When a mix is done ...

[malice]

I jut got off the phone with an A&R that quoted a famous french AE and mixer:

"A mix is not meant to be done, it's meant to be abandoned"
Patrice Blanc Francard

I will leave my reflexions about this statement a bit later, but I think this is good food for thoughts.

So discuss

malice

[Kenny Gioia]

Some projects I prefer to abandon before the mix…

but that's just me.

[lebouche]

I just decided with my client to scrap the last 3 months tweeks and go back to the old mixs...they were nearly perfect without all the cleaning up and pedantacisms....(wheres the spell check button?)

[MacGregor]

I jut got off the phone with an A&R that quoted a famous french AE and mixer:

"A mix is not meant to be done, it's meant to be abandoned"
Patrice Blanc Francard

I will leave my reflexions about this statement a bit later, but I think this is good food for thoughts.

So discuss

malice

Replace 'mix' by 'art'.

[Mixerman]

I jut got off the phone with an A&R that quoted a famous french AE and mixer:

"A mix is not meant to be done, it's meant to be abandoned"
Patrice Blanc Francard

I will leave my reflexions about this statement a bit later, but I think this is good food for thoughts.

So discuss

malice

Yeah, well that AE merely stole and repackaged the old adage about writing. "A book is never finished, it's merely abandoned." As someone that wrote a book, I'd say this is pretty much true.

As someone that has finished many more mixes, I would have to disagree.

There is a point, in my estimation, where the mix is done. I rarely find myself actually giving up on a mix, but rather deciding anything more that I do to it will be detrimental. I can't recall ever listening to a mix a year later and thinking, oh, I'd like to change one more thing. I can't say the same about some of the sentence structures in the book.

The key to your best mix is to stop mixing once the song is done. Otherwise you go past the mix. If one were to merely to abandon early, while there were still problems in the mix, then one never got to the mix in the first place.

Mixerman

[nobby]

My mixes should be abandoned, like a sinking ship :grin:

I think the point is, you can tweak something endlessly, so you may have to make a decision to stop.

I guess if you're a commercial mixer, this is tied to the budget; If your budget allows $50k for the project, stop at $60k.

[otek]

I can't recall ever listening to a mix a year later and thinking, oh, I'd like to change one more thing.

Funny, I can't recall ever listening to a mix a year later and wanting anything but running the CD through a wood chipper, putting the shreds in a rocket, and sending the whole thing into solar orbit.

To each his own, I guess. :D

[malice]

As someone that has finished many more mixes, I would have to disagree.

There is a point, in my estimation, where the mix is done. I rarely find myself actually giving up on a mix, but rather deciding anything more that I do to it will be detrimental.

I tend to agree with that statement, although I would consider this to fall in the "abandon you mix" category.


I can't recall ever listening to a mix a year later and thinking, oh, I'd like to change one more thing. I can't say the same about some of the sentence structures in the book.

Same here, most of the time I don't wanna come back an change a thing. I wish I could say : ever. But you might be a better mixer than I am. That said, I can recall wanting to change something, not after a year, but after 24 hours. Then that would coroborate the quote from Patrick.


The key to your best mix is to stop mixing once the song is done. Otherwise you go past the mix. If one were to merely to abandon early, while there were still problems in the mix, then one never got to the mix in the first place.


Again, I feel like if you feel like you have to stop when your mix is "done", then in a way, you "abandon" it.

Like parting from it at the right time.

As most form of art, it's all about momentum

malice

[Kenny Gioia]

I'm with Mixie in that I believe you hear the moment a mix is done.

You can just hear it.

I hate tweaking a mix after that point.

Although I differ in the listening to it years later part.

I always think I could have done it better.

[malice]

Although I differ in the listening to it years later part.

I always think I could have done it better.


Well,

You could say that, but it's a general feeling toward the mix. Like: "hmmm, this is not my best mix" kinda feel.

All the detail issues are vanishing and you can make a better judgement over the mix as a whole.

malice

[maccool]

I'm with Mixie in that I believe you hear the moment a mix is done.

You can just hear it.

And that, surely, above and beyond the technical wizardry, is what makes a good AE an artist?

[Mixerman]

Funny, I can't recall ever listening to a mix a year later and wanting anything but running the CD through a wood chipper, putting the shreds in a rocket, and sending the whole thing into solar orbit.

To each his own, I guess. :D
Heh, I just don't ever listen to those CDs.

Of course I have done CDs that I don't think are very good. The important thing is in accepting that as a mixer, you can only bring a song and a production to its fullest potential. If that potential was low, then it ain't your fault.

It's all just healthy ego development.

If the mixes turn out great, you're a fucking genius, and only your mixes would have ever turned out so great.

If the mixes are terrible, they're hacks, and everyone should be so happy that you made it as good as you did.

The only exeception to these rules is for songs that you fucking hate. If you hate the song, all bets are off. You'll never make a sufficient mix, and you can only pray that someone else either wins the mix, or is hired after the fact to mix it for you.

