Mixing Strategies of the Pros: 3 Top Engineers Take
you Inside the Mix
Abstract (summary)
Droney
gets the inside scoop from three seasoned professional mix engineers, Roger
Nichols, Tim Palmer, and Dave Pensado, on quality sound mixing. They say it is not only necessary to
have good equipment, but have the courage to experiment, be patient, and trust
your ear. There are several sidebars with the article, including, "Tips for Better Mixing," and "Pensado
Picks Plug-Ins for Harware."
Full Text
Mixing a song is like driving on a very busy and
confusing freeway. There are lots of choices and decisions to make, and an
incorrect one will send you off in the wrong direction. You're surrounded by
bad drivers (unfocused producers and egocentric musicians), who can definitely
delay your arrival. Bad monitors are like potholes, and distractions abound,
all threatening to destroy your concentration and set back your timetable.
Misleading signs are everywhere, and a moment's hesitation can lead to a nasty
accident. Getting to your destination will require a good road map; fast,
accurate decisions; and a will to win.
So how do
the seasoned vets of the mixing
world survive this chaos day in and day out? I corralled three of the best and
asked them. Of course they have great equipment, but take it from me: if Roger
Nichols, Tim Palmer, or Dave Pensado were working in your home studio, they
would still get a great mix.
Using their ideas will get you where you're going much faster, and the ride
will be a whole lot smoother.
Tim
Palmer is a modern-day scion of the British sound who works on, as he says,
"everything from Goth and metal to pop." His extensive credits
include U2, Tears for Fears, Pearl Jam, Ozzy Osbourne, Faith Hill, and David
Bowie, among many others. When we spoke, he'd just finished mixing a live album for singer-songwriter Jason Mraz and a
project for the subversively glam Kill Hannah, and was packing for a trip to
Finland to work with HiM.
The
perennially busy Dave "Hard Drive" Pensado is continually in demand
by R&B and pop royalty. If you watch music videos or listen to the radio,
you've likely heard some of his chart-topping mixes such as Pink's "Get the Party
Started," Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" and
"Dirrty," and the diva rendition of "Lady Marmalade" from
the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, which featured Christina Aguilera, Pink, Mya, and
Lil' Kim.
Pragmatic
and outspoken, Roger Nichols is an iconoclastic Grammy winner who's legendary
for his work with the pristine madness of Steely Dan (13 albums) as well as
John Denver (27 albums), Rickie Lee Jones, Take 6, Bela Fleck and the
Flecktones, and Roseanne Cash, among many others. On the day I visited him in
the studio, he was completing mixes
for a Rogers and Hammerstein tribute album that featured performances by such
artists as Phoebe Snow and Toots Thielman.
These
multiplatinum mixers have very different styles, but they share a lot of the
same philosophies. I found out how they approach their mixes, and the mental processes that enable them to
deal with all the inherent obstacles.
HAVE A
PLAN, STAN
All three
mixers were emphatic in stating that diving blindly into a mix, trusting that the muse will
lead you to inspiration, is a recipe for disaster. Before you begin, they
agreed, you must take the time to figure out what it is that makes the song
work best.
"Maybe
it's the vocal, maybe it's the lyrics, maybe it's the groove or a hook,"
says Palmer. "If it's the lyrics, you have to think from a vocal
perspective: is the music working to help the story to come across? In another
song, the key thing might be that amazing and memorable guitar lick. Or,
sometimes a song has a great groove. Then you've got to make the drums and bass
really solid so they drive the whole thing along. It's your job to figure out
what that special something is, and then carve your mix to bring it out. You must play to the strengths
of the recorded material."
"What's
important is that you have a concrete vision of where you want to go,"
Pensado agrees. "Then you'll find a way to get there. One of the main
differences between me and a lot of the producers I work with is that I have
the skill to do the mix in
a few hours. They might be able to do a similar mix, but it would take them at least a week. I think
the lesson there is to mix
for the forest and not the trees. When you start mixing for the trees, you paint yourself into a lot
of corners that it's difficult to get out of. You want to keep yourself on line
with the vision you started out with.
"Here's
something to think about. When the old radio shows of the '40s wanted to create
the sound of horse's hooves, they used a couple of coconut shells. A real horse
walking through the recording studio wouldn't have sounded as much like a horse
to the audience as the sounds that they created. That tells us that the
original sound you're given is not as important as the image you want to convey
in the mix.
"For
me, and I think for a lot of mixers, it's very visual: you tend to want to see
the horse, or, in the case of a great rock mix, the color of the guitar someone is playing. It actually
becomes like a painting. Some of the early Nirvana mixes, for example, were very impressionistic. There
are impressionistic mixes,
abstract mixes, realistic mixes, paint by numbers mixes, where you just fill in the
colors, and, of course, [laughs] Jackson Pollack mixes."
