There Is No Magic To Mixing

The more you mix the more you realize that there is no “magic” to getting a great track. Rather it’s the cumulative zffect of many simple, yet smart decisions. At our most recent Simply Recording Academy, we spent a whole day teaching guys how to mix a song from start to finish. When we wrapped up, I asked the students what was most surprising to them about the process. Their unanimous response? “We didn’t do anything crazy special to the tracks.” There was no “magic” happening.

Via Sarah Buckley Flickr

Our Need For Drastic Changes

There is a huge problem among us audio engineers. We want instant, drastic changes to occur. We like the idea of getting a good recording and then running our tracks through a few “magic plugins” or using a few “secret tricks” to transform our raw tracks into polished radio ready mixes. Of course that sounds silly when you write it out or say it aloud, but our mixing tendencies reveal this addiction to drastic changes.
 
Take how we EQ for example. We throw an EQ plugin on our dull sounding kick drum in hopes of resurrecting it to rock glory. We sweep around for pleasing frequencies, only to find them and boost the crud out of them! We’ll do an 8db boost or more. Whatever it takes. Why? Because we can hear an 8db boost. It’s easier to notice the change. And we like to hear change. A more subtle 3db boost (or even better, subtractive EQ on the bad frequencies) is  just not as satisfying.

The Power Of Many Small Tweaks

This tendency is perfectly understandable. But it is the mark of impatience, of fear, of lack of experience. The more you mix the more you’ll begin to trust the process. You’ll discover the power of making many small, subtle tweaks to get a big result. This will lead to mixes that sound more natural, musical, and retain the most clarity.

But it does take trust. You have to believe that every subtle move you make (the 3db cut here, the slight compression there, the smallest amount of saturation there) is adding up in a big way. Whenever I make a mixing move, I like to push till I hear what it’s doing and then dial it way back. I trust that it’s doing something good even if it is subtle and move on. Then an hour or two into the mix, if I bypass all the plugins I can instantly hear my mix fall apart. Wow, it was adding up all along.

The Magic Is In The Minuscule

If you were to send your raw recordings to a pro mixer, the mix he would send back would likely sound like magic had happened. I’m confident that the track would blow you away. Drastic difference right? But there was no one magic process he put your tracks through. Rather, the “magic” that comes through in the final mix is the result of so many good minuscule decisions.

The magic is in the experience a great mixer has (from doing this a lot, not “golden ears”) and can easily be broken down into simple, identifiable steps. This gives you and me hope. We too can make magic happen…if we’re patient enough.