Recording - September 2016 - 4

PUBLISHER: Thomas Hawley
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Brent Heintz

EDITORIAL

EDITOR: Mike Metlay
SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR: Lorenz Rychner
TECHNICAL EDITOR: Paul Vnuk Jr.
EDITOR AT LARGE: Beto Hale
COPY EDITOR: Diana Smethurst
MÚSICO PRO EDITOR: Fernando Curiel

No mixer is an island
One of the most important ideas you'll find in this issue on mixing is something
Bruce Kaphan lives by: "Everything you change, changes everything else." The
finely interconnected nature of mixing can be daunting to the novice engineer, and
many experienced mixers can find themselves getting in trouble as well.
The mix is where a lot of elements come together, not all of them musical. At the most
basic level, it can be tricky to bring together so many disparate tracks in a way that gels
them together and creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. In the DAW
Era, where you can keep every take, overdub a million times, and build virtual consoles
wider than your house, just keeping track of the bits and pieces can drive you insane.
If you're working alone, that level of complexity is plenty. But then there's the
practice of combining your work with that of another engineer. Sometimes you're
asking for tracks recorded elsewhere to be mixed in your facility; sometimes you're
providing tracks that a mix engineer has to make sense of. Other times, it's a collaborative effort with no clear line drawn between what you're doing and what the
other guy is doing... and somehow, in all of that, you have to keep track of not
one but two overstuffed DAWs full of tracks and takes and versions.
Think we're done? If we're lucky, that's as big as our problems get. However, the
mix engineer often has to do all that juggling while also bringing together the elements of the mix that aren't stored on disk: the contributing artists clamoring for
More Me, an outside producer who's demanding Everything Louder Than
Everything Else, a publicist who says Don't Bore Us Get To The Chorus...!
It's no wonder that professional mix engineers who can keep track of all that
stuff-while actually focusing on the music-don't exactly grow on trees.
There's no magic formula to get from here to there; every mixer has a different
way to get the job done. In this issue, we hear from successful engineers on everything from sharing tracks and long-distance collaboration to the painstaking process
of just getting ready to mix.
Before we begin, I'd like to add my voiceover to the track list. Here's some mixing advice that has helped me, and might help you too.
1. Just because you can launch 700 plug-ins without crashing your DAW, that
doesn't make it a good idea. That goes double for adding tracks to a mix. Set reasonable limits and stick to them; they'll improve your creativity, not stifle it.
2. Quality audio compressed down for the Internet will still sound better than crappy
audio compressed down for the Internet. Start excellent, finish excellent (or at least good).
3. If someone else enters your room, know beforehand if you're allowed-or
expected!-to listen to their opinions, advise them, overrule them, tell them to shut
up, and/or throw them out. (That line in This Is Spinal Tap about keeping a cricket
bat handy? So not a joke.)
4. Know your room, or your mixes will never be able to leave it.
5. Louder is not always better, but your traitorous brain wants you to think it is.
Set a monitoring SPL-a safe, sensible one-and stick to it.
6. When you set pan positions, do so with intent. Build a soundstage. A stack of
virtual instruments slathered in stereo effects isn't a mix... it's lasagna.
7. Don't forget that even today, there are plenty of occasions where people listen in mono.
8. You can't check a mix on too many listening systems. You can, however, check
a mix until you start second-guessing yourself. Know when to let go.
9. Protect your ears. Take frequent breaks and beware of fatigue.
10. If someone hasn't heard your mix, their advice on how to improve it might not
be that useful. (Yes, it happens... too often.)
Sensible rules, right? You'd be amazed at how many engineers can't or won't follow them, and then complain about their rotten sessions. Don't be like them, okay?
Enjoy the issue.

CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Vnuk Jr., Marc Urselli, Darwin Grosse,
Bruce Kaphan, Sean Shannon,
Michael Nickolas, Paul J. Stamler,
Marty Peters, Scott Dorsey
SOCIAL MEDIA
Brent Heintz, Paul Vnuk Jr.
ART & PRODUCTION

ART DIRECTOR: Scott Simmonds
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Colin Courtney
WEB GOALIE: Colin Courtney

PLAYBACK PLATINUM SERIES
Lorenz Rychner

EDITOR/PRODUCER:

CIRCULATION
Tiffany Sepe

CIRCULATION MANAGER:

ADVERTISING SALES AND MARKETING
DIRECTOR: Brent Heintz
CLASSIFIEDS MANAGER: Colin Courtney
ADMINISTRATION
Thomas Hawley

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EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

PRESIDENT: Thomas Hawley
VICE PRESIDENT: Brent Heintz

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RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2016