ROUGH
STUFF
Rough mixes are what you throw down at
the end of a session to give yourself a working road map. However, they often
take on a life of their own. Everyone has a horror story about the artist (ask
Bruce Springsteen's engineer about the trauma of Nebraska) or A&R person
who got attached to a seriously flawed rough mix and could never be convinced that there might be
a better way to go. In those cases, trying a different direction is just a
waste of time. But most people want to be open to creative possibilities and to
the hope that the mix will
take their song to a whole new level. So, isn't it best to start with a
completely clean slate? Well, no, not according to these pros.
"It's
very helpful to listen to the rough mixes
before beginning," says Palmer. "You can definitely get off on the
wrong foot if you go straight in and start pushing up faders without knowing
what your goal is. If you have engineering ears, when you push the bass drum up
you can tend to think, "That bass drum is dull, I need to do this and that
to it." But maybe, to make the song work well, the drums need to be dull
and not too defined. Here, if you didn't work out what was important before you
started, you can make all the wrong decisions. You get to the end and realize
that you've wasted your time. The song was much better with the low-fi
drums."
"In
a rough mix I'm listening
for the elements," says Pensado. "The most obvious question would be,
Are there a lot of effects like reverb and delay on the instruments, or was the
mix more up-front, dry, and
in-your-face? Where is the vocal relative to the track? Because if the A&R
guy has been listening to a loud-ass vocal for six months and you put it
"right," you could have some problems. The other thing I listen for
is - I hate to use the word, but - vibe. When you sit down at a console you're
sitting down at a blank canvas, and the first stroke you put on that canvas
doesn't come easy. The first thing you sit down to do is the hardest on any
creative project. The rough mix
gives you a starting spot."
Nichols
also finds roughs useful, but for different reasons. "I think the whole
process of making a record simply revolves around listening and paying
attention," he says. "That may sound obvious, but in my opinion, a
lot of people aren't doing it. For example, I get stuff to mix that other people have
recorded where, especially if it's a Pro Tools session, they automatically put
a limiter on every channel. Just because they can, or because they think they
should. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be an empty channel, but it's
got a limiter on it!
"Hopefully
they recorded in Pro Tools and they can send me the session file so I can take
the compressors off and start over. If I have the rough mixes, I'll listen to what they did first to
get the concept of what they were trying to do overall. Did they like the
vocals or the percussion loud? Then I'll start over, without their compression,
to get to that platform of the loud vocal or percussion, or whatever it was
that defined the whole feel of the song."
WHAT'S UP
FIRST?
Whether
you're laying out a 100-input console or mixing from a computer-based workstation, you've got to begin
with some piece of the song's instrumentation. Some engineers will throw up all
the faders right off the bat for a quick reference balance. Traditionally, many
other people begin with drums. Pensado tries to let the song determine his
first moves.
"For
some songs you might start with the rhythm track, others with vocals, some with
just the kick drum," he explains. "A good friend of mine who's a
mixer always starts with vocals. Sometimes I do too, especially if it's a group
like Take 6 or Boyz II Men that's known for their vocals. I'll bring the music
in around them. Something to keep in mind is that, unless you have an unlimited
amount of time - which you never do - with a heavily laden vocal track you
don't want to be working on your vocals at midnight. If I only have one day to
do the mix, and the vocals
are important, I'll get to the vocals early on, if not first. Then, when it's
11 o'clock at night, and I'm working more on instinct than creativity, I have
confidence that my vocals are sounding right."
Nichols
takes a holistic approach. "I've seen people start a mix by pushing up the kick drum
before they've listened to the song," he says. "They've never heard
the song, but they're trying to get a good sound on the kick. Then they work on
the snare, then the bass. When they finally turn up all the instruments, it
doesn't fit. Then they have to mess with this, mess with that, and they end up
wasting a lot of time.
"The
first thing I do is turn up all the faders and get a feel for what the song is
and what the mood is supposed to be. Then I'll get a rough sort of balance between
the instruments - this is how loud the strings should be, and the piano and the
vocal. Then, if I hear that the vocal kind of sounds muddy against something
else, I'll start equalizing a little bit, and fixing things so they meld
together. Then I'll go back and listen to the drums by themselves, and the
piano by itself, and refine that. I'll go around a couple of times in a big
circle and then, usually, it's close to done, except for vocal rides."
EVERYTHING
IN ITS PLACE
Mix engineers must routinely deal with multitudes of tracks, lots of good
parts, a few bad ones, and often a band full of musicians who all want their
individual parts turned louder. But beyond just finding the optimal levels, the
engineer must figure out the best stereo placement, fitting each piece into the
overall puzzle. The task is complicated by the fact that vocals, keyboards, and
guitars often use a lot of the same frequencies to assert their presence. So
when you're facing that daunting wall of midrange, skillful placement along
with judicious EQ and filtering will really pay off.
