Decisive Action

Mixing has nothing to do with unlimited creativity. It’s creativity within a context, and you’re expected to deliver instant results. In a way, it’s a lot like playing improvised music. The context is clear, the agreements have been made, you know your instrument, and the rest will become clear within a few hours. If you want to mix on a regular basis, your mixing process should be reliable first and foremost. You have to be sure that there will be something useful at the end of the session, even if it’s not your most brilliant performance. Therefore, experienced mixers are good at making decisions: at a certain point in the process they choose a direction and follow it through to the end. There are two challenges when it comes to this: first of all, your choice shouldn’t be based on a wild guess. The more you know about the music, production and artist, the more certain you can be of your choice. And second, you want to choose as quickly as possible, because this means more time for the execution of the mix, plus your focus and objectivity won’t be so low that your work becomes unreliable. You’ve probably noticed that these two challenges contradict each other. You want your choice to be as informed as possible, but if you postpone it too long, you won’t complete the mix successfully before your ears get tired.

Figure 15.2There are a few moments for reflection and discussion with your client, but during the execution of the plan there’s no room for distraction or looking back. For live mixers, it’s self-evident that there can only be discussion during the sound check and after the concert, as it requires their full focus to successfully complete the execution. Ideally, it should work the same in the studio, but don’t expect all parties involved to also realize this. If you don’t pay attention, the execution phase will be used for feedback as well, which is disastrous for your focus. Therefore, after the preparatory phase is over, you’ll have to consciously create room for the execution.

The solution is to learn to sketch as quickly as possible. After all, the only way to know which ideas have potential and which ones can be written off is by trying them out. The setup of your studio and mix template has a huge influence on your working pace, and so has your repertoire of ‘universal solutions’ for common mixing problems. Your sketches won’t just help you to make decisions, but also serve as a means of communication. An audio example will tell your client more than a thousand words. Through efficient sketching, you can get to a mixing vision faster, while reducing the risk that it falls short, or that it clashes with the producer’s vision (see Figure 15.3).

Figure 15.3The time during which you can stay objective, focused and creative is limited. That’s why it’s so important to structure the first part of the mixing process well. Executing and refining the mix can still be done after you’ve lost your focus a bit, but devising and testing new concepts is no longer possible at the end of a session. Complex mixes are a challenge, because when you call it a night and continue working the next day, there’s a greater risk of questioning your original concept. The earlier and clearer you define your vision for the mix, the more reliable the process will be.

Be Nice to Yourself

No mix is perfect, and no mix is ever ‘done.’ You could keep working on a mix forever, but at some point you have to decide that it’s finished, if only due to a deadline or a limited budget. I wish it were different, but that’s the reality of mixing. Live, this is much easier to accept, as you simply can’t control everything. But in the studio, it can be frustrating: you’ll always hear aspects in the music that could still be improved.

Your perception can be a burden, because in reality there is a point when the mix is really done. It’s just that this point isn’t defined by the moment when everything is perfect, because that doesn’t exist. The mix is done when the essence of the music comes across to the listener, when all parts in the arrangement fulfill their role, and when the objectivity of the mix engineer has reached its end. If you can’t tell anymore if something helps the music or not, you really need to stop.

The latter isn’t always easy. Some productions contain contradictions, which means you have to make huge compromises in the mix to still make it work. For me, it’s always hard to hear these mixes again later. Even though the mix might have turned out okay, and though it works in the sense that the music comes across, I only hear the compromises I had to make. I’ll keep wondering if there couldn’t have been a better solution. If I have to make objective decisions about such a mix again (for instance, because the producer still wants to change things), I make sure to protect myself. From that moment on, I use my main monitors as little as possible, and make as many adjustments as I can on small speakers. This way, I’ll mainly hear the essence of the music, and not so much the details. It makes it easier for me to preserve the essence of the mix without questioning all my previous decisions. The worst thing you can do during this minor adjustment phase is to smooth out your original approach too much. After all, this is the very approach that convinced yourself, the artist and the producer that it’s time for minor adjustments.

As you can tell, we’re reaching the point where mixing can be a fight against yourself. The final stage of a mix is the perfect opportunity to start doubting your own abilities, to be intimidated by the way (already mastered) reference tracks compare with your mix, to wonder if your speakers are playing tricks on you, and so on. Add to this the assignments that are called off because clients aren’t satisfied with your approach (this happens to the biggest names in the business—mixing is still a matter of taste), and you have a recipe for getting seriously depressed about what you’re doing. It’s not a bad thing at all to be critical of your work—I don’t think I’ve ever delivered a mix I was one hundred percent satisfied with—but there’s a point where it ceases to be constructive. Fear leads to gutless mixes. If you don’t dare to push on with your vision for the mix, the result will be reduced to a boring avoidance of anything that could potentially disturb anyone. In the end, not too much of this and not too much of that means very little of anything.

