What if you just suck?

[Ryan Silva]

I suspect that somehow I'm having trouble knowing exactly what I want all this mess to sound like.

That might be the crux of your issue. If you can't see the shape buried in the uncarved block of marble, maybe you're not a sculptor. Doesn't mean you can't paint or compose or choreograph or whatever. But maybe that one discipline isn't your thing.

It's hard if you?re mixing with more than one other person in the room. If your service focused like me, I always want to help the artist complete there vision, not my own. The reality is however, if you do this job long enough you will most likely have a better (faster) idea of what the potential of any given mix might be.

What happens to me often is I shut off that part of my creativity in order to facilitate the imagination of others.

But most of the time in the end, I should have just did what my instincts told me to do.

[drumsound]

Oh, and thanks for all the posts/thoughts so far. I really do wish I could have a mentor. That would be sweet.

Come to the Welcome to 1979 conference next month!

[Jay Reynolds]

It's hard if you?re mixing with more than one other person in the room. If your service focused like me, I always want to help the artist complete there vision, not my own. The reality is however, if you do this job long enough you will most likely have a better (faster) idea of what the potential of any given mix might be.

True. I was responding to bannerj's issue mixing his own material. But even when a client tells me what they want and provides me with reference material, I still start the mix with some sort of vision in mind. Or whatever the audio equivalent of vision is.

[JWL]

I spent so much time putting together a mix of the title track. I brought my wife in. She liked it so much she cried. Then I bounced it down and took it home to listen on my home system. Thin. Lifeless. Boring.

In my experience, this is almost always a room acoustics or a monitoring issue. If it sounds good in your space (the low end), but as soon as you listen somewhere else it is thin and lifeless (sounds like like of bass) then you probably aren't hearing accurately in your room. I know you said you had a good acoustics designer treat the space, but facts is facts.

How did you treat the room? How many bass traps do you have? Do you have a solid Reflection-Free Zone? How are your monitors arranged and/or crossed over? Are you using a subwoofer?

Also, I highly recommend listening to reference songs on CD when evaluating the mix, toward the end of the process. This will help you be sure you are in the ballpark.

[bannerj]

I spent so much time putting together a mix of the title track. I brought my wife in. She liked it so much she cried. Then I bounced it down and took it home to listen on my home system. Thin. Lifeless. Boring.

In my experience, this is almost always a room acoustics or a monitoring issue. If it sounds good in your space (the low end), but as soon as you listen somewhere else it is thin and lifeless (sounds like like of bass) then you probably aren't hearing accurately in your room. I know you said you had a good acoustics designer treat the space, but facts is facts.

How did you treat the room? How many bass traps do you have? Do you have a solid Reflection-Free Zone? How are your monitors arranged and/or crossed over? Are you using a subwoofer?

Also, I highly recommend listening to reference songs on CD when evaluating the mix, toward the end of the process. This will help you be sure you are in the ballpark.

My room originally was designed by an amateur well before I inherited it. With the best of intentions the design has no parallel walls except for the front and the back. Unfortunately, it has been a nightmare acoustically. There was a substantial null for any lower frequencies at mix position. Further, the room is too short. It is almost square. I can't remember the dimensions in feet.

The designer (who has done studios for Eminem, Kid Rock etc) had several types of tuned traps installed all the way around the front and side walls. There is an enormous bass trap in the rear where the back wall and the ceiling meet. This trap runs the full length of the back wall. There is also are two sets of clouds hung from the ceiling.

I've got the dual Focals for monitors. No sub. They are almost right against the front wall. We are trying to get the first reflections to bounce off the walls instead of the glass that is on both left and right sides.

So you can see. It is a pretty sweet setup...a setup that I don't deserve. My rationale in getting the school to put up the money for this is that even if I can't get the best out of this...maybe it'll be a good lab for students to learn in. In the long run my greatest concern is to create the best incubator for creativity I can. I just left the studio. Two students were in there working on a record. That makes me happy.

[Mane1234]

I think this is a very good topic to discuss so thanks to the OP for bringing it up. I would say we all have our strengths and weaknesses and being honest enough with ourselves to recognize them is very important. I'm a much better tracker than mixer and I enjoy the process of tracking much more than mixing. I like deciding which mic and which pre is going to work best and why. And I like getting the best performance out of the artist that I can. I really enjoy capturing that moment in time. I have noticed that becoming better at tracking makes mixing easier for me but overall I find the mixing process tedious and sort of boring. I know some of this speaks to the bands I tend to work with that aren't of a very high caliber so maybe if I was working with really talented artists I might have a different opinion. I don't get record on a daily basis either so it can become frustrating when I feel like I'm not making as much progress as I would like to.

[30Peak]

This is a great thread and kudos for having the courage to self analyze in a public forum.

I've recently taken up cooking - gourmet, full-on compete-with-the-high-end dude recipe stuff - and it's done wonders for my audio work.

In many ways, the two crafts are very similar. The entire chain of the process effects the final outcome of the finished product. As I'm much 'newer' to cooking than I am to recording and production, I've been a lot more forgiving of self. And you know what? My meals come out exceptionally well - so well that my wife invites folks over and sets me up with challenges, and do to my feeling of 'I don't know what I'm doing exactly so it might suck' attitude, it actually works out amazingly great 9 out of 10 meals.