"Everything
can't be in the middle," says Nichols, a survivor of major track wars.
"Unless you want to make a mono record, which is okay. But that's another
challenge. If there are two things going on during the song - say, both a
guitar and piano play throughout - then my first inclination is that maybe the
piano should be a little bit on one side. Even though it's in stereo. So I'd
cheat it over to one side, and I'd cheat the acoustic guitar over to the other
side, so you can sort of hear what they're doing all the way through. They're
the bed you're going to use.
"Then
I'll probably put the bass in the middle. But not 100 percent of the time!
Sometimes whatever the bass is doing gets muddy because of what the piano is
doing. Then, maybe the piano should be a little to the right, and maybe the
bass should be off center just a little bit. If that's a mistake, you put it
back in the middle. You're always trying little refinements of placement to
ensure that everything adds to the song instead of subtracting from it."
"It's
not just about creating a nice balance and making everything sound good,"
says Palmer. "Maybe some things shouldn't sound so good; maybe something
should be way out of balance. When you're first learning, because you have
pride in your work, you tend to think of every sound as an individual item that
should sound great. But as you move along through the years, you realize that
sometimes, for one thing to sound good, something else may have to
suffer."
So too
much use of the solo button can steer you wrong? "That's right,"
Palmer says. "You have to look at the overall picture. It's not always
about perfection. Sometimes you can take a part out of context, and it's not so
good, but within context it's amazing.
"You
listen to a sound and think "That bass playing is rough, I don't know
about that." Then you put it with the drummer and it sounds great. Here's
your plan helping again. Because if you go in and start fixing that bass up,
putting it in time with the bass drum and lining it all up, you may have just
ruined the whole groove."
IN AND
OUT OF TUNE
That
leads us to a theory put forth by Palmer. On the great old records we all seem
to love, the bands were tuning mostly by ear, especially during the basic
tracks. Everyone may have started out referenced to a tuner, but as the
overdubs progressed, things shifted back and forth a bit. Tuning was a bit more
about taste than exact science.
"Think
of the perfect tuning in a song as a thin, straight line," he says.
"In those days, after the basic track was laid down and a few overdubs
were added, some of the tuning may actually had drifted, but not to the
detriment of the sound. In reality, some of the parts may be a little sharp
(above the line of perfect tuning) and some players may be a little flat (below
the line of the perfect pitch). The tuning line is now a lot wider and thicker,
and so is the sound!
"When
the vocalist went to sing, he obviously aimed for the center of the pitch, but had
a lot of space either way. He could go a little sharp with emotion, or flat a
touch, and it still sounded good; it could actually add to the performance.
Now, with each overdub everybody retunes. You get an overall pitch
"line" that's very thin, and that doesn't give much room for
expression. When the singer performs, it's not as much fun! If he goes a little
sharp, it doesn't sound good anymore. So what do you do? You tune him or her as
well. They join the line and now the whole thing sounds small!
Pensado
thinks that although pitch correction can be helpful, it's often overused and
can detract from the feel of a song. "A great example is blues," he
points out. "When you go up a minor third, sometimes it sounds better when
you don't quite get there. Violin players, when they're going up the scale,
they play a different interval between B and C then when they're coming down
the scale. So the human ear readily accepts imperfections in pitch, and it's a
very, very personal thing how you interpret it." He counsels a selective
approach to pitch correction, rather than just strapping it across an entire
track: "Find those notes that just could never be resung [or replayed]
again, correct those, and move on."
Rhythmic
feel can also be damaged by too much correction, says Palmer. "If you chop
the whole thing up into enough pieces so it's all bang on a grid, the ear
doesn't hear any natural flamming of instruments any more. In many cases a bit
of that flamming makes the music sound bigger and more appealing. With a great
band - Led Zeppelin or whoever - you have the drummer who might play really
laid back, the bass player who's slightly ahead of the beat, and the guitar
player who's slightly behind. When they hit that big chord together, you've got
"one, two, three," all hitting your ear at slightly different times.
It sounds huge, with just enough natural offset [see Fig. 1]. Think of an
orchestra; one of the main reasons it sounds good is because they are a bit out
of time and out of tune!"
LESS CAN
BE MORE
Most
recordists know that the more processing you use, the more phase shift and
artifacts you introduce into your signal path, and this is generally
detrimental to a good sound. Yet it's so tempting, and so easy, to reach for
those powerful knobs and that brand new plug-in. Nichols deals with this
conundrum by taking a subtractive approach.
