Mixing and Audio Project

Written by Brent Tallent

It’s always amazing to see how much time can go into recording an album project and how little time is required to mess the whole project up in the mix. You could have the best tracks, vocals, drums, everything you need for a successful record and then mess it up in the mix.

In this age of do it yourself, here are a few suggestions for those who are trying to learn how to mix. I’m assuming that your tracks are recorded in a somewhat healthy manner and you’re not needing a bunch of fixes, just some good advice on how to come up with a nice sound.

Ideally the first thing you should do is turn off the music for a second and ask yourself, what sort of space do I want this piece to be in. Should it be in a nightclub, a church, a symphony hall, a bedroom… The answer to this question shapes a lot of things in regard to compression, eq, delay and reverb.

For whatever reason, I had the hardest time learning what compression was doing. Everyone said I needed it so I would throw a compresser on the instrument and make sure the lights were moving a little. Most of the time, I didn’t like the sound if the lights were moving to much. But one day I was driving down the road with my son in the backseat and he shouted something that nearly left me driving the car off the road. Later that day, he shouted something and I noticed that it wasn’t abrasive at all. The difference was the distance. In the car he was maybe a foot away and later in the day he was across the front yard. I realized that air between us causes a natural compression. So the more air there is between us the greater the compression. Of course, the amplitude (or volume) decreases as well, but it’s my homemade theory that air compresses the sound.

By compressing the sound, I mean that it softens the volumes that would seem the sharpest when close up to the source of the sound. Some of my son’s words were louder than others in a way that seemed uncomfortable and abrasive when he was shouting right behind my head.

This experience reminded me that in general, we are wanting a sound that seems natural and not abrasive.

Compression in the mix helps simulate this natural sound. It also helps simulate some of the distance between the source sound and the person receiving the sound. Most people think of reverb and delay first when considering distance, but compression is the place to start.

When you’ve decided what room you’re in, you can decide on the distance between the sender of the sound and the receiver of the sound. The greater the distance, the greater the need for compression.

If we were to stand face to face having a conversation and gradually take steps away from each other walking backwards, which tones do you think would decrease first? The low tones or the high tones? The low tones always disappear first. You can really notice this while you’re recording vocals if a person is right on the mic and then takes a step or two backwards.

Once again, if you’ve defined your space, you can ask yourself how many low frequencies you want in your mix in various instruments. If you recorded on a decent mic, you’re going to have a lot of low end and for most genres of music, it is unnatural sounding.

The next tool in the toolbox is the delay. We’ve all been in large rooms where the sound of our voice seemed to trail on for a long time. And everyone thinks they sound better in the shower. In the large room, are voice leaves our mouth and then bounces off the nearest wall, but then it keeps going to the parallel wall which may be farther away and then to all the walls as it becomes more random. If you’re wanting that kind of sound then you’ll be wanting multiple delays – some long and some short.

(to be continued...)