It helps to think like a musician on a stage. Above all, mixing should be fun: you should be able to lose yourself in it and make decisions without fear of falling flat on your face or being judged. If you don’t feel this freedom, your decisions will never be convincing. And what if you’re all out of ideas for the moment? Then don’t be too hard on yourself, and simply trust the people around you. Every day, my clients help me to be a better mixer, by pointing me to things I had overlooked, or by proposing alternative approaches. It’s nonsense that you can instantly understand everything about a song. If you want to do your job well and with conviction, you need to give yourself some space. Sometimes you just have to try your luck to hear how an idea turns out, and laugh about it if it fails. Sometimes you have to be brave enough to hold on to your first impulse without getting thrown off by the drawbacks that are bound to come with it. Sometimes you have to admit that the artist and producer are right when they say your mix isn’t working yet, and other times you have to trust them when they say your mix is awesome, even though you’re not so sure about it yourself.

One thing can never be called into question during mixing: your process. You will need an almost religious belief in it, because whoever said that it’s better to turn back halfway than to get lost altogether was definitely not a mix engineer. It’s only after the mix is finished that you can afford to think about methodology, and preferably not more than a few times a year. Being biased about the effectiveness of your own way of doing things—and the gear you use—will help you to reach the finish line with a sense of conviction. If you start wondering halfway if the compressor you’re using is really the best compressor ever, you could easily end up with a remix. This is why only your mixing decisions can be the subject of debate: whether you use the compressor, and how much. Don’t question the fact that you always use the same compressor for a certain purpose. ‘You can’t change the rules of the game while you’re still playing’ would be a good slogan for any mixer to frame and hang on the wall.

Be Open

If you want to use your initial feeling as a tool, first of all you have to be open to it. This might sound like something you’d rather expect from a woolly self-help book, but it’s necessary. However, this doesn’t mean you have to take a Zen Buddhism course, but you do need an empty head, calmness and attention.

The first time you listen to a piece of music should be a conscious experience, so the music will have the chance to settle into your mind. This is why I never play a project in the background while I’m still busy preparing the mix setup. I prepare what I can without hearing the music (routing, naming, sorting and grouping of the tracks, arranging the mixing board, and so on). When that’s done, I grab a fresh cup of coffee and quietly listen to the entire production. I prefer to start with a rough mix that clearly conveys the idea. But if this isn’t available, I simply open all the faders, and if things annoy me, I quickly turn them down while I keep listening. This is the closest thing to walking into a venue and hearing a band play without prior knowledge, or hearing a song for the first time at a party or on the car radio. If it’s a live mix, you could start by having the artists play together on stage without using the PA. This way, you’ll notice how they react to each other and who fulfills which role, before you start manipulating this with your mix.

Figure 15.5Consciously registering your first impressions of a mix in the form of associations makes it easier during the final stage to still distinguish between the main elements (which make the music and mix unique) and the secondary ones (which support the main elements).

Sometimes I take notes, but usually I absorb the music mentally and start free-associating. You can see this as consciously creating connections between your feelings and concrete references. These connections help you to remember your feelings, just like it’s easier to remember all the names of a group of new people if you consciously connect them to a physical feature or to someone you know who has the same name. In Figure 15.5, the principle of this way of working is visualized.

Translate

Preserving your feelings is the starting point, but you won’t be able to use them as a tool until you can convert these feelings into concrete mixing decisions. In order to visualize how this process works, you could draw a huge diagram in which you would have to display the complete histories of the composer, musicians, producer and mixer. Their fears, loves, influences, origins, upbringing, experiences, character, everything. All of these things converge at a certain point in the diagram and start to affect one another, which eventually leads to all kinds of decisions. Such a diagram would be infinitely complex and almost by definition incomplete. This is why, in the art world, this process is often simply referred to as ‘magic,’ ‘inspiration’ or ‘creativity.’ Great, all these vague concepts for the most crucial part of the creative process. Sadly, it’s hard to make these things more concrete, because the translation of your feelings into practice is exactly where the greatest artistic freedom lies. This conversion works differently for everyone, and therefore, by definition, music sounds different when it’s mixed by someone else. In that sense, imitating someone else’s mix is like trying to fall in love with the same type of person as someone you admire, which is never going to work. Still, there is more to be said about how this magic can come about, as a significant part of it is actually not so magical—it’s mainly about estimating what’s important for the music, and then drawing on your knowledge of how you could accentuate this in your mix. In these cases, there’s a relatively direct connection between your perception, associations and mixing decisions. Another part of it is in fact more abstract, and if you want you can use the word ‘magic’ for that. Or call it ‘chance,’ ‘revelation from above,’ or whatever floats your boat (see Figure 15.6).