"Say
I'm working on a vocal," he says. "Mainly I want it to sound the way
the singer really sounds in the room. The way I do that - instead of trying to
add something to make it better - is to figure out what's bad and get rid of
it. If you start out saying, "This needs to be a little brighter, and that
needs to have more bottom end," pretty soon you've got EQ adding 57 little
things, when maybe all it really needed was for you to find the bad part and
remove it. All of a sudden it's better because you took out the sound of the
room where the vocal was done that wasn't a very good room. Or you took out
some woofy part of the piano, where you had to put the lid on a short stick
with a blanket over it. If you look for the bad thing and remove it, you're
about 60 percent there. Then you can say, "Oh, a little brighter here
"
Palmer
agrees. "It's very easy to over EQ," he says, "it can be better
to look for frequencies that are unnecessary and remove them. If I'm looking
for a frequency to remove, I'll boost the EQ radically and sweep it until the
offending frequency sticks out like a sore thumb. Then I know exactly where to
cut."
"You
should never put something on the mix
because you perceive that's what you're supposed to do," says Pensado.
"For instance, If I'm doing a hip-hop mix I probably won't put any compression across the stereo mix. If I'm doing a "Lady
Marmalade," I've got it crunched. Why? I knew it was going to be a pop
song getting a lot of airplay on a wide variety of stations, and I wanted my
compressor to be controlling things more than the radio's.
"But
say on "Beautiful," by Christina Aguilera, there's nothing on the
stereo bus - no EQ or compression. We wanted an old-fashioned sound. There are
some songs I mix, say on
Pink's "Get the Party Started," where I wanted you to hear the mix. I wanted it to be part of
what was hooky about the song. But with "Beautiful," if anything at
all made you think of anything besides Christina's voice, it was a failure. So
I "anti-mixed" it. I really worked on subtracting my personality from
the mix."
DON'T
DISTURB THE GROOVE
"Groove
is a very personal experience," says Palmer. "It's really the amount
of "out of timeness" that you personally enjoy and accept. Sometimes
I'm working with an artist who will constantly want to replay a part because
they feel it is out of time, while I'll be telling them it sounds great. Their
personal reference point is just different.
"It's
important to keep as much of that feel as you can. If I have to move a few
parts around during a mix I
will move them by ear. Remember, it's important to listen to music rather than
look at it. A lot of people now just look at the screen and make decisions
based on that. But if you listen, it might sound good even if it looks wrong.
Using the screen can, of course, be helpful at times, especially if you're wondering
why something's not working. It's convenient to have a look around and see
what's going on. But if you're finding problems before you've heard them,
that's when you get into trouble."
"To
me, the groove is the mood of everything taken as a whole," says Nichols.
"The internal rhythms, the delay on the guitar, the little space between
the vocal and the reverb, the way the kick and bass connect, the sustain of the
acoustic piano, the bounce of the congas. It's all the little nuances that make
everything work together.
"There
doesn't have to be a lot of stuff on the record, it just has to feel right. I
have gone into the studio intent on doing overdubs on a song, and when I put up
the mix and listened, it
didn't need anything else. We'd try anyway, but at the end of the day, we
didn't use anything we added. The song was done, but we hadn't realized
it."
THE
EFFECT OF EFFECTS
"I
like to find one reverb and use it as a main reverb for the whole song, sending
everything to it a little bit," says Nichols. "Then for the vocal,
I'll use three or four different reverbs, splitting out the vocal to different
tracks [or channels]. When the vocal gets louder, the quality of the reverb
changes because it's sending to a different unit. When the vocal is soft, maybe
the reverb has a long decay time so it's nice and moody and has all this big
ambience. That long, three-second reverb doesn't work when the person's
screaming into it; it will be two choruses before the thing finally decays.
"Taking
the vocal apart and splitting it out to different tracks allows you to give the
loud parts of the vocal a completely different reverb send and completely
different compressor or EQ settings than the soft parts [see Fig. 2]. Of
course, those things are easy to do using Pro Tools. You can clone tracks so
you've got two vocals or two snare drums - one for the cross stick, another
when he's playing the snare - and make them different. Doing those things will
really make the mix
easier."
Pensado
says, "I look at reverb in two ways. First, it's a front to rear panner.
If you want something to go to the back of the mix, put reverb on it. This is the most fundamental
psychoacoustic trick we have. Of course, sometimes I use reverb just because it
sounds good. Who cares if it sounds like it's in a sewer pipe, as long as it's
a great effect?
"I
don't like to pan my effects returns hard left and right. I'd rather get
identical units or plug-ins, then pan one hard left (both returns) and the
other hard right (both returns). Select the same, or similar, programs on each
unit and tweak them so they're slightly different.
