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Originally Posted by Call_me_Switters  Engineering is all about making decisions. Also every experience engineer would agree that grabbing the right sound in the source is the best thing.So...if you know what you do and you trust your experience and your decisions,you compress an Eq at the source.You get a happy singer that hears in his cue mix a great sound and gains confidence and also a great signal ready to mix. If you are afraid or you are not sure leave it for later.But beware!If all decisions are left later it is possible to lose focus and drown in the sea of unlimited options.And this is not good for the vibe of the creation.Go ask CLA |
I totally get your point. The problem for me, and others with less experience, is that I don't know what I want until I can hear all the tracks after recording. I have a basic idea what I am shooting for, of course. But I find that because I don't have a lot of experience yet, I don't know what I am going to get until I already have it recorded. Then, I can notice what really worked in the recording, and what didn't work so well. Then I usually go about highlighting things in the direction of the track's strengths, and downplaying things that didn't seem to get recorded all that well. I really have no idea if, for example, if I need to boost or cut at 500Hz on a guitar or vocal track until I hear it mixed. I have no idea if I am going to want 2:1 compression on an entire guitar track, or if there will be spots in the song where I need to automate the compressor down to 1:1 for a brief section. Until I hear it , how would I know?
There isn't any way for me to know how it is going to turn out until I hear the tracks mixed together somewhat, because that would be a prediction. And a prediction requires a lot of experience knowing how things generally go.
I think what you suggest makes good sense after gaining a lot of experience. But to get all that experience, I think I have to do everything at mixdown until I start seeing certain things repeating from mix to mix. Then, I can start doing things during tracking to compensate.
Make sense to you or not?