When I was a younger man, I attended a mastering session for an EP I’d mixed. Attended sessions are less of a thing these days and in some ways, as someone who mixes and masters albums, it’s actually probably the shorter route to getting the best sounding mixes/masters. To avoid a rabbit trail, this is something I’ll address in a future producer thoughts post.
The seasoned mastering engineer politely pointed out to me that the mixes would be a lot stronger if there wasn’t so much in them. They were simply over produced.
The Kitchen Sink … and The Dishwasher For Good Measure
Back then, I had “grown” as a music producer but I had naively thrown every idea I had into the song. It didn’t necessarily sound bad (subjectively of course) BUT it was very full to the point of being over the top. All of those different ideas had to fight to find a space in a very cluttered sonic space and the mix suffered because of it.
From that day onwards I took that advice to heart and really started to ask myself “does that need to be there”. It’s something I still have to ask myself, especially when producing my own music.
Great Arrangements Mix Themselves
This is not a new idea and it’s well known amongst professional mix engineers.
More recently, I was recently finalising a track for the Doxkyn album called “Dear Precedence” (due for release 25 Jan 2024). I was at the pointy end of the mix so I was using Sonible’s True Balance to get a feel for the spectral balance. I loaded in some similar references and was pleasantly surprised that everything looked good without much tweaking.
More importantly, this song sounded good. It had sounded like that from the beginning really. It was a simple arrangement with instruments that occupied the frequency spectrum appropriately. The sounds by their very nature just didn’t need a whole lot of “mixing” to work.
The Takeaway: Think about the sounds that will be used in your song before you record them. Where will they sit frequency wise? Listen to other similar songs and get an idea of the sounds they are using and which places they are occupying in the frequency spectrum. The more you can choose sounds which sit well without even being mixed, the stronger your song and your mix will be.
Most of all, ask “does this need to be here?”. Pull out the kitchen sink and don’t even think about adding the dishwasher
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