"I
like to use 30 to 40 delays, from a 128th note to a half note, panned all over
the place. I'll intentionally make some of the delays out of time, creating
what I call asymmetrical delays. Just move them until they sound good. Plug-ins
are perfect for this, because some have 6 to 12 delays built in."
Some
engineers like to precisely time their delays to multiples or fractions of a
song's tempo. Palmer says, "I do that if I'm going for a specific effect,
but often I think delays are better when they're out of time and create a bit
of rubbing. Especially with music being so precise these days, it can be good
to loosen things up a bit and relax them. Maybe a delay that's bang on will
just disappear into the snare drum sound, and you'll find yourself turning it
up louder and louder to hear it! If it's a little bit out of time, you'll get a
bit of rub and you might hear it more clearly.
"Of
course," he notes, "all this is specific to each mix and artist. When I work with
U2 they don't have these tuning or timing issues. They play as a band and don't
need to be loosened up. They don't cut things up in Pro Tools and they don't
overtune. With U2, maybe I want the delays sitting just right in the pocket
because there's already enough movement within their instruments."
THE CASE
FOR DYNAMICS
"The
current trend for overcompression doesn't do it for me," says Palmer.
"It makes things sound very, very loud, but also very undynamic and small.
Lately, even the mastering engineers seem to be bored with the cheap thrill of
overcompression! If you're mastering specifically for the radio, you obviously
have to make sure your songs aren't going to dip compared to your competition.
But a commercial CD for home use should have some depth. Lately every CD is
prepared as though it's on the radio already. I want my CDs to sound more
dynamic and have more variation in sound and level."
"Usually
by the second verse, if you've got a drum machine at pretty constant volume or
parts that aren't dynamic, you're not noticing them anymore," says
Pensado. "But if you just kind of yank a drum up here, or something up
there, your ear finds it and you'll remember it for another 32 bars or so.
Something I've learned from the visual analogy is that it's okay to make things
loud for one or two bars, then tuck them back where they should be. It's okay
to take the kick drum and at the beginning of every eight bars turn it up 8 dB.
Make it stupid loud. The engineers might say, "Ooh, did you hear
that?", but 99.9 percent of the people who buy the record are going to go,
"That's cool!""
"It
takes me about an hour, but sometimes I'll put every kick and snare at the
level I feel it would have been if it was played live [see Fig. 3]. And almost invariably, you feel
like the drums should come down a bit at the second verse. And then there's the
kind of bridge that should subtract energy from a song, so that when you hear
that last chorus come in on the radio, you're going to drive straight to Tower
to buy the record."
THE FINAL
FRONTIER
Should
you find one set of monitors you like and stick with it, or listen on every
different speaker you can find? Sanity is elusive in the domain of
psychoacoustics, especially when you've been at the mix for a while.
"I
switch between several different speakers for different purposes," says
Palmer. "If you're trying to get a tight sound with the bass and the bass
drum knitting together, you might put it on the big speakers where you'll get
the best bass response, then crank it up a bit to make sure it's solid. When
you're balancing vocal levels and you're thinking about what the emotions of
the music are and if they speak well, you're probably going to be listening
more quietly. At that point you don't need to be blown away by fidelity, you're
just listening for a balance you think is correct. I'll usually do that on a
Yamaha NS10 or an Auratone - whatever I have that's fairly quiet. For fidelity
I'd go more for my Genelecs or the big speakers. And of course my car is a good
point of reference for me because I listen to a lot of music there."
"If
everybody in the world had the same speakers and power amps I could do a mix in five minutes," laughs
Pensado. "To be really good at understanding what happens to your mix at different volumes and on
different speakers, you need to listen in a variety of environments. I use four
sets. I love the old Yamaha NS10s, I've got a set of Augsbergers that are dual
15 TADs with a TAD driver, I've got a set of old Auratones that are on their
last legs, and I use the little mono 3-inch speaker that comes with the
1/2-inch Studer machine. Even after all that, I'll try to listen in the car, or
go to the lounge and listen on a boom box. I also have a little
college-radio-station transmitter I've put together so I can send FM out to the
radio in my car from the control room - under FCC limits, I want to point out.
I also really like it when we have the budget for clients to take the mix to their home studio to check
it out."
Okay,
lots of different speakers. But what exactly are you listening for? "A lot
of the music I do requires the kick drum to be as important as the guitars are
in a Led Zeppelin song," says Pensado. "If you're listening on the
big speakers, you can be thinking "Man, it's Grammy time!" then you
go down to the Auratones and there's nothing there. That tells you the
frequencies below 100 cycles are right where they need to be, but the
frequencies above there are pretty much nonexistent. This gets into the area of
psychoacoustics. You're not ever going to get the low end from the kick drum to
come out of the set of Auratones. But what you can get are the frequencies that
make you think you're hearing the lower frequencies. That could be anything
from 200 to 3K.
