What a difference a mix makes

[Jeroleen]

In recent years musicians have had to add at least some degree of engineering skills to their bag of tricks as a result of the home recording/computer revolutions has occurred and taken hold.

From what I can tell, many of those that frequent sites such as this are either professional or aspiring engineers. Though I believe many of those are also musicians, the emphasis is on engineering.

This is significant because I am a musicians first and foremost. I have gotten into the home studio thing, I have a fairly nice set-up, certainly enough for my purposes, and I have been working at it for the past three years.

Recently, I went back to some of the earlier work and started remixing since I now have some better tools and more skill.

I discovered how truly important a mix can be. At first, I could not understand why my tracks sounded so awful. I got the sounds down, played the parts but, after trying to mix and listening to the results, I though I had somehow lost the ability to make music.

I now realize that it is important for me to have a clear understanding of the limits of my ability and equipment and when necessary, consult a professional engineer for mixing or critical tracking or whatever might be necessary.

I bring this up because I also realized that there is only so much time and energy I can and will devote to developing engineering skills. At some point it tends to interfere with progress as a musician and composer.

I have heard much about the fact that the home studio revolution ahs cut into the profits of studios and engineers and it may have to a degree but, ultimately there will always be a need for great studios that are fully equipped and highly skilled engineers.

The real question now is at what point does one decide to bring a project into a professional studio. Should this be part of the initial plan and if so, what does this mean for formats, sampling rates, plug-ins, host programs and the whole DAW question.

I would like to hear from some of the pro engineers about what they would like to see and hear when they are brought a project already in process. What are some of the do's and don'ts.

Finally, I have thought about this ever since I re-mixed one of the first self-recorded tracks I did and discovered that it was not as bad as I thought.

Thank you in advance for any thoughtful replies.

[kittonian]

Most engineers, myself included, would like to either record every single track themselves and then do the mix OR if that's just not possible they would like to have hi res 24bit 96k files with no edits using great pre's and converters (little to no processing (i.e. eq, compression, etc.) on any of the tracks) in either WAV, SDII, or AIFF format. You might want to let the mix engineer choose how to create the comp tracks as well (i.e. you record 6 passes of the lead vocal and then let the mix engineer go through each line to choose what lines are the best ones - then you combine those edits into one track which is called a comp track).

Giving the files to the engineer this way allows for the greatest flexibility for the mix engineer to do his job without having to try and salvage tracks that a musician "thought" were perfect but now just don't seem to fit into the mix like they should.

You'd be surprised at how often you solo out a track in a mix and alone that track sounds terrible BUT drop it into the mix and it sits perfectly and adds to the ambience of the overall vision.

Also, make sure that when you have someone mix a song you allow at least a day and half of time to complete the work. I can't tell you what a benefit it will be to you if you plan to book the studio properly because if you spend the first day mixing, have everyone take a CD home with them and make notes during the night, and then come back the next day and make all the corrections, you will be much happier in the end.