This article is for all of you who want to become mixing engineers. This stuff is trickier than you can imagine, especially when you’re dealing with an unknown mix. What do I mean by an unknown mix?
Somebody comes to you and says “I got 24 tracks here that I want you to make sound good.” You’ve never heard the song before, have no idea how it sounds and somehow you have to make some sense out of it.
What do you do?
I’m going to now detail what I do. Please note, this is not the only way to go about doing this and the procedure may actually change somewhat depending on what kind of song it is, how many tracks there are, how much time you have to work on the project and so on. This is just one example.
First thing I did was download all the tracks, unzip them and import the wav files into my Cubase DAW. The easiest way to do that, especially when you’re working with 24 tracks like I was, is to highlight all the tracks in your explorer and drag them directly into your DAW. If it asks you if you want a single track for all the wav files or individual tracks, definitely go for individual tracks.
Now I’m looking at 24 sliders in my mix console and I have no idea what each one does outside of the description of the wav file. Here’s where you have to use a little common sense. Naturally, it helps if you have some clue about musical arrangements such as what instruments are probably main and what instruments are probably background.
I took all the 24 sliders and moved them down to zero. I then looked at the instruments and vocals and started moving them up one at a time, starting with the piano. I guessed at a level for each one realizing that as I kept adding sliders, those levels might have to be further raised or lowered. Rule of thumb is you never want to raise. You always want to lower if you can. Otherwise, you end up going into the red and have to bring everything down. I had a lot to work with here.
1 Piano track
4 vocal tracks
10 strings stracks
2 guitar tracks
6 percussion tracks
1 main track
My best guess was that the piano would be the main comp and it was. I went with the main vocal being next with the 3 background vocals being somewhat behind while the strings, percussion and guitars further in the background. Naturally, this would change depending on how each part was played, what instruments came in and went out during the course of the song and so on.
Next thing I would do is process each instrument individually. To get the best mix, you want each instrument on its own to sound as good as it can. If the samples you’re given are dry, and they should be, then you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want with them. Now, the guitar parts I got sounded like they were recorded through busted amps. I don’t know if that’s the sound they were going for but there is no way they’re going to cut through a mix the way they sound now.
So, the guitars need some major work. I’m going to run them through my guitar rig and process them as if they were dry. Some reverb, compression and a good distortion and these guitars will sound passable. They’ll never sound great because of the quality of the original recording, but they can be made to sound decent. Either way, you probably don’t want them too forward in the mix.
Now, the piano sounds totally dead. It’s going to need some overhead compression and a good convolution reverb. Not too much. Don’t want it to sound washed out. It’s still your main instrument so you want it to cut through. A Barry Manilow like sound should be fine.
As for the strings, they’re simple. First thing you want to do is send them to one bus so you can mix them together to get a nice level on all of them relative to the rest of the mix. Then I’m going to put a nice concert hall convolution reverb on the whole bus. I’ll mix them in the background. I don’t want the strings overpowering the mix. It’s not that kind of song.
The percussion needs to cut through because there isn’t much in this mix that’s keeping a beat. The piano is playing a lot of broken chords and arpeggios so I need something that’s going to keep somewhat of a beat. So the percussion I’m going to keep dry and just throw some compression on it. I will also group the percussion in one bus as well.
Now we get to the vocals. There are 4 vocal tracks. The main vocals and the background vocals. What I usually do with 4 vocal tracks is I bring the main vocals up front, I pan two of the 3 background vocals left and right and take the fourth vocal and set it just slightly back of the main vocal with some delay on it. Makes a really nice effect. I don’t group the vocals in one buss for one reason. I find that vocals processed as a group don’t sit well in the mix. I find that by processing them separately I get a better mix.
After everything is mixed the way you like it, bounce it all down to two stereo tracks. But we’re not done.
You now have to take the stereo mix and process it. That means EQ, compression, limiting, whatever you have to do in order to get a radio ready mix.
It’s a long process. But the key to it is taking things one at a time. If you don’t look at the whole project as a whole project and freak out at how many tracks you have and just take it one track at a time, you’ll be fine.
And that’s how I work with an unknown mix.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim