Your mixing "philosophy"

[Foliage]

Hi! There are heaps of approaches to mixing and I'm sure they are all capable of getting awesome, (or not so awesome) results. Do you have a basic mixing "philosophy" or can you boil down what you do into some semblance of one? Audio examples of your own work or anyone else that exemplify your approach could be cool too.

Sorry if this is too generic a post, but I find the topic kinda interesting anyway!

[lyman]

Retain, if not further, the artistic intent of the song's creator(s).

[Foliage]

Oh yes! cool. How might you go about furthering something you weren't part of the immediate creation of though? How might you approach that? Be as specific as you need to be but as general as you can be.... if you can be bothered!

[kslight]

Mix it no longer than I have to, because I've noticed once you exceed a certain time frame it's no longer getting better.

[Foliage]

Yep! but can never seem to learn this lesson with my own stuff though, as the "mixing" phase often starts before anything is actually finished.. If I ever do stuff for other projects/people I tend to limit mixing time a lot, and am generally surprised at how good everything sounds afterwards.

[The Scum]

Everything louder than everything else.

If somethings not working out, don't be afraid to shut it off. We did 14 guitar overdubs not with the intention of using them all, but being able to cobble together one decent one.

If something's not working, don't be afraid to do something drastic. Distortion, heavy bandpass, round-trip through the space echo.

If I patch in one compressor, I'm probably patching in all the compressors.

Work at a lower volume than I think I should.

[vvv]

You can never have too many olives, or too little vermouth ...

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I have no particular philosophy for mixing. Lots of jobs are different and require different approaches.
A few helpful things I have learned along the way -
#1 Take lots and lots of breaks. Listening is hard work and its really easy to lose perspective. Nothing hits the reset button better than taking time away.
#2 - Turn the speakers down. Everything sounds big and detailed and powerful and awesome when its loud. The trick is to make it sound like that when the volume is low. As a side bonus lower volumes mean you won't go deaf quite as soon (although you will probably still go deaf).
#3 - Dial in the main balances and panning quickly. Don't spend an hour on drums and then move on to spend an hour on bass. Push all the faders up and put things roughly in their place before you work on details. Everything effects everything else. There's no point in waisting time on details before you see the big picture.
#4a - If the vocal is king make sure it's up when you're working on everything else. Don't build the whole mix and then add the vocal. Build the whole mix around the vocal.
# 4b - When the vocal isn't king don't be afraid to fuck that shit up. Treat it like it's just another instrument.
#5 - Don't be afraid to tear down and start again.
#6 - Don't be afraid to try several different approaches and edit together the best bits of each.
#7 - Just because you bought X piece of gear (and it's awesome and your really excited about it) doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job (as evidence see everything released in the 80's). Don't process/compress/reverb/etc/etc just because you can and really want to. Sometimes the boldest move can be doing nothing.
#8 - Sometimes when the mix just doesn't work it's because the arrangement doesn't work. Mixing is best viewed as an extension of arranging. You're job is to bring all the elements into focus. Doing that sometimes reveals that the elements don't fit or don't work as well as they should. The best fix is to go back make changes and re-record. Sometimes that isn't possible and you have to work with what you've got.
#9 - Mixing is a weird job. A great recording of a great songs and arrangement is pretty easy to mix and is almost guaranteed to sound good. Conversely, you can pull out all your tricks and kill yourself to make a crappy recording of a mediocre arrangement of a passable song sound ok.

[joninc]

the endless quest... a few things that i am continually learning ...

1. a mix is not a democracy. everyone does NOT get an equal say/voice. when you try to make every thing even in volume it's all competing for your attention. figure out when something can be featured and turn it down everywhere else.

2. symmetry can be very boring - doubling and panning stereo is like MONO. same
both sides = narrow stereo field. why do we do that?

3. less is more. 100 tracks = a lot of eq carving and minimizing everything to make space. things sound small. choked. mute is your friend. be vicious.

good questions to ask yourself -

what's in the foreground? what's in the distance? what's the focal point of this part of the song? do the drums need to be pounding all the time? can the guitars take over?

what's dry? what's wet?

LESS REVERB is often better. unless you are going for super murky. only put it on one or 2 elements and let other things be dry. go listen to your favorite albums, they are not as wet as you think and often they aren't as "big" either.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

not much to add that wasn't in the last two posts.

i don't really think in terms of verses and choruses, i think in terms of the beginning of the song to the end, and how we get there note by note.

i mix quietly most of the time, sometimes really (like 50db spl) quiet. BUT it's super important to spend some time mixing loud or there's too many surprises come mastering time.

figure out what's important and make sure you can hear it without having to work hard.

some of the less important stuff often sounds better when you can't hear it totally perfectly. your imagination fills in the information and IMO often does a better job than you could with an eq or whatever.

you can only pay attention to so many things at once. pick yer battles.

all proper records have a tambourine on there somewhere.

[Gregg Juke]

Great responses here (see above). The parts about "not a democracy" and "mixing being part of arranging" are presciently, pricelessly spot-on. This sort of speaks to the dichotomy that I see, that your "mixing philosophy" often depends on whether you are "engineering" or "producing."

GJ

[Theo_Karon]

How does it sound in the other room? How does it sound in the other room while I'm eating a sandwich (in the other room)? That's important.

[tjcasey1]

Make sure you can hear everything - that's what I shoot for. I don't even think "art". Once you can hear everything clearly, you've got a good mix. Of course, the artist may turn around and say "I wanted to hear the lead guitar louder", so I'll turn that up by 1 or 2 db. But that's about it.

This is what I do AFTER I've gotten rid off stuff that just isn't working or that's cluttering things up for no reason. But I consider that to be "arranging", not "mixing".

People usually go gaga over what I've done with their mix, which makes me chuckle. In the back of my mind I keep saying to myself "but all I did was clean up the extreme EQ, compression, etc. that you were using."

[Foliage]

Thanks so much for the responses so far guys! Many of them made me chuckle. There's definitely a common thread forming, but hearing different people with different experiences explain things in their own way is great. Sometimes something just hits you because it's explained in a way you can easily relate to!

[tjcasey1]

And actually, the only time I went "whoa..." was after I had mastered a compilation and the client listened to it EXTREMELY LOUD. The "loud" song was ear-splitting! It had been mastered to be loud at my normal listening level, but this guy listens LOUD all the time. I had to remaster it a bit quieter for him, which was a shame because it had a nice "oomph" to it at normal listening levels.