Zen and the Art of Mixing

[Slau]

LOL You forgot
Ch 9?CW BLL and
Ch10?CW BLL DLY

[mixerman]

The engineer/soundguy side of me agrees with a lot of what he's saying, but the punk rock side does not. For example if you're working with an underground band that's pooled its savings to make the album they've dreamed of for the past year, or years, or lives, then you can't go "underdubbing" parts willy-nilly. Really, the same thing goes for most punk/metal bands in the underground scene; each band member gets their part and that's that. That's the way they want it, end of story. The punk rocker in me thinks, "who is this fucking mixing engineer who thinks he knows better than me how my songs should sound?" Then again, the odds of that kind of band working with a guy like Mixerman are low anyway; we just pay one guy to record, mix and maybe produce, maybe not.

It's not always about "the song". It can be about "the band" or "the album". Right?

I don't ever say that underdubbing is a requirement of a good mix. In fact, my very first sentence on underdubbing defines it quite clearly:

"Whereas overdubbing is the process of adding parts for the purposes of improving a production, underdubbing is the removal of those parts that fail in this regard."

So, if all the parts work great, there's no reason for an underdub.

You're talking about a genre of music, that is not only typically recorded quickly, but complex and overbearing overdubs aren't generally a part of the equation. If the point of the music is raw reckless abandon, I'm certainly not going to polish it, and there's probably not a whole lot to mute anyway.

If it makes you feel any better, I've mixed many songs in which I muted next to nothing.

Enjoy,

Mixerman

[mixerman]

Just picked this up yesterday and I'm like 60 pages into it. Good stuff. There are already some things I don't necessarily agree with, but lots of things that are right on. Part of me want to make everybody read it and the other part of me wants to keep it to myself.

Only complaint: what's up with always spelling kick drum "kik"?

It probably comes from years of writing kik on the board tape both for space considerations and time. I mean, think about how much time I've saved through my career dropping that "c" thousands upon thousands of time.

Shit. I might have just burned all the time I saved responding to this post.

Ah well.

Enjoy,

Mixerman

[vvv]

[jhharvest]

I write BD.

Great book, mixerman! I'd have brought my copy with me to Africa as the only book I'm bothering to carry, except a colleague nicked it before I left.

[Bro Shark]

Ugh, I need to stop typing my thoughts on the Internet.

Enjoyed the book a lot, Mixerman.