General:
I'm sort of always mixing as I go, at least in my head. At the tracking stage, I'm always thinking about how I want the intruments to fit into the overall picture, and the role I want each intrument to play. I'm not focusing on how each instrument sounds by its lonesome, but rather where I want it to be "seated" in the mix. This changes, obviously, from time to time, but when I'm setting up and selecting my mics and preamps and such, I usually have a very clear idea of what I want from each instrument, and I try and zero in on those during the recording stage.
Like maybe I want the snare to be woody and resonant, or I want it to be just a steady loud crack, or I want it to big and boomy, or whatever, and I want the bass to be smooth and round and warm, like something you can wrap yourself up and fall asleep in, or I want it to be stringy and punchy and metallic, or I want it to be like a loud, fat, growly finger in your ear or whatever. Maybe I want the vocal to rich and full and airy, surrounding the listener, or maybe I want it to be loud and clear, present and right out front, or maybe I want it to be intimate and throaty, with a lot of mouth noise, like the singer's lips are breaking saliva, leaning over your shoulder, delivering the lyrics right into your ear like a secret. Maybe I want the guitar to sound like a fat buzzsaw drone, or maybe I want a thick, chunky, slurpy, tubey sound, or maybe I want a slinky, sexy, shimmery twang and snarl.
This has a lot to do with the arrangement and performance, but I'm always thinking in terms of the overall vibe of the track, and where each instrument fits into that. This will determine whether I want the guitar player to use old strings or new, where the mics go, how the drums are tuned, whether I want to track the parts one phrase at a time or do the whole song straight through and punch-in mistakes later, or whether I want to use one setup for the verse and another for the chorus or whatever. Ideally, if I can track it right, mixing is a simple matter of setting the levels. In practice, it's rarely that easy.
I'm always doing little rough mixes as I go, putting reverb on the vocals, squashing the bass a little, turning up the hi-hats, and so on. This helps the performers hear where they fit in, and it helps me hear how things are working together. Come time to mix, I'll mute all the effects, turn everything up to zero, and give it a listen. From there, the approach can vary widely. If something is obviously not working then I will attempt to knock it quickly into line, and if that doesn't work, then it may need to be retracked or rethought.
Often, I will turn down everything but the bass and drums, and start from there. I'll get the bass and drums going good, so they feel right, so they drive the song the right way, keeping them peaking around -6dB (this seems to work like magic-- if the bass and drums sound good at -6, then, almost always, when I add everything else in, the peaks will come in just about 0dB). There's my foundation. Then I'll bring up the vocals and get them to sit in the bass and drum mix so that they're clear, clean, intelligible, and sound the way I want them to sound. The vocals are the song, usually. Those are the key elements that have to be right. All the other instruments and effects can be altered to fit in with the bass/drums/vox. From here, I push everything else up and start playing with it to get it to fit into the mix the way I want.
Other times, I just throw up all the faders and start tweaking. I'm not afraid to retrack, and I'm not afraid to just leave stuff out of the mix altogether. I'm not trying to get something that sounds like a "good mix," I'm trying to get something that doesn't sound mixed at all, where the listener just loses sight of the "sound," and simply hears the song and the performance. A good mix, IMO, bypasses your critical listening skills and communicates directly with your hips and your tailbone and with the hairs on the back of your neck. A good mix spreads across my face as an uncontrollable grin and down my spine and along the hairs on my arms. It makes me want to close my eyes and dance or drum along or sing along or bop my head and I forget about the reverb duration on the ride cymbal or Q on the vocal cut or any of that.
Specifics:
* - Software that you mix with (added on edit)
Sonar
** - Stereo tracks or Mono?
Um, usually mono tracks, but sometimes stereo. Depends how I mic'd it. I very rarely use "stereo" synths or samples, since most of them are basically a mono sound with stereo reverb or modulation or something and I usually find it easier to control that stuff on my own, later, but if it's a key part of the sound, then I'll work with that. Drum overheads and stereo pianos and such sometimes get made mono, too.
* - Bussing
Lots of bussing, lots of cloned tracks, processed in different ways. When mixing, I like to think and work in terms of sonic "elements" rather than instruments. I like to be able to push up or pull back on the "meat" of the bass or the "air" in the vocals or the backbeat, or the "edge" of the guitar, or the clarity of things, or what have you. I like to be able to zoom in and out, pschologically, and be able to easily push forward the "plink" of the piano while pulling back on the resonance, or to change the relative perception of the clarity of the vocals vs. the bigness, without necessarily altering the overall "sound" or the percieved position or level in the mix.
