Rookie Mixing Mistake

[View in Web Browser]( In my nearly 15 years of running Home Studio Corner (and Dueling Mixes and now Recording Revolution), I've seen it all. I guess it's more accurate to say: I've heard it all. Today I want to draw your attention to one rookie mistake I hear regularly from people's mixes. (Side-note: When I say rookie mistake, it might give off the impression that it's wrong to make mistakes. It's not. Mistakes are a part of the process. However, I believe my job is to help you avoid some of the common mistakes, so you can progress faster and achieve your musical goals sooner.) This mistake is nearly impossible to spot on your own, which is why it can be so insidious. I hear it the most when I have students mix a song that I've already mixed. Since I've mixed the song, I have a solid understanding of what the raw tracks sound like and what kind of mixing results are possible. So when I hear this rookie mistake in someone else's mix, it can be pretty jarring. And what is this dreaded mistake? Over-processing. It's understandable. It's probably human nature. You sit down to mix a song, and you've got all these plugins in your arsenal that you're excited to use, so you use them. You slap plugins on every channel and have the best time tweaking sounds, turning knobs, and pushing buttons. "Look ma! I'm a mixing engineer!" After all, that's what you see all the pros do in videos online, right? They slap plugins on stuff, turn knobs and push buttons. The problem, of course, is that the professional knows where to add plugins and where to leave things alone. There's an old story Andrew Scheps tells where he mixed a song (completely on cheap headphones I believe) and submits it for mastering. He gets a call from the mastering engineer, who tells him that there's nothing he wants to change on the mix. It's perfect the way it is, so he's simply going to transfer it untouched onto the final, mastered album. Here's a question. Let's say that mastering engineer charges $300 per song for mastering services. If you got that call from him, would you expect a discount? Perhaps he would wave the $300 fee entirely, since he didn't really DO anything? My answer: I would pay him the $300 and maybe even throw in a tip. Why? Because I'm just a nice guy? No, because he did his job. His job isn't to slave over my music for a few hours and make it sound amazing. His job is to simply: make it sound amazing. And if he can do that in 5 seconds, I'm all for it. A professional knows when to use his tools and (more importantly) when to set his tools down. Back to you and me. Our job as mix engineers is to, as they say in the medical profession, "first do no harm." Never throw plugins on a track just because you think you "should." LISTEN to the track first. Does it need anything? Sometimes the answer is no, and it's your job to come to that conclusion. I've heard beautifully-recorded acoustic guitar parts become mangled by someone who wanted to slap heavy compression, reverb, and excessive EQ on them. The end result? It sounded terrible, of course. I was shocked that guitars that sounded so good raw could sound so bad in a mix. And the culprit is a simple one: over-processing. Just because you have lots of plugins doesn't mean you should use them. When I mix a song, I like to play a modified version of the game "Name That Tune," only instead of saying, "I can name that tune in 5 notes," I say something like, "I can mix those drums with two plugins." And I set out to use as few plugins as I can to get the job done. Does that mean I never have a vocal track with 7+ plugins on it? No. But it does mean that each of those plugins is there for a very specific, calculated reason. Embrace your laziness a little. How can you mix that next song with as little effort as possible? You might find out that this is the key to unlocking incredible mixes. Joe Gilder The Recording Revolution [Unsubscribe]( | Sent by The Recording Revolution 777 N Ashley Dr Unit 1306 • Tampa, Florida • 33602