James Lee Stanley

Tuesday evening I finished up recording the bass and basic percussion for the All Wood and Doors project and Wednesday could finally return to my solo project, Backstage At the Resurrection.

I am  in the final mixing stages and I wanted to talk a little bit about mixing.   This is such a complex topic, so deep and so varied that I’m just going to give you a couple of things that I do to make it easier.

For those of you just joining us, mixing is the combining of all the individual tracks of all the voices and instruments on a recording.   In the recording process, each voice or instrument is given it’s own space on the tape, or hard disk.  This space is called a track and it is a discrete recording of just that voice or instrument.   

Combining all these tracks in such a way that you can hear everything is the mixing process.   And it involves placing the sound somewhere in the stereo or 5.1 field, so that a specific part will come  to the ear from a different place, i.e. left, right, behind, dead center, etc; dialing in or out certain frequencies on each track; the volume of each track; and finally the effects (reverb, delay, etc) on each track.

So that’s what I’ve  been doing since Wednesday and will be doing so until this recording sounds like I want it to sound.

One of the suggestions that I would make to you is to have more than one set of speakers.   I use some large modified JBL’s that I have had for a decade and I use Yamaha NS-10’s for nearfield monitoring.   I also have a several pairs of AKG studio monitor earphones (KM-40’s?   I can’t remember the designation and the little metal logo plates are long gone).

I have these different sources so that I can listen to the mixes on each one of them.   The NS-10’s are essentially flat (a little high end spike); the JBL’s boomy and the earphones utterly flat in terms of frequencies; all frequencies are treated the same in the reproduction process of the phones.

With the advent of the Ipod, phone mixing has become much more important, as many people only listen to music on their Ipod.

The mix must sound great on all three sources.

The other simple trick I do is to listen to the mixes at various levels all day long, as I do the mixes.   Everything must be able to be heard at even the softest level or else it’s not mixed properly.

Sometimes I will put the mix on the softest level  I can and then close my eyes and listen…or even play solitaire and listen.   When you do it like that, things leap out at me that aren’t right.

One of the dangers of mixing a long time is that you develop the ability to just hear one thing, like the kick drum or the bass.   You tune everything else out, so listening in an off handed way allows you to listen to the whole and not the parts.

And when you listen at a high volume all day, you actually fatigue the ears and you begin to lose the ability to hear certain frequencies.   Never listen very long at a high volume.

Good luck in there.