* - Control Surface vs Mouse
I like faders and knobs. I dislike the mouse. Personal preference.
* - Monitoring (technique and equipment)
Monitor quiet, below conversation level. Change speakers frequently, using both good and crappy playback systems. Check different sections loud frequently. Take frequent breaks and listen to other recordings that have a sound similar to what I'm looking for. Burn CDs and the like to check mixes in the car and on other playback systems. Check mix with headphones frequently to focus on details. Walk away from the desk and listen to the mix from the next room with the door open, and the door closed (this is key, it give a sense of persepective and can frequently reveal problems).
* - Effects (type and settings)
As appropriate, really. The usual stuff. Some delay and/or predelayed reverb on the vox, frequently sort of "timed" to the track. Another reverb send for everything else, set up as sort of a generic "room sound," typically mixed pretty low in the mix (like, nearly inaudible) just to sort of glue things together at the end. Another send, perhaps, for drums or background vox or guitars or piano or anything else that wants a special reverb. Sometimes a gated verb insert on the snare, or something else.
Some compression usually on the bass and the kick/snare. This will often be a seperate bus that will be compressed fairly heavily and mixed in with the uncompressed versions of everything else. Some compression or tape saturation or mild tube overdrive or something else on the vocals to bring up the presence and clarity or intimacy. This will typically be on a cloned track of the vox that gets mixed in behind the "regular" vox, and may be bandwidth-limited. Compression on parts that I really want to stand out, sometimes bandwidth-limited. Sometimes another bus where two or more instruments are compressed together to set them together. Additional "surgical" compression or limiting on anything that needs it, particularly clean or acoustic guitars, percussion, piano. This "surgical" compression is not intended to alter the sound, merely to bring up the levels a bit on things whose sonic profile (NOT the performance) might be more dynamic than I want them to be.
Eq as appropriate to clear up sonic space, reduce unpleasant artifacts, enhance intelligibility, etc. Usually a low-cut on anything that doesn't have much essential low-frequency content. Somewhere below the instrument's range, just to eliminiate any rumble, or sometimes creeping up into its range to reduce mud. If I need to eq something to really significantly alter the "sound" of it, or the percieved frequency profile, then I will typically create a clone or a bus and process that track heavily just to bring out whatever I'm looking for (i.e., the thump, or the mouth noise, or the bigness, or whatever). May also involve dynamics control or other processing. Once I zero in on that precise element, then I mix it in with the "regular" one to taste. This can create phase issues which may or may not be desireable, and which sometimes require compromise or compensation.
Maybe some special effects like delays or distortion or flanging or phasing or other "swirlies" or "telephone eq" or "old vinyl" on occaision, though I'm not generally a big fan of these things. I usually think they sound cheesy.
* - Spectrum Analysis
Almost never, unless I'm trying to isolate a specific problem and having a hard time with it. I can't remember the last time a spectral analyzer did me much good. Trying to "fix" a mix so it "looks right" almost invariably leads to a worse mix, in my experience.
* - RMS measurement
I check the meters frequently when compressing, not usually to achieve any specific target, but just as a sort of safety, to keep track of the changes I'm making. If I think I'm making minor tweaks, but meters tell me the levels are drastically different, or if I think that I'm just squishing the transients, but my meters tell me that whole passages are getting clamped, then I'm going to switch speakers, or turn it up, or turn it down, or give my ears a rest, or whatever.
For the finished track, I usually like this to end up somewhere around -18dB to -12dB as a practical compromise, but I'm not religious about it. If I expect the project to be mastered, then I won't sweat it much. If it's not likely to be mastered, then I'll sometimes throw a limiter across the main outs just to catch occaisional transients so I can bring it up around there for the 16bit final. I want my mixes to be heard, but I'm not a mastering engineer, and I don't try to be.
* - All-Digital or Digital/Analog
I like analog, but I can't afford much high-quality analog gear, and I don't have good enough equipment to keep going back-and-forth, so I'm pretty much all-digital at home.
* - Sonar views (ie mixing in Track View vs Console)
Pretty much always in track view.
* - using Compression (per track vs bus)
See effects.
** - what type of music do you record?
Mostly rock/pop-type stuff-- drums, bass, vox, guitars, keys, sometimes piano, percussion, strings, etc.
Cheers.
post edited by yep - 2005/03/28 01:42:47