"A
lot of times you'll add top end to a kick just so your ear can find it. You're
not making it louder or fatter, but the perception is that the kick drum got
louder. Actually, it just gave your ear the opportunity to find it. Think of it
this way: if you have a power amp on your system, it takes several hundred
watts to move the low end, but only 20 or 30 watts to move the high end. Your
ear hears high frequencies much more efficiently than low frequencies; what
you're doing is playing on the ear's efficiency to find the low end.
"Here's
an example. Put on the mix
and listen to the level of the vocals relative to the music. Pick a song that
has a lot of full-range frequency, not one that's thin on the bottom, and when
you go to the smaller speakers it's going to sound like the vocals are too
loud. When you go to the big speakers they'll sound like they're not loud
enough. What's right is probably to have your vocals a little loud on the
smaller system and a little - just a little - more difficult to hear on the
bigger system.
"As
an engineer," continues Pensado, "if I make the decision that most of
the people who will buy this song are going to be blasting this as loud as they
can in a car, I won't pan things quite as wide. And I'll use less reverb,
because they're going to be getting the reverb from their environment. It's
like when you go to a big dance club where the music is reverberating off the
walls; if you have too much reverb on your mix you're in serious trouble. That's why we do dance mixes pretty dry, except for
maybe an effect on something you want to sound big and wide and nebulous."
ARTIST
RELATIONS
Mix engineers face more than just technical challenges; they also have to
learn to deal successfully with their clients. "Sometimes a band wants
something you think is crazy, just nuts," says Palmer. "Then you try
it, and it's pretty good! You can't let your ego get in the way. On the other
hand, I recently met with a major artist who wanted to do things in a way I
didn't think was right for the project. I thought about compromising and doing
things his way. But ultimately I realized I would be very unhappy. I told him I
wasn't the right person and left. If you don't enjoy your job, you're not going
to do it very well."
"One
of the neat things about success," says Pensado, "is that the people
who are telling you what to do have probably been successful. That helps with
trust, and that bond you definitely need to have between an engineer and a
client. But I believe conflict is always a necessary ingredient in creativity.
[Laughs.] Show me a totally happy environment and I'll show you some crap
coming out of it! It's not coincidence that Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and
Richards weren't speaking half the time. Or that Van Gogh cut off his ear!
"I
like it when a client disagrees with me and can back it up," continues
Pensado. It makes you do things and think about things differently than you
have in the past. Most people you work with have great suggestions; sometimes
they don't know how to articulate them. I'm thinking Fahrenheit and they're
describing in centigrade. If I can get the formula that can translate that,
we're doing some great stuff.
"I
think the ideal balance of working with a client is to give them what they
want, but 15 or 20 percent more. With some clients, maybe only 10 percent. Then
they're going to feel, and rightly so, that when they're coming to you, they're
getting new stuff. Not just what they want, but also a sound that's special and
really works. It's a fine balance. You've got to understand your client
psychologically to know just how far ahead of the curve you want to take them.
Rarely is it more than 20 per cent. Give them more than that, and they'll leave
studio thinking you're kind of cool and hip, but a week later you'll probably
recall it and get all that stuff out of there. Eventually they're going to take
you back in the direction of the rough mix because that's their comfort zone."
KNOW WHEN
TO STOP
"I
generally work from my instincts and have a feel for when the mix is right," says Palmer.
"Some mixers will work for 12 hours, then pull the faders down and start
again. I've never been like that, I would rather work fast and then have
another go later if I am not happy. Also, I find it helps to keep the hours
sensible, and to attempt to keep some distance. Taking breaks instead of
spending hours on end in the control room helps to keep perspective. Listening
through a door or in your car is useful. I sometimes take a break and put the
TV on, check out some MTV. [Laughs.] There's always the chance you might hear
something you can use. But seriously, keeping objectivity is half the battle.
"I
take a mix up to a point
where I think it sounds pretty good, but I don't push it too far," Palmer
continues. "Then I go home - hopefully not too late at night! In the
morning, the first thing I do is listen to the mix and make my notes with a fresh brain and fresh
ears. Morning is probably when I'm the most critical. I'll get a list - whether
it be 2 or 20 things to do - and go straight to the studio and do those changes
right off. Then I'm pretty much ready for the band to arrive.
"I
don't want to be part of this factory-line sensibility that some modern-day
mixers employ: "Get it done; next!" Occasionally, though, it can turn
out really well to have to work fast. When you don't get too much time to
overthink, you're working purely off your instincts, which can be good. On the
Tin Machine records - that people either love or despise - I would start to mix and David Bowie would often
say, "I love the rough mix,
don't spend too long and take the edge away." I'd tell him there were a
few things I could get better, so he'd give me one hour to mix. That was it ! You really had
to work from your gut. That's all well and good, but when you're unhappy, and
the budget doesn't allow for a second look it's very frustrating!"
