Chapter 7 - Conclusion
7.1 Putting It All Together
My overall procedure for mixing usually looks like this. First, I tend to do a lot of mixing as I go. For instance, the first thing I do after I add a drum sound to the mix is usually to EQ and compress it. Whenever I notice something that sounds wrong, I fix it. By the time I've finished writing my track, I've already got a mix that's sounding pretty OK.
At that point, I'll typically spend some time doing some fine-tuning on the mix. I'll do some subtler EQing to complement the broad-brush EQing I did before, and add in panning, reverb, and delays if I haven't already. I might redo the levels, and also add in some level riding if it's needed. If the track has both a kick drum and a bassline, then I'll spend some time focusing on their relationship and making them work better together.
Having finished my fine-tuning, my next step is to render a copy of the mix and burn it to a CD, put it on my MP3 player, etc. Then I will take it around and listen to it on a bunch of different sound systems, at different volume levels, and with different levels of ambient noise. For each test, I'll take notes on what I think is wrong with the mix in that context. "Cymbals too bright," "Pad too quiet," "Bass too loud," etc. Usually, a pretty clear pattern will emerge.
The complaints will usually sound like leveling problems, but they usually aren't. More often than not, the apparent problems with levels actually indicate a problem with masking or dynamics, and are better solved with EQ, compression, panning, and time-based effects than with leveling. Furthermore, often the best way to solve a problem with a given track actually requires making adjustments on a different track. For instance, if your snare drum lacks impact, it might just be that you have some other stuff in the 200Hz range that you need to EQ out of its way. There's always more than one way to solve a mixing problem, but not all solutions are equally good, and many solutions will also create new problems. Think before you tweak.
So now you've got your mix perfect. What's next? Well, if you're signed to a record label, or you just have cash to burn, then you'll send it off to a mastering engineer to get it mastered. The mastering engineer will fix any remaining problems with the mix, and depending on the style of the music, may also increase the perceived loudness so that it is competitive with other music of that style.
You should not attempt to do your own mastering processing on the music. All of the sonic corrections that a mastering engineer would perform can be more easily and effectively performed in the mixdown.
But what about loudness? Well, you can also do that in the mixdown. Of course, it is impossible to enter into any discussion about loudness without first mentioning the so-called "loudness war" and its effects on music. However, this topic has been discussed to death, and I will not rehash the whole thing here. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then go read Wikipedia's excellent article on the loudness war.[1]
I take a moderate stance on the loudness war. On the one hand, a lot of music coming out these days sounds just terrible. But, on the other hand, I think that you can actually get things pretty loud and still have them sound good. I do not take the extreme stance that every transient must be perfectly preserved; I think that you can actually take quite a bit off, and raise things up quite a bit, without substantially hurting the sound.
So how do you do this? Well, not with a brutal compressor on the master bus. No, the way to achieve loudness with grace and style is to think about loudness on every level. Use compression and limiting, on the level of individual tracks, to make all of your sounds tight and controlled. Take as much transient off of your percussion sounds as you can without hurting the sound. Avoiding masking is also a big part of loudness, so EQ away unnecessary frequencies.[2] If you do just these two things, you'll probably find that your music is already pretty loud, and it doesn't sound worse; actually, it should sound better.
You can then go ahead and put a limiter as the last step in your signal chain, but be tasteful with it. Only use it to bring down a stray peak here and there. If you did a perfect job with the mixdown then theoretically there won't be any stray peaks, but realistically there will probably be a couple, and you can use the limiter to rein them in and gain a few more dB of loudness with very minimal effect on the sound.
7.2 Final Thoughts
Mixing is a perfect illustration of the 80/20 rule in art. The 80/20 rule states the last 20% of a piece of art will take 80% of the effort. Mixing is part of the last 80% of the effort. All a good mixdown does is take the sound quality of a piece of music from mediocre to good. And yet, it can be a hell of a lot of work. Good mixing is a matter of making a large number of small adjustments: some EQ here, a bit of compression there; lots of small enhancements that slowly stack up to a big difference in sound. That's why mixing takes so much time for so little payback.[3]
Mixing is about balance and harmony. It's about getting your sounds to play nicely with each other, with nothing overwhelming anything else. But more than that, mixing is about getting your sounds to form something larger than their component parts. It's about weaving a bunch of sounds together into a unified whole. And it's about creating beauty. A good mix is beautiful in its own right, even without consideration of the music that it contains.
As you mix, keep in mind the yin and yang. Adding to one thing will usually take away from something else. Whenever you do anything, be aware of the ways in which it hurts as well as helps the sound, and try to make the right tradeoffs and strike the right balances.
Think before you tweak. After you tweak, listen to the consequences. Listen back to the untweaked version if necessary, and compare the two. Think more. Tweak again if necessary. But don't overthink, and don't overtweak. When you do that your perception gets distorted and you make the wrong decisions. When you feel that start to happen, take a break and come back to the mix with a fresh perspective.
Don't try to find mixing solutions to problems that are not mixing problems. If a vocal performance is sloppy, don't try to use a bunch of mix processing to tighten it up; record a better performance. If two synth lines are blatantly clash- ing with each other, don't try to make them get along with EQ and sidechain compression; change them so that they don't clash any more, or get rid of one of them and write another synth line. If a tune has no low end, don't go boosting every track at 60Hz; write a bassline. If a tune isn't exciting, don't try to make it more exciting by boosting the treble. Then it will be boring and have too much treble.
Be creative. The ideas in this document are suggestions, not rules. You will run into lots of cases where you can create a very pleasing effect by doing the very opposite of what this document told you to do. You will also run into cases where you can create a very pleasing effect by doing some strange thing that no one has ever done before, or at least never written about. The important thing is to understand the general principles at work in the mixing process (the mechanics of sound, how a compressor works, etc.), and have confidence in your ability to make musical judgments based on those principles.
I have said this once before, but it deserves saying again: trust your ears. If it sounds bad, then it is bad. If it sounds good, then it is good.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
[2] Unnecessary frequencies are defined as frequencies tliat are not easily audible when you put the sound in the mix.
[3] Despite the fact that mixing has so little payback, I still think that you should do it on your music, and work hard at it. A big part of being a good musician is just putting in that last 80%, rather than stopping at 20 and moving on to the next thing. This sounds like a drag, but it's also kind of an appealing idea that you can make yourself a better musician, overnight, just by putting more time in.
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