz points out that this likely is happening on a large scale all over the world and as a result our music in becoming less and less dynamic.

Just think... that album you are listening to as a reference was probably mixed to compare to some other mastered album as a "target sound" and they ended up with a reduced dynamic range. Now you are trying to match that final reduced dynamic range in your mixing stage!

You get the point.

Basically, if your mix sounds (dynamically) just like that album you are trying to imitate, you are likely overcompressing. Your drums should pop, your vocals should jump up slightly, if someone is playing harder, it should get louder!

If you can anticipate the compressed sound that may be introduced in the mastering stage, your mixes will translate better and you will be a lot happier with your mixes!

Staying Fresh...

I often find maintaining a state of creative "freshness" a challenge. I will have these periods of creative energy where I can create, write, mix, produce, whatever, for days on end without feeling drained. Then, usually within a week or so, I seem to lose momentum and creative work seems to feel a little more like work.

I take this seriously, because I don't consider mixing to be a mundain, mechanical task in anyway. For me, it is one of the areas where i feel I draw on my creativity the most.

A few months ago I stumbled across a podcast on iTunes called, "The Accidental Creative". It focused mainly on this idea of creative rhythm. I would definitely recommend checking out the podcast and even the website. Tod Henry (the guy running the thing) runs an 'e-coaching' program through the website specifically for creative types. I've found this stuff to be really helpful in understanding the dynamics of working in a creative field where I have to "create-on-demand." The general idea that is put out there is that all creative people (all people?) have rythms of creative energy or drive that include peaks and valleys. Basically, the idea is to align your life to work with those peaks and valleys, not against them.

Check it out, I've found it helpful.

The Accidental Creative