what's a "good mix"?

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what's the average time you spend on mixing per song?

a. a few hours
15
50%
b. a few days
13
43%
c. a few weeks
1
3%
d. a few months
1
3%
 
Total votes: 30

dontouch
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what's a "good mix"?

Post by dontouch » Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:08 pm

So you've been mixing a song for 10 days...at what point do you say "okay, this is the best mix I can get and it's ready for mastering.". Please share your thoughts! Thank you!

AstroDan
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Post by AstroDan » Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:40 pm

I would say after a few years of mixing, you could get one in a few days.

Mixing is infinite times harder than tracking.
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vivalastblues
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Post by vivalastblues » Fri Jan 08, 2010 3:44 pm

If the recording is good, the time spent mixing is pretty damn short.

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timh
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Post by timh » Fri Jan 08, 2010 3:52 pm

i said a few days. but thats at maximum. usually i do it in a few hours, but im no professional, and usually nothing i do is over 14 tracks.

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T-rex
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Post by T-rex » Fri Jan 08, 2010 4:09 pm

I love mixing, I wish my mixes were good enough so I could just do that. I love tracking too, but it would great to just mix all day long for a living.

The longer you do it the less time it takes. I find now that about 4 to 8 hours is my average, depending on how well the recording and performances are.
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MoreSpaceEcho
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Fri Jan 08, 2010 9:14 pm

assuming the arrangement is together and there's no editing to be done, i like a day (a long one usually) to do all the processing work and another half a day or so to refine the balances/rides/etc.

i have spent 6 months mixing one song, but as i get older (and much better at tracking) i think quicker is usually better. as lost blues said, if the tracking's really good there isn't much to do. some of those albini 'in utero' multitracks are like...faders at zero, pan the guitars, put the kick and snare at +6 and you are done.

dontouch
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Post by dontouch » Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:40 pm

Suppose there's no editing to do. How do you tell when a mix is done? Especially when dealing with mostly over-dubs, do you imagine it being played by a group of people and mix towards that?

cale w
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Post by cale w » Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:06 pm

Mixes are never done. There's unlimited tweaking to be done. Forever.

MoreSpaceEcho
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sat Jan 09, 2010 7:23 am

dontouch wrote:Suppose there's no editing to do. How do you tell when a mix is done? Especially when dealing with mostly over-dubs, do you imagine it being played by a group of people and mix towards that?
it's done when you can play it from start to finish and not want to change anything.

i don't necessarily imagine it being played by people, but that's certainly not a bad place to start. one song i mixed last year, every time the chorus hit, all i could imagine was Mothra, Godzilla, and Rodan (gtr, bass and drums respectively) kicking the absolute shit out of each other and destroying Tokyo in the process. i balanced them so it was a fair fight.

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T-rex
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Post by T-rex » Sat Jan 09, 2010 10:18 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: it's done when you can play it from start to finish and not want to change anything.
Nicely put! Yeah, it's hard to define, its one of those things that just hits you during one of the playbacks and you think, "Yep, that's it!"

I generally spend the first bit, after edits or any clean up crap, just throwing faders around like crazy, muting and unmuting instruments or groups of instruments and just see if anything creative leaps out. I have no problem changing an arrangement on the fly if it suits the song.

If you want the song to gel well and some of the overdubs don't fit, then you wither have to leave them out or manipulate them and make them sound like they belong. It doesn't really matter how you do it, just the end result.
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kinger
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Post by kinger » Sat Jan 09, 2010 11:45 am

I find a song is done when I can listen to the song and not the production, if that makes sense.

MoreSpaceEcho
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sat Jan 09, 2010 11:57 am

makes total sense. that's kinda the whole idea.

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Post by drumsound » Sun Jan 10, 2010 12:45 am

I'm in the several hour camp. I prefer to mix without the client for a good bulk of time, and then pull them in, let them hear with fresh ears, play it a few times and then start in on any tweaks they may have, and continue to refine until it feels 'there' to all of us.

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losthighway
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Post by losthighway » Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:58 am

Here's a question for you all on the subject:

How many of you zero the board, and unplug your outboard sends when you finish a mix on one song and start on the next (apply the obvious digital version of this action if you're a DAW guy)?

How many of you use the ending place for the last mix as the starting place for the next?

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JohnDavisNYC
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Post by JohnDavisNYC » Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:24 am

a few hours... i like mixing 2 to 3 songs a day when i'm mixing a record...

i generally leave stuff patched up, as my 'basic' drum sound and vocal chain will usually stay pretty consistent across an album, unless there are huge sonic differences to how the songs were tracked... generally once the basic vibe is established, it is just changes from that... level changes, eq changes, different verbs and spaces, etc... i try to get the difference between tracks from the performances and instrument sounds, print lots of effects on the way in, so that then the mix is more about the presentation, not trying to create content via the mix...

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