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How Do You Mix? Seems the DAW Has Eliminated Traditional Mixing


Anderton

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I was over at producer Michael Wagener's studio the other day, and we were talking about mixing. He said that really, no one "mixes" in the traditional sense any more because when you're working in a DAW, you tweak things as you record and by the time all the tracks are done, you're already most of the way to a mix. Of course with analog or digital tape, it was much more difficult to edit as you went along.

 

That's how I work these days, but I don't think this is at all a case of "the old way was better." If you can tweak/edit tracks as you go along, then they help shape the music in a more cohesive way. For example last night I was working on a song and had a cool percussion part that sounded great with the original rhythm track. But when the vocals got added, the percussion was too busy so I put in a simpler tambourine part and found the right level and EQ for it. So now, the tambourine part is effectively locked into the mix, as is the vocal, even though I still have quite a ways to go before the song is done.

 

Do you mix as you go along, wait until everything is recorded and mix it, or some combination of the two?

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One of the reasons why I don't use a DAW is because with a DAW, I can't mix as I go along, which is something that I've always done (and still do) when tracking with a console. It's just too clumsy for me and looking at the screen takes my attention away from the music I'm recording. But then, I don't do projects a bit at a time, I record live musicisans playing together. As we're tracking, since I'm monitoring the full band mix, that's what I tweak as we go along. It's unobtrusive as far as the band is concerned, they hear playbacks that are pretty close to the final mix, and it gives me something constructive to do while the band is working over problem areas.

 

I can see mixing, editing, processing, and replacing things when you're the composer, arranger, artist, engineer, and producer. With a DAW, it's easy, almost natural, to make changes as you go along, hopefully constructive ones. But when I'm in the control room and the band is out there playing their hearts out for an hour or so before taking a break other than to hear a playback, while I'm refining my monitor mix, which is coming through the same signal path as the final mix, that's as far as I go. I don't have the time or the concentration to locate a glitch and edit it or replace it with a piece from another take. I want to concentrate on what the band's doing and do what I can to help them do it the way they want to hear it.

 

 

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Do you mix as you go along, wait until everything is recorded and mix it, or some combination of the two?

 

I don't think about MIX, to me it's like an autonomous process of artistry which serves as a layer of flavor or validation. I tend to focus exclusively on a single component.

 

Why do I do this?

 

Because for me, a song is a "person." it has personality and feelings and I hate to deviate or attempt to change who the person is. (Metaphorically speaking). So if I start thinking about mixing as I go along then I immediately start deviating from the original idea and soon, the song becomes a totally different person. This is not entirely bad but can cause issues when attempting to finish a project, especially having your own studio, you could get trapped in the art of forever tweaking.

 

 

In fact the Mackie MCU is off until I get to mixing something.

 

Historically, I think this attitude came from my early days using commercial studios, as a way to cut down cost, we book the studio for separate sessions. Example: Week one: Produce and edit write, week 2 record, week 3 mix.

 

But we had to rehearse and make all adjustments conceptually before getting to the studio.

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I'm using my DAW pretty much exclusively these days, having been a late convert from standalone machines

 

I tend to get things 'something like' as I'm going along. Then when I've finished all of the recording I perform a final mix. I try not to mix too much with my eyes

 

My hearing isn't as good in my right ear as it is in my left, so I have to take that into consideration as well

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I took a page out of Peter Buck and Jimmy Page's book: make everything sound the way you want before you even press record.

 

The only tweaks I do are in post. Volume, speed tricks, sometimes reverb, and any Brian Eno techniques.

 

 

That is a very interesting concept and I also think that the ability to to tweak things, meaning all the features and available tools of DAW can sometimes be overwhelming and take away from the focus of the job unless you are absolutely discipline and knowing when to stop.

 

It's powerful if you know what you want and when to stop. For example: Should you try all 1500 reverb preset or should you take one and call it a day?

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Still the old way. I got good at it, like playing guitar or piano... just got better all the time. In a way new recording technology can be as inconvenient as if someone decided I needed to rearrange the notes on a piano, so I'd have to relearn that. Same with guitar. So in so far as recording and mixing is an art like playing an instrument, there's times I've decided not to take up the new instrument.

 

Still the same as since I've been a member of Harmony Central... use analog tape and digital and mix it all through a board. My main board is no Lamborghini. It's a Tascam M320B and I have other analog submixers, some of which I built.

 

Half of what I own is modded and tweaked by me. I had my M320B on the workbench for over year, recapping and tweaking the EQ sections to my taste, replacing op-amps and other components with better ones. It's a quieter, cleaner mixer than when I bought it.

 

And what Nice Keetee said as far as the digital side goes... limited chicanery. I mix and master to half-track analog tape. It makes me feel good... I have fun. When I stop enjoying the process I quit!

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It's a shame that all of the people who started recording music in the last 10 years will never learn how it's really done. With a DAW you don't need to record and mix music, you simply gather all the pieces and construct it - just like Legos. And then you can dance to it.

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I think a lot of times choosing one X out of many, whether it's reverb presets or kick drums, is more about the person creating the music than the listener...which is fine, because we want to get goosebumps as we create things, and good sounds make us happy. But I have to admit that many times, I just choose something quickly that's in the ballpark...and often find it ends up in the final mix.

 

 

I think this was the greatest challenge I faced when I first started using DAW. I remember working in a studio and we had 16 track ADAT, (sync two 8 tracks units).