My advice is to try and throw everything you think you know out of your head and start experimenting with every step. Go backwards. Use the same limiter on every track immediately, mix on a pair of headphones, or reverse your monitors R/L until halfway through a good mix.

Mostly, go nuts with breaking up your routines while mixing: wear an eye patch. Only use your non-dominant hand. Take breaks and hum the bass line to the song you're working on. Drink new teas or foods. Keep a bad sitcom running with the audio down on a TV nearby. You probably don't need new gear: I know that's the quick answer we ALL think all the time.

Essentially, work against your own routines, withhold all judgment, work with the very basic things in the most elementary sense, and most of all, let yourself fail.

You may be pleasantly surprised by the result.

And if that doesn't work, take up something new that you might suck at, too so you'll feel better about your audio skills.

[kinger]

You probably don't need new gear

Words of wisdom.

Which I'm going to completely ignore.

[jgimbel]

It's tough to beat 30Peak's post, very eloquent and absolutely true. In general there's not a bit I disagree with. Usually overthinking is the easiest way to ruin something, or prevent you from doing it in the first place. However, some good old-fashioned grunt work can really pay off. I've had a number of times that I've been unhappy with my drum sounds (that I've tracked) when I'm mixing. I did a recording technique video about drum micing techniques relatively recently (just put it online though). I didn't do this because of my issues with my own sounds, just really to give people a good explanation and example of different techniques/sounds. What it ended up being was a not-overly-scientific experiment that showed me that the sounds I'm getting really aren't bad and that I need to have more faith in them. I just tracked some drums with an XY pair, spaced pair, recorderman, glyn johns, and a close mic setup. And you know what? They all sound pretty good. It was helpful to hear what they all sound like one after the other, but honestly since I did the video, I haven't had half as much trouble mixing. Just going through methodically, trying things, really LISTENING, either drastically improved the sound I'm getting, or, what I'm banking on, let me see the sounds for what they really are, and appreciate them.

Not that I'm saying method is what should normally be applied to music, definitely not. But taking the time out to do this, rather than leaving it to when I'm tracking and don't feel like trying a million things and just settling really helped.

[bannerj]

You probably don't need new gear

Words of wisdom.

Which I'm going to completely ignore.

Nothing I've said so far suggested that I'm worried about acquiring new gear. In fact it is just the opposite...I'm frustrated that I can't get better sound with what I've got.

[bannerj]

I'm most definitely over thinking. I do that in almost every other area of my life. So...

And yeah, I'm a really good cook. I love to cook--probably enjoy it so much because I trust that I'm good and therefore I don't over think it.

I was that kid on the basketball team who could hit free throws all throughout practice, but when i was in the game...brick.

So, since mixing is such a contemplative process, what is the difference between working hard and over thinking?

[30Peak]

So, since mixing is such a contemplative process, what is the difference between working hard and over thinking?

For me: working hard = sense of accomplishment/relaxed... over thinking = stress/tense.

I mean, look at what's happened to this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGksmlTWCFE

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Is there another engineer you can partner with?
I did a record last year with a good friend and fellow engineer. When it came time to mix he'd get the song roughed in to the point where he was happy with it but hadn't started riding levels or automating. Then he's hand it off too me. I'd tweek some things and start doing the fine tuning. Once we'd worked our way through all the songs we called in the client and the 3 of us went through a few rounds of tweeking till it was all done.
It turned out really well and we turned out the record much faster than either of us could have done on our own.
The nicest part of the process was that neither of us were stuck working on any one song for very long. You just get the song as far as you can and then hand it off.
We also picked up some tricks from each other. Never underestimate the value of seeing someone else process.

[mikeyc]

First of all, I'm totally jealous. I'm at another small college just up the road from you and, well...I'm just jealous.

Anyway. The way your describing it, it sounds like it could be your monitoring to me. A couple years back I was generating turd after turd for mixes and then one day I realized that I had strayed from my old method I followed when I started out.
I'll explain: When I started out recording (on ADAT, natch), we'd mix down and take a cassette copy of the mix in the car and ride around town, go get a Frosty or whatever. We'd listen to the mix over and over and compare that to the sound on the monitors in our recording space and fix any discrepancies. Every mix I did from back then still sounds cool to me. There are things I'd do differently, but the mixes stand up OK.
When I opened my studio, I had a nice enough room and got comfortable with the monitoring. The mixes from that era are still OK. By the time I moved my rig back home, I had totally left out the Frosty cruise. My mixes really started sucking and I started really doubting my shit. It took me a long time to realize that I had stopped comparing my mixes on other systems, both good and shitty. Now it's something I try to make a conscious effort to follow through with.

If the stuff sounds great in the studio and no-so-good at home, I'd check it on a few other systems. And definitely listen to other stuff on the Focals to see how they treat some of your favorites. The thing with really nice monitors (for me anyway) is they can be misleading if you're not really comfortable with them. I used to mix on Genelecs down in Kzoo and things always sounded great on them. Until I did the Frosty cruise.

[jgimbel]

Unrelated, I'm writing a new novel called "The Importance of Frosty Cruz", in stores soon.