The mood swings of mixing.

[Ryan Silva]

It never fails; I fall in love with a recording while it?s being tracked. I mean I love this song with all of my being. This even extends to about the first or second passes during mixing, but after this I think I loose my mind a little. What happened?!!! I thought I loved this recording? It felt and sounded so good yesterday, and now I?m embarrassed to even be involved with this project.

At this point I have learned not to call the musicians and say: ?Ya man those vocals sound kinnda weak, and I think the bass was slightly out of tune.? Until I have a chance to either have them in the studio to make there own judgments or until I have had a few days of not hearing it.

So I wait a few days and listen again and abracadabra!!! It sounds great again and all those mixing adjustments I made really did help.

Anybody else go through this?

Thanks

[floid]

the opposite, actually - sometimes when i leave a project for a few days and come back to it, it'll sound complete ass. So i'll try tweaking the mix, you know, check all the suck knobs... and the next week discover the first mix sounded just fine, what the hell was i complaining about?
maybe it's something similar to what they're talking about in that binaural beats thread? as in, your brain gets "entrained," or whatever they're calling it, to focus on certain aspects of a mix...and when you come back to it you're not hearing what you expected OR what's really there, but rather the difference between the two. Depending on whether your expectations were positive or negative would probably affect the value of this difference...

[thethingwiththestuff]

i dont think it has anything to do with the word of the week here at TOMB, "entrainment." can this meme die now?

but yeah, this is probably the case for almost all of us. it's simple human brain functions. our hearing is relative to recently heard things, and we have a short aural memory for comparison functions.

i think the trick is to "listen to your body" and know when your hearing is getting skewed. take 5 minutes to listen to something else, or just be in silence, step outside and get some air, whatever. last night mixing for some clients we took a ten minute break, i let them smoke a cigarette and i played the piano for a few minutes, just listening to a real instrument and taking my mind somewhere else. it's a total battle to keep persepective.

especially when your clients keep passing you bowls...

[vvv]

especially when your clients keep passing you bowls...

And I was going to say, speaking of recording my own stuff, that I often hear it different after the recording or mixing "session", when I'm sober.

[drumsound]

I do find that I can't mix right after tracking. I need a day or two to let my mind let go of everything. There are always times during a mix tht I loose perspective. That's when a break needs to happen. I need to get better about regular breaks in general. I do most of my mixing without the client present. This leaves me open to take a walk or go get lunch or even sometimes walk away until the next day.

[Ken]

I go through this all the time. I feel like it's sounding really great during tracking, and then I go to mix, and I don't like the way it sounds. I drive around to it for a while, make some adjustments a little later, and then I (usually) like it much better.

But then, I realize that I could have made a little tiny tweak to make the....

Mixes are never finished, only abandoned?

[thethingwiththestuff]

especially when your clients keep passing you bowls...

And I was going to say, speaking of recording my own stuff, that I often hear it different after the recording or mixing "session", when I'm sober.

i know lots of people feel its completely unprofessional to work that way. certainly there are types of jobs i wouldn't smoke during, but i leave it up to how the client wants to work. i just have to make sure i'm aware of what kind of poor decisions i'm prone to make like that. i make sure to listen to everything when i'm sober as well, and i sort of get to have two points of view.

[vvv]

I am completely unprofessional when, as I said, recording my own stuff; I rock.

Working on other's stuff, depends on the situation.


But intox'd versus sober is kind of like schizophrenia, or not.

[ashcat_lt]

especially when your clients keep passing you bowls...

And I was going to say, speaking of recording my own stuff, that I often hear it different after the recording or mixing "session", when I'm sober.

i know lots of people feel its completely unprofessional to work that way. certainly there are types of jobs i wouldn't smoke during, but i leave it up to how the client wants to work. i just have to make sure i'm aware of what kind of poor decisions i'm prone to make like that. i make sure to listen to everything when i'm sober as well, and i sort of get to have two points of view.

OTOH, if you expect the majority of your listeners to be in a similar state, does it really matter?

Seriously, I think this is fairly natural. It never really bothers me to the point of calling it a problem. I guess I agree that a mix is never really done.

I never mix with the clients present. I know the drummer wants his drums louder. Never mix the same day as tracking, either. Take regular breaks.

[Ryan Silva]

especially when your clients keep passing you bowls...

And I was going to say, speaking of recording my own stuff, that I often hear it different after the recording or mixing "session", when I'm sober.

For me Weed = Reverb

Thats what I look out for, it's easy to do.

[apropos of nothing]

Drink lots of water. "Bearing down" causes hemmroids. Relax and let it come out easy.

