Introduction

It’s not often a new form of art is conceived; where or when the art of mixing was born is not easy to answer. We can look at the instrumentation of orchestral pieces as a very primitive form of mixing—different instruments that played simultaneously could mask one another; composers understood this and took it into account. In the early days of recording, before multitrack recorders came about, a producer would place musicians in a room so that the final recording would make sense in terms of levels and depth. Equalizers, compressors and reverbs hadn’t yet been invented; there was no such role as a mixing engineer either; but sonically combining various instruments in order to produce an appealing, coherent, and aesthetic sound was an ambition shared by many.

Like many other new forms of creative expression that emerged in the twentieth century, mixing was tied to technology. It was the appearance of the multitrack tape machine during the 1960s that signified the dawn of mixing as we know it today. Yes, there was a time when having the ability to record eight instruments separately was a dream come true. Multitracks allowed us to repeatedly play recorded material before committing sonic treatment to the mix. Equalizers, compressors, and reverbs soon became customary in studios; audio consoles grew in size to accommodate more tracks and facilities. We had more sonic control over individual tracks and over the final master. The art of mixing was flourishing. Music sounded better.

The 1990s significantly reshaped much of the way music is made, produced, recorded, mixed, and even distributed—computers triumphed. Real-time audio plugins were first introduced with the release of Pro Tools III as far back as 1994, but such a setup required a dedicated DSP card. It was Steinberg’s 1996 release of Cubase VST that gave us the audio plugins we now take for granted—a piece of software that can perform realtime audio calculations using the computer’s CPU. The term project studio was soon coined as computers became more affordable and capable, and the hiring of expensive studios was no longer a requisite for multitracking and mixing. However, the processing power of computers back then could still not compete with the quality and quantity of mixing devices found in a professional studio.

Things have changed—running 10 quality reverbs simultaneously on a modern DAW has been a reality for some time. There are now more audio plugins in the market than hardware units, and the quality of these plugins is constantly improving. Professional studios will always, it seems, have an advantage over project studios, if only for their acoustic qualities. However, DAWs offer outstanding value for money, constantly improving quality and widening possibilities.

So is everything rosy in the realm of mixing? Not quite. It is thanks to computers that mixing has moved from large and expensive studios into bedrooms. More people than ever are mixing music, but only a few can be labeled experts. Mixing used to be done by skilled engineers, who were familiar with their studio and the relatively small set of expensive devices it contained. Mixing was their occupation—and for many their raison d’être. On the contrary, project studio owners generally do much more than just mixing— for many, it is just another stage in an independent production chain. So how can these people improve their mixing, specifically when time is often constrained?

This is where this book comes in. When the first word of this book was typed back in 2004, mixing literature was limited, cluttered, and often only scratched the surface. This book was originally conceived to stand as a much-needed comprehensive source. It is hard to believe that just over a decade later, we have the opposite problem—there is too much out there, and if literature isn’t enough there are also blog posts, online forums, and video tutorials. As us humans are increasingly and involuntarily assuming the role of information filters in this vast jungle called the Web, a book such as this can spare many the foraging—what you need or wish to know in one place.

Being comprehensive doesn’t come without a cost, though. This book is long; painfully long if you ask me. Perhaps of little comfort is that this book isn’t quite a cover-to-cover type of read—feel free to stop reading now, look at the table of contents, and jump to the topic of most interest to you. Possibly not everything will be clear without reading some preceding chapters, but you should grasp the bulk of it. Regardless, many readers have testified that with so much to digest, it was only on the second or third reading understanding sunk in.

I would like, in this opening text, to expose the greatest misconception that exists about mixing: it is wrongly assumed by some that mixing is a purely technical service, and some even declare that mixing is simply a remedy for imperfect recordings. There is no doubt that mixing entails technical aspects: a problematic level balance, uncontrolled dynamics and deficient frequency response are just a few of the technical issues we encounter. Yet, with the right amount of effort, almost anybody can master the technical aspects of mixing—after compressing 100 vocal tracks, one should be getting the hang of it. Technical skills are advantageous but can be equally acquired by all. The true essence of mixing does not lie in these skills. Many mixes are technically great, but nothing more than that; equally, many mixes exhibit some technical flaws, but as a listening experience they are breathtaking. It is for their sheer creativity—not for their technical brilliance—that some mixes are highly acclaimed and their creators deemed sonic visionaries.

The sonic qualities of music are inseparable from the music itself—the Motown sound, the Neve sound, the Wallace sound, and so forth. The nontechnical side of mixing entails crafting the sonic aspects of music: shaping sounds, crystallizing soundscapes, establishing harmony between instruments, and building impact—all rely on the many creative decisions that we make; all are down to the talent and vision of each individual; all have a profound influence on how the music is perceived. It is in the equalization we dial, in the reverb we choose, in the attack we set on the compressor, to name but a few. There simply isn’t one correct way of doing things—be it an acoustic guitar, a kick, or any other instrument, it can be mixed in 100 ways; all could be considered technically correct, but some would be more remarkable than others. A mix is a sonic portrait of the music. The same way different portraits of a person can each project a unique impression, different mixes can convey the essence of the music in extremely different ways. We are mixing engineers, but more importantly: we are sonic artists.

By the time you finish reading this book, you should have far more knowledge, a greater understanding, and improved auditory skills that will together enable you to craft better mixes. However, I hope that you keep this in mind: