Summary

Wherever possible, you should allow time to have a "mix review" session the following morning. But before we discuss that, I'd like to make some closing comments about the mix process itself.

The process, in summary, goes something like this:

• Learn everything about both the song and the recorded material on tape
• Set up a rough mix of everything
• Establish a good backing of drums, bass, and "pad" tracks in context
• Get to the next stage of having all the lead stuff active and in good working order
• Add in the lead and backing vocals
• Tweak the mix, such that it is good throughout the entire song
• Perform a final, "general" revision of levels and (possibly) mix compression
• Record the mix down to stereo
• Relax
• Sleep on it

But - as I have mentioned previously, it is an iterative process. You will change and revise everything you've already done, as the mix takes shape - however, the more times you go around, the less radical the changes should be. You should be "closing down" the mix by degrees as the day goes by. By the end of the mix, you should feel confident that it is a "near-as-perfect" representation of what you were expecting to achieve. You should not feel that anything "could be better". That's why mix sessions usually go on well into the night. You tend not to have an ending time in sight, and instead you just work, and work, and work, at it until you feel that it is absolutely perfect. Then you go to bed after a brief period of relaxation.

It is difficult to write an article like this purely from "memory" of what goes on, and in practice there are without doubt some important aspects that I have left out. I will review this article from time to time to incorporate peoples comments, and update it where I think I left out important points. For example, on an analog mixing session there are several important things you need to be aware of. Apart from the obvious importance of making sure that an analog multitrack is properly calibrated and demagnetised before you mix - and that you are definitely mixing from the "Repro" head and not the "Sync" head (which has a different frequency response characteristic at the high end, and it is easy to forget to switch to "Repro"), it is also important to remember to clean the heads at several key points during the mixing session. An analog multitrack tape gets a severe battering during a mix session, and you will dirty many cotton buds wiping off all of the oxide that sheds onto the tape heads during the mix session. That battering might even effect the tape itself - the master tape may get slightly duller after hours and hours of use, and you might need to compensate for this (but it should not get too much duller, because that may indicate that you've got a nasty problem like magnetised tape heads).

As I said - there are probably other important things that I've forgotten too. I'll add them as I remember them.

Finally, I should also state that both parts of this article represent my own practical experience of mixing sessions over several years - but they might not necessarily reflect the experience of the many other people around the world who also do mixes - and so I do not assert that this is in anyway the "right" approach for all circumstances. However, it's certainly been my experience so far on mixing sessions that what takes place resembles pretty much exactly what I've described in 99% of cases.

The only times when it's deviated significantly from the above is when helping out less experienced people, who often go off in disturbingly significant wild tangents, and have sudden major changes of approach during the session - and almost start mixing from scratch again. I normally can't wait to get out of the studio quick enough under such circumstances, because there's a real danger that they won't even finish the mix at all. Use your time sensibly, and keep an eye on the clock. Mix sessions that run over more than a day are usually not pleasant to work on.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 746