I said I was done, yet here I am. I am on this forum to learn. I thought that is what this forum is for.  So you shouldn't be suprised by my desire to learn. Shouldn't be suprised by me asking questions. I probably will "take a class" based on the feedback I have received in this thread.  I feel like there is this perception that if I learned anything while hiring some one to mix my music,  they would be cheated in some way or it is unfair to them.

I have looked into paid tutorials, however they are very pricey for just a couple of hours. This is a hobby, and I want to be better at it.  There is a community college that offers some courses, which a full year of courses is about the same price as I was quoted for a 2 hour tutorial. Unfortunatly takes a year, travel etc. But I would get 6 hours per week of learning plus lab time.     So I accept this reality.

Thanks all for your feedback!

You might want to look at some of the Lynda.com training videos because they have some excellent mixing tutorials. The ones by Brian Lee White are tremendous and I learned a lot from them. He also does a course in EQ and compression. They're based in Pro Tools but the info is of course applicable anywhere. I think it's around $25/30 a month to subscribe (you won't need the more expensive subscription with the practice files because they're Pro Tools anyway) and you can just cancel after a month. 

I usually don't allow the client in for most of a paid mix. I tend to encourage them to come in towards the end of say a day mix and I take notes and make some changes.

Unless it was a  paid tutorial type of thing then that would be a different scenario. Different cost more than likely and they can be there for the whole thing obviously. 

But people can only learn so much while watching a mix go down. It is maybe a bit like watching a great artist paint. You will learn some things but not how to paint. When I teach and conduct say a masterclass, the whole class can watch while I mix. There is usually a data projector so they can all see and all hear of course. I explain what I do but then let them loose on the same session in the lab afterwards etc.. They need to put the time into the mix learning process. They won't get it from just watching one mix. 

I'm siding with the Mix Engineer.

If you send your music out to be mixed, or master, all you should get back is a wav file.

How to mix a track, is a trade secret.  Many producers and engineers spend years, and years practicing this.   If they want to, "take their sound to grave," that's their right.  

Life, liberty and all that jazz...

If you didn't work it out beforehand, and give the guy a chance to tell you, "no," beforehand..  than that is your fault.

Linear Phase


I'm siding with the Mix Engineer.

If you send your music out to be mixed, or master, all you should get back is a wav file.

How to mix a track, is a trade secret.  Many producers and engineers spend years, and years practicing this.   If they want to, "take their sound to grave," that's their right.  

Life, liberty and all that jazz...

If you didn't work it out beforehand, and give the guy a chance to tell you, "no," beforehand..  than that is your fault.

I agree. The most you could ask for, IMO, is printed wavs of the separate tracks or stems, not the project which reveals every step. As mentioned already, if the engineer has used external hardware or plugins the client does not own, giving back the project would be useless, anyway. Well, of course the client could list the plugins that are missing, buy them, and then see the setting etc. That won't work with external hardware, obviously. The way I see it, giving your stuff to an outsider you expect the outsider to have gear that you don't have.
 
I had never thought about a dilemma of this kind, as I have never used/will never use the services of an outsider. Interesting.

Think of it this way - if you went into a studio 20 or even just 15 years ago, you would have walked out w/ the printed mix, maybe the individual raw tracks, and that's it. Automation, processing and most of which took place in real time - the actual mix - could not be taken out, for very obvious reasons.  


There's also a very simple reason why many mix engineer do not usually provide the mix.


If your engineer is using Pro Tools (and, whether we like it or not, the majority of them still are) and/or any hardware, he would have to bounce each individual track in the project in real time, in order to be able to provide you w/ a project file that would play as intended on any system, regardless of your the hardware you own. 

It's not just plugins.

What happens if the Mix Engineer runs several tracks and/or stems through his $10K Hardware chain? - I believe this is quite common practice in many studios.

You might be able to buy the plugins he used to gain an insight of what he did to your mix, but investing in the hardware he used simply won't be an option for the vast majority of us. a) even if you know what units he used b) what settings were used c) cost

Sharke has answered this the best in my opinion.

I work with architects etc who would draw plans for your house. You pay him to give you a finised product i.e. a paper printout of the plans that you can use.

It wouldnt make sense for him to give you the actual autocad computer files that you could (a) see how he draws particular images (b) or use his template for your own work. He's doing himself out of probably future business!

If I wanted those drawings which would would rarely be the case, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask him before the job is carried out. This applies to the mixing end to. He doesnt want you seeing his secrects (we are all the same in a way, those that are good that is!) and it can probably be time consuming to bounce down individual tracks etc also. Agree with them before hand is the general rule here, but as a business practise goes, I totally understand why they wouldnt want to give you their services secrets that they have worked so hard to learn and gain experience on over numbers of years (and pumped probably a lot money into).

Cian

I have some sympathy for the OP.  I once arranged, on behalf of my employer (local government), to get some historic documents photographed.  I specified that I wanted the negatives too, but I didn't deal with the photographer directly and the colleague who spoke to him forgot to pass on my request.  I tried to rectify this later but ended up with a copy made from the negatives rather than the actual negatives themselves.  I didn't keep my boss in the loop on this occasion, as he would have been furious about some outsider ending up in possession of the negatives, although his concern would have been the copyright issue, whereas my concern was the image quality being inferior on the copies (this was pre-digital).

sharke


I would hazard a guess that the mix engineer has certain methods and techniques that he or she considers "secret." It may be that they have a trademark sound and that they don't want anyone taking a look at how they did it. After all, you may be able to get enough clues about their methods and techniques and any "magic" that they use, that you would possibly consider having a crack at it yourself the next time instead of hiring him. 

As I was reading this I thought the same thing.