Chapter 1: Music and Mixing
Music-An Extremely Short Introduction
-The music unfolds itself with perfect freedom; but it is so heart-searching because we know all the time it runs along the quickest nerves of our life, our struggles and aspirations and sufferings and exaltations *Michael Allis
-Today, music rarely fails to produce emotions
-As mixing engineers, one of our prime functions/responsibilities is to help deliver the emotional context of a musical piece
-When approaching a mix, ask:
%What is this song about?
%What emotions are involved?
%What message is the artist trying to convey?
%How can I support/enhance the vibe?
%How should the listener respond to this piece of music?
-A mix can and should enhance the music, its mood, the emotions it entails, and the response it should incite
The Role and Importance of the Mix
-Mixing: A process in which multitrack material - whether recorded, sampled, or synthesized - is balanced, treated, and combined into a multichannel format, most commonly two-channel stereo
%A mix is a sonic presentation of emotions, creative ideas, and performance
-Everyone appreciates good sonic quality (cellphones, hi-fi systems for example)
-Live performances are final for music, equipment
-The mix plays an important role in an album's or track's success
-A mix is as good as its song
The Perfect Mix
-The excerpt set (20 seconds from different songs, different albums)
Chapter 2: Some Axioms and Other Gems
Louder Perceived Better
-Harvey Fletcher and W. A. Munson of Bell Labs (1993)
%Played a test frequency followed by a reference tone of 1kHz. Listener had to decide which one was louder. Wanted to see how loud certain frequencies had to be to sound as loud as 1kHz.
%Fletcher-Munson Curves
%Formal name for the outcome of these studies is called the equal-loudness contours
-The louder music is played, the more lows and highs we perceive
-Two common beliefs that are false: 1) Mids are key to a balanced mix at varying levels, and 2)a mix that sounds good at quiet levels is likely to sound good at loud levels.
-When quiet, we perceive more room noise. When loud, we perceive more direct sound.
Percussives Weigh Less
-In a practical sense, sustained instruments require more attention due to their constant battle for audible dominance
Importance
-Ask yourself constantly: How important is it?
Natural vs. Artificial
-Patti Page, Confess, and the first multitracking
-'Natural' comes straight from the instrument
-It's a taste thing: you either like it or you don't.
Chapter 3: Learning to Mix
What Makes a Great Mixing Engineer?
-Vision: How do I want it to sound?
-Action: What equipment should I use? How should I use the equipment?
-Evaluation: Does it sound like what I want it to? Does it sound right? What is wrong with it?
%Approach #1: Okay, let's try to boost this frequency and see what happens.
%Approach #2: I can imagine the snare having less body and sound more crispy.
-Mixing vision ultimate question: How do I want it to sound?
-Having a mixing vision can make all the difference between the novice and the professional mixing engineer. While the novice shapes the sounds by trial and error, the professional imagines sounds and then achieves them with the mix.
-"What's wrong with it?"
-ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
%Have the skill to critically evaluate sounds
%Master your own tools, have knowledge of other common tools
~But ultimately, jack of all trades, master of none
%Must have theoretical knowledge that can help you when a problem arises
~It is better to know what you can do, and how to do it, than to understand what you have done
%Interpersonal skills are a must
%Be able to work quickly and efficiently
Methods of Learning
-Read the damned book
-Reading and hearing
%Read the book, listen to examples
-Seeing and hearing
-DOING IT
Mixing Analysis
-Your CD collection contains hundreds of mixing lessons
-Continuously ask questions about what you're listening to
Reference Tracks
-Great idea to have a few mixes, learn them inside and out, fully analyse them, and have them readily accessible
-Using Reference Tracks
%As a source for imitation
%As a source of inspiration
%As an escape from a creative dead end
%As a reference for a finished mix
%To calibrate our ears to different listening environments
%To evaluate monitor models before purchase
-How to choose a reference track
%A good mix
~Important to choose more modern songs with newer, better equipment
%A contemporary mix
~Part of the game is keeping up with the trends
%Genre related
~Don't get country track to help with a rap song
%A dynamic production
~Three songs in one track gives you that many more options
-Don'ts
%A characteristic mix
~The Strokes really played only one way, and wouldn't help much unless you want to copy them
%Too busy/simple
~Too much and you can't discern what's going on. Too little and it won't be helpful
Chapter 5: Related Issues
Breaks
-Sometimes, people go hours not feeling need to take a break
-Brain-demanding, ear-demanding process
-Breaks let us forget the recent tracks you were working on (to a degree) so you can come back and work on something new
-Our ears get tired, so we bring down monitoring level
-Critical break: day or two withour listening to the song after completing it
%Clears our individual mixing from our heads, we have less sonic prejudice
Using Solos
-Novices tend to abuse/misuse this, mixing isolated tracks without mixing it into the song
-The mix is a composite, beneficial to adapt a mix-perspective approach. Solos adversely promote element-perspective approach
-Lose the reference to the mix
%Compressing vox for example
%When vox solo'd, no reference to volume. Soloing guitars gives that perspective
%Panning useless unless with the rest of the mix
-Useful, like when getting buzz out of the guitar track, but useless once found
Mono Listening
-Many tvs still monophonic with music
-AM radio stations, FM if the signal is too weak
-Large venues sum in mono because it's difficult to give stereo feel to so many people, very expensive, not much different
-Mono-compatible mix: Mixes that translate well when summed to mono
%So few mixes are meant to be in mono, but the aim is to minimize the side-effects that summing might bring about
-Many engineers install a single speaker for mono listening
%gives true mono (out of one speaker) rather than phantom mono (out of two speakers)
-When we sum in mono, balance of the mix changes
-Also helps in evaluating the stereo aspects of our mix (can be easier to determine authenticity of panning, various studio effects, and overall impact of stereo panorama
-Many analogue and digital desks offer a mono switch
Bouncing Submixes
-Recording the mix or submix
-Bouncing drums for example would let you play a single track rather than all tracks; free up the compressors, EQ, reverb, and other tools; frees up channels (if using a board); frees up CPU
-Options available when bouncing:
%File type: WAV (BWF if time stamp included)
%Bit rate: 32 bit float (or 24 bit integer)
%Sample rate: should be same to the project's sample rate
%File format: multiple-mono (stereo file stored as two mono files with a respective .L and .R extension) and stereo-interleaved (stereo file stored as a single stereo file)
%Realtime (online)/offline: saves to disk as it plays. May be longer, but less prone to timing errors, lets you listen to it as it is being recorded
*When bouncing the final mix, best to leave any bit or sample rate to mastering stage, but if being put on CD, 16-bit, 44.1kHz, stereo interleaved*
Mix Edits
-Very often we'll run into many versions of a single mix called edits
-Common editing candidates:
%Album version: least restricting mixes
%Radio edit: heavily compressed or limited because it's how it will play. Vox commonly pushed up since radios commonly listened to in loud areas. Long songs sometimes cut short with edits or fades. Limited ability to translate/reproduce low frequencies
%Vox up/down: often two edits bounced with difference in vox by 1dB
%Club/LP versions: requires centered bass content, minimum phase
Mastering
-Simply put, mastering is an art and a science reserved for the experts
-Mixes used to be submitted to mastering on 1/2" analog tapes, Later, it was DATs, now it's CD/DVD or external drives
-Not professional to submit CDs because they're prone to mistakes
-Log included with everything on it
-Biggest problem in mastering is each instance of processing affects all elements of the song
-The more the mix needs correction, the more distant the hope of perfection
-Has become common to submit mixes in subgroups (vox, rhythm, leads, residue mix [everything not in other groups])
-Full stereo mix should be submitted that is equal to the sum of all the stems when faders at unity
For class on Wednesday, we went over the presentations of these first five chapters and went over the mixes we had worked on the week before. Some of the notes that were said were:
-Fading the edits that we make to avoid the possibility of pops
%Apple+F after selecting everything makes it faster to apply fades
-Exaggerate the lows and highs
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