Storyline

If all of this is getting a bit too vague for you, or if it’s already in your system so you don’t have to consciously think about it, there’s another concrete and easy-to-implement principle you can use to direct your mixing decisions: all music has a story. It takes you from one point to another, and things happen on the way. These musical events keep the music interesting to listen to, and therefore it’s important to emphasize them in the mix. This is a lot like mixing music and sound for a film, except that the events on the screen are prompted by the scenario, not by the music. Since these cinematic events are much more concrete than when you work with music alone, it’s easier to make distinct mixing decisions. When I mix music for movies or live performances, I always find myself having fewer questions than when I only hear the music. The images dictate when what is important; they determine the course of the mix.

Figure 15.6The method I use to hold on to the feeling I get from a piece of music when I hear it for the first time. By consciously registering my associations, I create a memory that I can call up later in the process, and then translate it into mixing decisions. Often, a large part of my feeling has little to do with how others perceive the same piece of music. Therefore, it’s not my intention to translate it literally so you can recognize it in the music—the conversion is usually much more abstract. I mainly use these concrete associations as a memory aid, to bring me back to the moment when I first heard the music.

If there is no (visual) story, you can also create one yourself. You can come up with a music video to go with the song you’re mixing, or play a movie in the background with a mood that matches the music. In an interview with mix engineer Tom Elmhirst (by sonicscoop.com), I read that he regularly plays movies in the studio while mixing, to keep having images to connect with the music. For me, it often works well to create scenarios for transitions that aren’t powerful enough yet. This is also a very effective way to communicate with artists and producers about where a mix should go. A songwriter once made it clear to me what had to happen in the transition to the bridge by telling this story: ‘You’re at a party among friends, but you start to feel more and more alienated from them. Eventually, you take a big jump and dive into the swimming pool to close yourself off from the outside world. Underwater, you become completely self-absorbed.’

Figure 15.7Mixing a song based on a (made-up) story motivates you to create powerful, unambiguous movements. A single image of a submarine going underwater can lead to dozens of mixing decisions, in a very intuitive way.

A concrete storyline like this can be a stimulus for hundreds of mixing decisions, all of which serve the same purpose. The result of such a connection is a mix that makes a powerful statement: your goal is to create an event that’s told by all the instruments, not a random balance in which the instruments just happen to sound good together (see Figure 15.7).

Your audience usually won’t have any idea of the underlying ideas that brought you to a particular mix. Which is good, because if you communicate these ideas too literally, your listeners can’t develop their own feelings with the music. Therefore, the goal is not to convey your own associations, but to use them to give your mix a certain structure. The audience can feel the difference between a structured mix and one that results from arbitrariness. A structure can really give a mix a distinct character and a narrative quality, which is more likely to evoke feelings in the listener than something that only sounds nice but that’s pretty randomly put together. You can compare this principle to an abstract painting: you can give the viewer too much, but also too little structure to hold on to.

Take Breaks

The longer you can stay objective about your own work, the greater the amount of reliable work you can get done in a single day. In this case, ‘reliable’ means that you and your clients will still be satisfied with it the following day. Besides training your ability to concentrate (by mixing a lot), taking breaks is the best way to expand this window of objectivity. But it’s not as easy as spending twenty minutes at the coffee machine every two hours, like they do at the office. An ill-timed break can also make you lose your grip on a project. Simply taking a hike in the middle of a process or a train of thought is not an option, as this sometimes means you have to do the whole thing again after you come back from your break. A break can help you to take some distance from already completed subprocesses, so you can evaluate them with fresh ears. For example, your first mix balance won’t mean anything until it’s done. It’s pointless to reflect on it halfway, as this will only allow the doubt that rears its ugly head after each break to sneak into your process. It’s for this reason that I always have lunch at different times, depending on where I am in the process. I should add that to me, a break means no music, so no reference tracks by other artists either. I don’t let the artist have another listen to the mix while I’m taking a break, and I don’t perform minor edits that are still on the wish list. Preferably, I spend some time outside the studio, in different acoustics with different ambient noise. I would almost consider picking up smoking . . .

Distraction

One of the reasons to take breaks is that your ears get used to the sound they have to cope with (see Chapter 2). This is what makes a piercing guitar pop out of the mix the first couple of times you hear it, while later it seems to blend in just fine, even though you haven’t changed a thing. This kind of habituation creeps in when you listen to the same sound for an extended period of time. So even if you don’t take breaks, it’s a good idea to not constantly play music. All the work I can do without sound coming from the speakers, I do in this way. For naming, cleaning up tracks and routing you don’t need any sound. For editing you do, but you don’t always have to hear the entire mix. So this is one of those rare cases where the solo button does come in handy: when you’re removing noises or clicks from an individual part, it’s fine (or even better) to do this by isolating the track.

Switching to a different type of speakers can also help you get a fresh perspective on your mix, although it can also be confusing if you don’t know exactly what to expect from a particular speaker. A less drastic solution that will still work very well is briefly switching the left and right channels. This way, many instruments are temporarily located somewhere else, so it will be more like hearing them for the first time. If the piercing guitar from the example was originally panned slightly to the right, its shrillness will stand out more when it suddenly comes from the left. It’s important to be alert when you listen to the result, because after you’ve heard your mix twice with an inverted stereo image, the novelty has already worn off.

You can also try to reset your ears with other sounds. And I don’t mean intimidatingly good-sounding reference tracks that have everything you’d want your own mix to have, but a completely different sound. This won’t keep your ears from getting tired, but it can rebalance your reference of the frequency spectrum. After you’ve watched some random nonsense on YouTube, maybe you’ll suddenly hear how piercing that guitar really is.

Let Your Mind Wander

As much as I value silence when I’m not consciously working on the mix, sometimes listening with half an ear is the best way to signal problems. If you let your attention wander to your inbox, a television show or another source of distraction, you can suddenly notice a huge problem that was right under your nose all this time. All-important realizations such as: ‘If I turn the vocals down, the entire mix will fall into place,’ will sometimes only come to you after you create some mental distance from the mix. There’s a fine line between half-attentive listening and not listening at all, so it’s important to find a way that works for you. Personally, I become too absorbed in email and messaging to keep my thoughts open enough for the music. But checking a website or watching sports with one eye (and without sound) works perfectly for me.

Pragmatism and Deadlines

Creativity isn’t bound by time, or at least according to people who obviously aren’t mix engineers. It’s true that good ideas are difficult to force, but what you can do is leave as little as possible to chance. The day that I don’t finish a mix because I’m passively waiting for a good idea is the day that I’m replaced by another mixer. A large part of the mixing process consists of structuring and executing ideas that have already been conceived by others, or that are already part of your own repertoire. You can always fall back on these if you’re all out of ideas. Because you work so methodically, with tools and concepts you’re extremely familiar with, this creates a pleasant state of peace that allows you to be creative. The almost autistic nature you need to have as a mixer—and the desire to leave nothing to chance and always structure everything the same way—makes you confident enough to explore new creative directions. Meanwhile, your method helps you to suppress the fear that the mix won’t be finished or that it won’t work.

Part of this method is setting deadlines. Not allowing yourself to try yet another idea, forcing yourself to move on to the next element and recording an effect (so you can’t change it anymore) can all be seen as deadlines. Deadlines force you to make choices, which in turn forces you to be pragmatic. An example would be if you can’t get the lead vocals and piano to work together. The vocals are more important, so if there’s still no convincing solution after twenty minutes of trying, the piano will have to make room by being turned down a bit. You might think that this kind of pragmatism is the enemy of perfectionism, and that it leads to carelessness. In some cases this could be true, but more often pragmatic choices keep the mixing process from stagnating, plus they make sure that there’s at least something to reflect on at a certain point. After all, it’s pointless to refine half-finished products—something has to be finished first, otherwise you can’t hear where you are.

Some insights require more time than available in a mixing process. It’s highly possible that, after mixing the first three tracks of an album, I suddenly discover the method that makes the vocals and piano work together. I can then go back to my previous mixes and make them work even better with some minor adjustments. On the other hand, if I had refused to turn down the piano during the first mix, I would have embarked on a frustrating course in which I could have spent hours looking for a liberating epiphany, completely losing sight of my objectivity. As a result, I wouldn’t be able to make any meaningful choices about the other instruments anymore, because I had already grown tired of the music. Pragmatism is necessary to protect yourself from such pointless exercises. The more experience you have, the easier it gets to be pragmatic. You can already predict the hopelessness of a particular search beforehand, and then decisively break it off.

By the time you’ve attentively listened to a song fifty times, small details will become more and more important to you. It can even go so far that you lose sight of the essence of the mix in favor of the details. When this happens to me, I switch to my small speakers and listen to the ‘bare-bones’ version of the mix, stripped of everything that makes it sound nice. Usually, that’s when I hear the essence again. And if I notice that my tinkering is only making this essence weaker, it’s time to call it quits and live with the remaining ‘imperfections.’ The mix is done.