Mixerman

[eagan]

There is a point, in my estimation, where the mix is done. I rarely find myself actually giving up on a mix, but rather deciding anything more that I do to it will be detrimental. I can't recall ever listening to a mix a year later and thinking, oh, I'd like to change one more thing. I can't say the same about some of the sentence structures in the book.

The key to your best mix is to stop mixing once the song is done.

This, to me, is one of the most interesting parts of this so far. I might have to print that and clip it out into a little note to stick up in a place where I'll find myself staring at it often while working.

The fact that Mixerman looks at a book project in a different way just suggests the difference in one guy and experience in one kind of work versus another. There's probably a lesson in that about experience making you able to be quicker at seeing all the options, weighing them, and then (maybe the hardest part?) discarding many of them.

Maybe that's the biggest problem, for a lot of people? You can keep gradually having ideas about some other thing you can try, and keep trying them, and make the pile of decisions to be made larger and larger as you go. "How can I spiff this up a little more?"

Maybe the lesson is just to work toward the point where everything is out of each other's way, and then stop before you mess it up again?

I suspect that this thread can go on for pages and pages, for a lot of reasons. There's no single magic formula, although I think there are a lot of people doing this in the world who figure it's just a matter of collecting the right bag of magic tricks to apply to anything they mix.

For some time I've wondered if the biggest problem many people have with mixing has been caused by the fixation over the past couple of decades on the idea of hired gun "Supermixers" and their Supermixes. You know, the idea of just handing over a bag of ingredients and some wizard whips up magic from it, rather than just being a guy who sits down for a few hours and organizes what's there.

I'm one of those "solo guys in a home studio part time" characters these days, rather than working for clients in a studio on the clock, and that right there gets you into a whole new bag of worms.

In my own case, the current stuff at hand tends to include great gigantic piles of textural tracks to sort through, and that brings on all kinds of listening and decision making about "what should I maybe pull out?". (Part of how I deal with that is making steps of decision making and submixing part of the process, so "the mix" is actually a multistep ongoing process).

[I'm guessing that among the folks here, me and Fulcrum might have the most common ground]

For me personally, it would be a much different deal if I were doing straightforward guitar/bass/drums/vocals rock and roll. I struggle with the decisions involved in layers of stuff and weighing what's most important, what's background, all that.

I suppose when it comes to what this thread is about, in some cases, for some of us there has to be a time when you just have to call a halt and decide that this is the best it's going to get, move forward to the next project, and maybe the next time, we'll be a little smarter than the last time.

Does that ever really end?


JLE

[Kenny Gioia]

Of course I have done CDs that I don't think are very good. The important thing is in accepting that as a mixer, you can only bring a song and a production to its fullest potential. If that potential was low, then it ain't your fault.

Mixerman

Although, being the Producer and Mixer on a given project does not afford me such luxuries. :Sad:

[Mixerman]

Although, being the Producer and Mixer on a given project does not afford me such luxuries. :Sad:

Well, yeah. When you're the producer, it's a whole new ball game. That's why I think a producer should be far more selective than a mixer. As a mixer, I can usually find some redeeming quality in the music. As a Producer, I better be able to find more than a redeeming quality, or I'm the wrong producer for the gig.

Mixerman

[djui5]

To me a mix is done when it sounds like a song, and I don't hear anything else I need to tweek...

[Kenny Gioia]

Well, yeah. When you're the producer, it's a whole new ball game. That's why I think a producer should be far more selective than a mixer. As a mixer, I can usually find some redeeming quality in the music. As a Producer, I better be able to find more than a redeeming quality, or I'm the wrong producer for the gig.

Mixerman

Can a budget be considered a redeeming quality?

[vocalnick]

Coming at it from very much a project studio angle, I think there's a lot of psychology and self-delusion that goes on when you're listen to a mix after some time has passed. I tend to acclimatise to even the, um, "less good" mixes, to the point where if I do revisit a mix, the new & improved version just doesn't sound quite right, even if it's objectively better in technical terms.

I guess this is just another form of "demo love", really...

[EyreSpace]

I often think the mix is finished long before the client does. They always have "science experiments" that they want to explore. Sometimes they work out, usually not. Gotta love those hourly rates...

[eagan]

I hadn't mentioned this before, but there was something I read in an interview once that really stuck in my head, and it seems to relate here.

Pat Metheny was talking to somebody about whatever it was, and came up with a phrase for something, that he calls "option anxiety". If I remember it right, he was mostly talking about people having keyboards with 1001 synth patches available to punch through, or similar stuff with guitar players, processing, different amps, and so on.

The crux of the biscuit was essentially that given a large number of technological options for sounds, that people would frantically zip through the million and one choices they might have available, yet never really settle deep into any of them, because of some fear that they might miss the coolest thing in the universe just around the corner if they don't keep trying stuff. You can lose the plot of what you're actually doing.

Now, I'm guilty of something like this myself, sometimes, although I don't do the "punch through all the presets and try each one for a total of two seconds" thing he was describing.

I do believe in exploring and experimenting, and I think you can go the opposite way and restrict yourself too much, by insisting you stop and stick with the first brain fart that pops out.

The point to me is that it's a sometimes difficult bit of discipline to be able to hold up when you have something good, and move on to the next item, and not freak yourself out on thoughts that you might be stopping just short of the discovery of wonder and amazement that will make the universe throw itself at your feet.

I definitely think this applies to mixing.


JLE

[Fulcrum]

What Eagan said. It's so difficult sometimes to just decide, and then to live with the decision, in an era when literally anything seems possible. And when you are your own only client, and you don't have a deadline, you can all too easily crawl up your own ass. Ask my wife; I could probably see out my own esophagus at this point.

I have actually been repeating the mantra of completion vs. abandonment quite often over the last three weeks, as I am preparing to finally wrap up the Fulcrum album. I realized:

that the mixes I am undertaking for my album are only ever going to get "close enough" and that further polishing is not going to add very much more to them; and
that I am about to pass the point of diminishing returns, so far as my effort goes; and
that I'm not going to have a whole hell of a lot of time once CAPE starts.So my drop-dead completion date is now February 1. I've been working on this non-stop for a number of years, and I'm going to need a change soon. It will be nice to have this behind me.

Then CAPE, and then putting out feelers for the album... my wife is ready to kill me now, even as I am learning the words to "Who Will Buy?".

[dikledoux]

The trick about "option anxiety" is to have the idea in your head FIRST, then look for the thing that either accomplishes that or is so undeniably better that you have to discard your original idea.

Seems like I remember an old interview with Michael Hedges wherein they touched on his use of alternate tunings. He mentioned that he didn't come up with a tuning and then start to hunt for interesting patterns. He'd have the composition pretty well fleshed out in his head and then find a tuning that would let him accomplish that. That really struck me as a smart process.

dik

[Mixerpuppet]

I was gonna say when the last Invoice is paid...

There are some thing to consider in my mind about perspective and relativity.

Mixes you considered finished in your younger and more inexperienced years may not have really been finished...

Some songs mix themselves and some are unmixable... If I feel Im fighting too much early in the mix then there is doubt in my mind that the mix can be finished without either retracking or abandoning the song.

Obviously the freelancers like Mixie will have more to work with as far as source material which removes them from a variety of circumstances that may cause abandonment. Just a guess.

I got my first studio job in 1989( July) and was mixing (supervised) by december. I've never been happy with every mix from start to finish since then.

My expectations all always higher than my dismal ability, like chasing the moon...

I don't have an ego so maybe that's my problem...

My gut feeling is that having a goal of what the finished mix will sound like is key to being able to finish one.

[Kenny Gioia]

Some songs mix themselves and some are unmixable...



Great point.

An amazing song can usually be mixed by any of us and still be a hit.

A horrible one could be mixed by the best and still suck hiney.

So why do they hire me again?

[malice]

Lebouche,

I started a new thread with your question ;)

malice

[Jason Phair]

For me? After the second encore.

[DaveC]

I know when one of my mixes is done. Nothing is sticking out and annoying me, and the song rocks (for me). If I flip to some other killer CD's in a similar genre, it at least stands up well.

Not saying I always have enough time/mindset etc to pull that off. Main problem is if the time and pressure means that you don't have enough mind-space to properly sit back and really listen to what's playing.

I'm also not complacent, I am sure that just about every aspect of my mixing and the way I hear and the way I 'see' a song can be improved, and I am striving and focussing on a few things all the time. But you can't reinvent your abilities all the time.

A mix is a performance, and in professional realms it must be performed within some sort of time frame, so you do what you can and hope that it is in the ballpark of your usual standards so you are not ripping anyone off, and hope to learn something while you do it.

Could it have been done 'better'?
a: not by me on that day
b: better by what standards? There are some appalingly mixed mega hits out there, so if it is mixed better than them, surely it must be adequate!

But anyway, I think you know when it is finished. It might be a crap mix, but it is a finished one. If you don't know it's finished, how can it be an artistic representation of the way you saw the song?

Sorry if this is a ramble and doesn't make any sense, I've been hardlining the Slipperman 'narratives' solid for 3 days, and I think it has had an effect.

[slabrock]

When the record is in stores and has started to sell.

Until then there's lots of people who can get any kinds of ideas, and i may be called back to fix something i'm perfectly satisfied with - and they should be, too.

I've got few too many good records on hold right now, so i'm a little cautious.
:icon_eek: :icon_eek: :icon_eek:

Peace,

Slabrock

[Stick]

It makes me happy when I get a mix "done" before I reach the point of saying "that's as good as it's going to get". And usually, for one song, that has to happen on two different days, because it usually sounds pretty different the next day.