[vvv]

[lightandmind]

I do have to say- when I've spent 6hrs mixing, am under time-constraint, have taken multiple breaks, and still feel like I'm going nowhere with it, -some marijuanna sure goes along way. Not to promote drug use, especially while working on someone else's stuff, but there has been more than a few times that I've felt so stuck- smoked abit- and suddenly blending it all togather seemed soooooo easy! AND the mixes sounded just as good, maybe better, the next day! What can I say? It is what it is, and probably isn't for most folks-

Aside from this, I always find that whenever I mix, I have (at least) two perspectives that I constantly use to analyze:
1) The Engineer's Perspective- the one most of us use, the one that say's what is logical, the we're all hear to perfect. Infinite knowledge to be possessed.
2) The Casual Listener's Perspective- All technical info stripped away, this mindset asks "What does this sound like to Joe Shmo/John Q. Public?"
This knowledge is easly-aquired, and is doesn't really consist of much.

[tommy]

Im always kind of pleasantly surpised when my least favorite track (during tracking phase) turns out to be really cool sounding during mix phase. This happens to me a lot actually. Anyway, the thing that helps me keep perspective during mix is the awareness of letting the visceral aspect of the song guide my critical listenning which is difficult (for me at least) because for me, critical listenning ALMOST goes against the visceral aspect of the song/s. IE, for critical listenning, I have to kind of NOT let myself rock out to the song and therefore, monitor at almost conversation volume. Not easy to do. Especially if the song naturally rocks or croons or whatever. I would usually alocate time chunks towards different kinds of listenning during mixing to gain different perspectives just so that I can see the whole picture. Critical listenning happens for a good chunk until the song starts to take shape. Then when i feel like its getting closer, I will turn it up a good bit and see what it feels like to let myself rock out to it. Take mental notes and continue tweeking whatever needs to be tweeked back at conversation monitor level. Then listen on a different set of speakers if available. Horrortones are cool. My trusty car stereo is the best though. Then listen SUPER quiet, then listen from somewhere else besides right in front of the monitors. All of this I repeat alot and do in no particular order but I do very deliberately. Then print the friggin thing.
Personally, I like having the client present during mix. Especially the main guy or girl. Makes mixing funner.

[Professor]

I liked the entrainment explanation... but then that's just me.

Actually I think the idea was in the right place because it does have something to do with psychoacoustics, but in this case it's not so much the phenomenon of entrainment as it is the phenomenon of fatigue.

Listening fatigue is a very serious part of everything that we do, just as much as eye strain headaches, carpal tunnel syndrome and ass sweat.
For me, the carpal tunnel is doing better since I've had a track ball for the last four years, but now I'm feeling what I think is arthritis developing at the base of my index and middle fingers. The ass sweat has been much better since I bumped up to a pair of Aeron chairs for the studio. The old chairs were pretty nice Steelcase brand office chairs that probably ran about $350-400 a pop, but they were only good for about 3-4 hours where the Aeron chairs (about $950 a pop, but I splurged with the polished aluminum) breath very well and are good for upwards of 12 hours. Currently I'm most worried about eye-strain because I think this really has finally effected my vision to the point where it's probably time for glasses... and I really dread that thought.

On the listening side, well, we take breaks. Sometimes the breaks are 10-20 minutes, and sometimes they need to be overnight. I really try to avoid mixing immediately after tracking, almost as much as I avoid mixing on the fly. In fact I probably mix on the fly a little more often. I don't mind tracking and diving directly into editing as much, but even there I like to have some space.
I think a big part of it for me is the sort of adrenaline rush (however miniscule) I feel while tracking. There's just so much excitement in the room with everything setup, all the musicians creating, and I'm hearing the sounds being captured for that first time. It's exhilirating. But it can also overwhelm the senses, including the critical listening. I know that when I sit down to start editing I immediately am hearing things in a different sort of way (as long as some time has passed) and it's a good thing in most cases. I can't recall sitting down to edit and/or mix and feeling I really screwed up a mic choice or placement in a pretty long time, but I definitely still hear things differently. But I find that it's just that I'm hearing things a little more cleanly, a little more plain, but not necessarily worse... just not as good as it needs to be. In a certain way that makes it easier for me to mix, because I know I have to return the music to that state of excitement I felt while tracking. As the sound returns, so does the emotion and I know I'm close.
Of course, there's also the physical reality of fatigue too. If I can't hear the high end properly anymore, or I've let the control room level creep up too high, or the sounds are just feeling irritating because my ears are sick of hearing despite my brain's best attempts at listening, then I know it's time for a loooong break... and I take one.

So yeah, sometimes it can be a true physical issue, but most times I think it tends to stay in the psychoacoustic realm.

-Jeremy