"I
like systems with total reset, so that when you open it up it's exactly where
you left off," says Nichols. "Especially when you're working on a
whole album. When you don't want to hear the first tune anymore you can save it
and go to something fresh. You can get it 50 percent done, then go through the
whole ten tunes and do the same, then go back. That saves you from getting
tired. You don't want to spend four hours riding the vocal, then you ride
something else and now the vocals are all too low.
"You
bring the vocal up more, and some of the rides you did no longer mean anything.
That's chasing your tail. A break and going to another song can really help.
When are you done? When there's nothing left to do! If you can listen to the
whole record, and not just focus on one thing, if nothing bothers you, and you
can hear everything, then it's okay. That's it."
On the
other hand, Pensado says, "I have a saying that you're never through with
a mix, you just run out of
time. I'm not sure that you're ever really done. I don't get to do a lot of
recall mixes, but unlike a
lot of engineers, I actually like doing them. Even when you've nailed a mix, when you hear it again
you'll have other ideas. That's just a sign that you're growing. A mix is never really finished, but
it is definitely possible to overmix something. There's a point in the process
where another two hours can very easily make it worse. You have to look for
those signs. You ask yourself, "Was I more excited about this an hour or
two ago?" The minute you start feeling it's getting worse instead of
better, you were done an hour ago and you should probably backtrack!"
PARTING
SHOTS
Finding
your own voice is one of the most important and rewarding things you can do, in
life and in mixing. But in
our increasingly homogenized world, it can be a risky business that requires
hard work and a high level of self-awareness. On the other hand, great art, and
lasting records, don't come without pushing the envelope.
"I
think these days a lot of people are affected by marketing when it comes to how
they're working," says Nichols. "It's about what equipment they're
using, and what somebody else who's successful did with that equipment. They're
not really paying attention to the specifics of what they themselves are
recording or mixing. They
think they have to use a certain drum machine, or a certain microphone, or a
certain compressor that's set in a certain way because that's what they've
heard they're supposed to do. To me, what's important is to experiment, some
little bit, every single time so that you can come up with your own
rules."
"If
people in our industry thought more about the correlation between the visual
elements of mixing and the
audio part, we could take mixing
to another level," says Pensado. "We have to step up the music to
where a kid wants to buy our record as opposed to a piece of software or a
PlayStation game or any of the other temptations that are out there for 20 or
40 bucks. Obviously we all would like to have better music, but those of us who
do what I do can contribute a little bit by making the music we have better.
That doesn't require replaying the parts, it requires understanding what the
original vision of the producer or the writer or the artist was and trying to
piggyback your vision onto that rather than having a contradictory vision, or
none."
Palmer
states simply: "The song is, and will always be, king. It's funny that as
we increase sampling rates and bit rates in the recording side of music, the
public is moving the other way and downgrading from CD to MP3. They are showing
us they really care about the songs, artists, and performances. That is not an
excuse for poor production and mixing,
but a reminder about what makes someone want to own a piece of music. Sometimes
I feel we miss the point. Don't forget that the best cure for a bad mix is a great song!"
Maureen
Droney, whose engineering credits include projects for Carlos Santana, George
Benson, John Hiatt, Whitney Houston, and Aretha Franklin, among many others, is
the Los Angeles editor for Mix.
TIPS FOR BETTER MIXING
Before
you start moving faders and twisting knobs, have a clear vision of what you
want the mix to sound like
when it's finished, and stick to it.
There's
no hard-and-fast rule as to whether to build your mix one element at a time or start with all tracks
up. Be flexible, and let the needs of the song determine your approach. Avoid
doing detailed tweaking on individual elements until you have a good idea of
what the rest of the tracks sound like.
Don't
dehumanize your tracks with overly aggressive pitch and time correction.
Remember that subtle irregularities in rhythm and pitch can often make the
overall song sound better.
When
equalizing or adding an effect to a particular element, always take into
account how that change will affect the mix as a whole.
Too much
processing can negatively affect the overall sonic quality, so be judicious.
When equalizing, subtract rather than add when possible.
Preserve
your dynamics. Don't go overboard with compression. When working with
programmed tracks, add in enough dynamics to make the song exciting.
Monitor
on a variety of speakers at various levels, and try to check your mix in different acoustic
environments.
Don't
stay on one mix for too
long. Take breaks, and even switch to a different song for awhile if possible.
When you come back to a song after a prolonged break, listen through it and
create a list of the changes you want to make.
Don't
feel constrained by convention. Experiment when you can, and if it sounds good,
do it!
Q&A:
USING CDS FOR REFERENCE
Do you
reference your mixes
against finished CDs during the mixing
process?
Palmer:
If I'm not familiar with a room, yes, I'll listen to some other things I've
done."
Nichols:
If I am in a studio I have not mixed in before, I will play back something I
did somewhere else that came out well so I can hear what the speakers are doing
in the room. Once I have it scoped out I use what I heard to modify the mixes so they match when I leave.
I do not play the CD any more during the mixing.
Part of
it is the Meyer HD-1 speakers I use. I either rent or bring my own. I have used
the HD-1s on everything I've done since 1989. Most studios where I have used
them now own a pair so I don't have to cart mine.
Pensado:
I like to reference to CDs, and I like for my clients to hear it. It gives
people in the room who aren't accustomed to my monitors a frame of reference.
Actually, I've been told that I listen to way more music during my mix process than most engineers.
I always have a music television station on and a couple of CDs in the player.
I'll just randomly hit it. If what's in there sounds better than what I'm
doing, I keep working. If it doesn't, I'll print!
Q&A:
LEAVING ROOM FOR MASTERING
How much
room should you leave for the mastering engineer to add the finishing touches?
Palmer: I
do like to leave some room for mastering. I don't like to kill the mix by adding too much
compression too soon. I'd rather keep an album sounding as dynamic as possible.
If more compression is needed for the radio, the mastering guy can squish it a
little further.
Pensado:
I'm fortunate that I work with the same few mastering engineers I trust, and I
prefer not to put too much compression on my stereo bus if I know they are
going to work on it. These guys are great; they can do it as good or better,
and I've saved myself going through those electronics, which they're going to
go through anyway.
Nichols:
Because I actually have a mastering business and have been mastering since the
mid-"70s at ABC/Dunhill, I know when to quit! The monitors and the
monitoring environment are the important things. If you are not exactly sure about
how things are going to translate, then give yourself a little more room for
mastering. If the monitors and environment are perfect, you can cut it a lot
closer.
You can
also leave yourself flexibility with alternate mixes. In Nashville, they usually print about 20
versions of each mix. Vocal
+1 [dB], vocal -1, backgrounds +1, vocal 0, backgrounds -1 - all the
permutations you can imagine. When the songs get to mastering, if the vocal is
too low in the chorus, they just edit in the version with the vocal up louder.
Q&A:
DEVELOPING YOUR EARS
How did
you develop the ability to know what a good mix should sound like?
Palmer:
You're not likely to have it right out of the box. It's something that you
develop over time, something that you definitely get better at. When I first
started out as an assistant, I'd see people spending five or six hours
equalizing bass drums and think, "How can they tell anything after all
that?" But the longer I've done it, the easier it's become. You have a lot
more clarity because you know where you've made all your previous mistakes.
Nichols:
I don't call myself a musician, but I'm a guitar owner, and a keyboard owner,
and I can muddle through. That ability has helped me to know what I liked, and
why. Knowing what to do came partly from listening to the balance of
instruments and the timbre of their sounds. The other part of it is a feel
thing, as basic as when you hear a song and something in you goes "Wow,
that's cool!" When I'm mixing,
I'm always trying to create - besides a sound - something emotional. The way
the bass sustains under a piano lick, or the way some other parts happen
together
that's
what gives the song its mood. To me, that's at least as important as getting an
individual guitar to sound good.
Pensado:
If you're a good mixer, you mostly have the canvas in your head when you start.
It's just a question of visualizing the sound as you work. That sound comes
from the records you heard as a child, the experiences in your life, all sorts
of things that give you references. Most of us who do this rely heavily on
those references. That's why it's so important to be open to new music, new
things, and to force yourself to change your references. It's incredibly easy
to have them stay solidified, and that's not good.
Word
count: 8088
Indexing (details)
Narrow
subject
Audio
equipment, Audio
production, Mixers
(Audio Equipment), Sound
Engineers, Advice, Quality, Recording
Engineers, Recording
Equipment (Audio), Recording
Techniques, Mixing
(Recording)
Broad
subject
Naxos
composer
Nichols,
Roger
People
Title
Mixing Strategies of the Pros: 3 Top Engineers Take you
Inside the Mix
Author
Publication
title
Volume
Issue
Pages
42-44,
46, 48-50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60-61
Publication
year
2004
Publication
date
Apr 2004
Year
2004
Publisher
NewBay
Media, LLC
Place of
publication
New York,
N.Y.
Country
of publication
United
States
Journal
subject
ISSN
0884-4720
Source
type
Magazines
Language
of publication
English
Document
type
Interview
Document
feature
Tables;Photographs;Diagrams
ProQuest
document ID
1400774
Document
URL
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1400774?accountid=144516
Last
updated
2012-09-17
Database
International
Index to Music Periodicals Full Text
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