 

We had to be extremely picky as to what would make it to tape or how we utilized these tracks. You do not want nasty over dubs with complex cross overs. And also, if you had a session guitar player from out of town, you want to get the best before he takes off.

 

Today I have Sonar, I no-longer understand the concept of unlimited tracks. : )

 

Initially it was like taking a starving man to a buffet stand. I would spend days looking for a sound, not because there was nothing good but because one always wondered, "what else is there?" At times the song never recovered.

 

So I am back to the basics, as if I was limited to the 16 track ADAT, as if I am trying to lose weight with a full fridge of sweets and cakes.

 

Which is why I tend to put a firewall between the processes. Don't use mixing as a "fixing process."

 

I like to think of my recording process as extremely meticulous and professional as if I am cooking a meal.It has to happen naturally otherwise I just leave it alone until the idea comes by. But in most cases its already planned and organized in my head.

 

 

 

 

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That is a very interesting concept and I also think that the ability to to tweak things, meaning all the features and available tools of DAW can sometimes be overwhelming and take away from the focus of the job unless you are absolutely discipline and knowing when to stop.

 

It's powerful if you know what you want and when to stop. For example: Should you try all 1500 reverb preset or should you take one and call it a day?

 

There are so many plugins these days, but when I started using Audacity in 2009, it was a bit simpler.

 

I was recording what I originally conceived as a Rock album, and recorded bits and pieces of songs. Well, I had no idea where to go from where I began, so I started experimenting. And that's how I made my first Ambient EP.

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What's really happened is that the DAW has opened up an option for writers and composers to make music. Beethoven gathered all the pieces on individual lines of staff, then brought in an orchestra to play it. Composers today can gather all the pieces on individual tracks, then trigger a virtual orchestra to play it (or set of loops) to play it.

 

And along with this, brought the option of making music to people who are neither writers, composers, or musicians to make music. This is occasionally a good thing, but more often just creates more clutter in the musical universe. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

 

There are still plenty of people using DAWs basically as tape recorders, but as tape recorders where you can edit things after the fact. I don't think a DAW is about limiting possibilities, but expanding it.

 

I never hesitated to edit tape. If there was something that I couldn't fix with an edit, it either got done over, got used as is, or was left out. You don't have to keep everything that you recorded, but some people would rather save a bad idea or bad performance than discard it. Again, this might be good or it might be bad. And opinions vary as to which.

 

As bucksstudent (or Phil O'Keefe says, for that matter) it's best to get things right at the source, or at least most of the way there. Then everything subsequent to that becomes simple :)

 

So why not do that all the time? Well, going back to the beginning of this comment, there are more people now than then who just can't get it right at the source - either because they can't play it well enough, they didn't write it as good as it should be written, they haven't discovered the right recording technique, or (last and entirely least) they don't have the proper tools to do the job.

 

I'm not saying that there's no more good music, just that there's so many more musical forms that don't interest me that wouldn't have existed without the DAW.

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Today I have Sonar, I no-longer understand the concept of unlimited tracks. : )

 

So I am back to the basics, as if I was limited to the 16 track ADAT, as if I am trying to lose weight with a full fridge of sweets and cakes.

 

 

I think you mean you no longer understand the concept of limited tracks. Or maybe you mean that you lost track of the tracks and now you're on track again, working toward a mix of 16 tracks.

 

I wrote the "beginners" monthly column in Recording magazine for close to 5 years. It started when most people were still recording on tape (some digital) and lasted through the time when the concept of the DAW was pretty well established. I think I was using Cakewalk Pro Audio near the end of that run.

 

The last article I wrote before retiring was entitled "The Eight-Track Challenge." I encouraged the readers to set up an 8-track project in their DAW and work as if it were an 8-track tape recorder. The rules were pretty simple - Punch-ins were OK, un-dos were OK, but if you wanted to comp a track, you had to do it by bouncing, not pasting. If you had more than 8 parts to record, you had to bounce tracks to make room for the new parts. The idea was to figure out what needed to be done, then commit to the decision.

 

I got a few comments on that article, mostly running along the lines that it was easier to decide when to quit recording and start mixing, and that mixing 8 tracks was much easier and came out smoother than starting a mix with dozens of tracks. And it was mostly because, integrated within the recording process, you had already done the "mapping" of which pieces to keep and where and how they'd fit.

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I have 2 modes of recording : ensemble and overdub. When recording an ensemble, I concentrate primarily on mic and gobo placement, helping to dial in individual sounds and getting good levels from every source; mixing only happens here in the context of setting up monitor mixes for the cans. This is unrelated to what's recorded because I don't monitor thru the DAW or audio interface (other than a feed of rough 'idea tracks' and possibly a drum click.

 

When overdubbing, I need something coherent enough to play along with, so I continually mix as I go. For a final mix I generally discard this 'monitor mix' and start over so my mix is not influenced by what I needed to hear to record new parts well.

 

So, I suppose in both cases I treat mixing as a separate step. Mostly.

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I think you mean you no longer understand the concept of limited tracks. Or maybe you mean that you lost track of the tracks and now you're on track again, working toward a mix of 16 tracks.

 

Yes, that is what I was meaning to say.

I think it takes serious discipline being a musician and having your own recording environment. Like a doctor addicted to medicine or a chef addicted to eating.

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