audio mixing Archives - Aaron J. Trumm

6 Tips for Audio Mixing on the Go

This article about audio mixing on the go first appeared in FlyPaper by Soundfly. I reprint it here with permission and I encourage you to check out their courses. You can get a 15% discount code on a subscription using the promo code AJTRUMM15.

Also – you may find an affiliate link here and there and I may get commissions – it’s part of how I keep afloat!

Let’s not beat around the bush. You probably got stuck at home for a long time due to the virus which shall remain nameless. So maybe “on the go” is an ironic thing to say, but the concept of mixing outside of the normal studio setting is what we’re talking about here.

You can use some of these tips to help you get quality mixes while you’re stuck at home, and even if your actual studio is at home, and in an open world you can take them out to all the coffee shops, park benches, and hotel rooms your heart desires.

So, without further ado – let’s talk about six tips for mixing on the go.

Listen More Ways

The fact is if you’re doing this audio mixing on the go thing, you’re probably doing so in headphones. If not headphones, you’re listening in rooms that aren’t treated well. If you’re at home, you could start treating the room you’re in, but if you don’t want to go down a home studio rabbit hole, or if you’re actually out in the world, consider various listening devices.

Try listening to mixes on your main headphones, then your laptop speakers, then a set of earbuds. Try exporting the mix to an mp3 and listening with your phone. Or connect an old boom box with aux input. Listen on your TV. Listen in your car. Take notes everywhere you listen so you can make adjustments.

Believe it or not this was common practice even back when everything was mixed in big fancy commercial studios.

Small Tweaks

When you make adjustments from listening to various speakers and devices, make them subtle. If you hear too much hat on the laptop but it sounds fine in the headphones, pull it down a bit so it starts to sound better on the laptop but doesn’t get lost in the headphones.

Remember the name of the game is having mixes translate on various devices, so making subtle tweaks is usually best. It’s also better in general when you’re not in the best circumstances to make small tweaks.

Develop Over Time

Since you have a DAW and you can save mixes, and even save alternate mixes, you don’t have to do it all at once. You can use this to your advantage to let a song develop over time, rather than trying to get it all right in one go.

This evolution of a mix over time is sometimes the best way to get past the limitation of being in less than ideal mixing environment.

Get Feedback

Since you do have the luxury of letting a mix develop over time, take advantage of other people’s listening environments (and ears!) by getting feedback. Take notes and try to make subtle adjustments based on what other people hear. Usually, you can implement everything everyone says in a subtle way and strengthen your mix over the course of a little time.

These people don’t have to be experts either. A healthy mix of expert ears and lay-listeners can really give you the best bead on how your sound is landing.

Use Reference Tracks

Starting off a mix session by listening to a view great mixes that are in the ballpark of the sound you want is always a good idea, but it’s especially necessary when you’re in unfamiliar territory. You still won’t be able to hear sub bass your headphones can’t reproduce or shimmering highs missing in your temporary speakers, but you will be able to calibrate your listening so you can more quickly get to the sound you’re looking for.

Come back to your references periodically, especially if you’re in headphones, to keep your perspective right.

Corrective Software

Finally, you may be able to improve your ability to mix remotely with the use of corrective software such as SonarWorks. Although not the only game in town, SonarWorks is the best at calibrating headphones so that you can get a reasonable even, reliable sound to mix with. Other calibration packages include IK Multimedia’s ARC, ToneBoosters, Dirac, and Waves NX. All these packages are simply filters you insert between your master buss and audio output, which eq the sound according to a headphone or room profile, evening out the sound for a more accurate mix. You may be surprised at how game changing this can be. (By the way, you could probably use some room correction in your space too – check my video on how I do this for – basically – free).

Go Forth – Or Stay Home

Whether you’re languishing in a house with no studio, or you’re living in the post COVID utopia of travel and socialization, you can get a great mix on the go with your laptop, DAW, and a little bit of tenacity and inventiveness. And you can always check your mixes later at the real studio to see how well you did. Using some of the tips here, we hope you’re pleasantly surprised!

I’m an artist, producer, and writer. I used to mix all over the place. Now I stay more put. Let’s talk about it on Facebook or Instagram

The Evolution Of Evolutionary Mixing

June 22, 2021 by Aaron

Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work, Recording Magazine

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio mixing, do it yourself recording, home recording, mixing, music mixing, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

The modern recording process has been set for quite a while. It goes:

Pre-Production (writing/rehearsing, etc.)
Tracking
Mixing
Mastering

Keeping these processes separate and distinct has its advantages. For example, a well written song composed, arranged and rehearsed is usually tracked smoothly, with fewer problems than ill-conceived ideas, even with non-traditional music like electronica. Well arranged songs also lend themselves to easier mixing. Mastering, meanwhile, needs to be its own process, with new ears and different gear, and of course getting a break from long tracking sessions and coming back fresh for mixdown can not only be more effective, but more fun and rewarding too.

The process has proven effective, but in the past 5-10 years, I’ve noticed a new paradigm developing for many musicians and producers, myself included.

In traditional mixdown, we bring recorded, edited final tracks to a mix studio, call up the tracks on tape, MDM or DAW and use a console and outboard processing to create the final mix. We move faders, dial knobs, make patches, and if our console isn’t automated (ie: the ubiquitous Mackie 8-Buss), rehearse and perform moves and changes in real time, sometimes working in teams (“move over, Bob! I have to twist the mid-range NOW to create that EQ wahwah! Make sure you fade channel 2 while I engage the delay…”)

These are often one shot sessions, with hours of listening on multiple monitors, boom boxes, computer speakers and car stereos to achieve translatable mixes. This works, but what if you make a mistake, or find out the mix is too boomy in Walmart? Can you recreate that session? Do you have the time and money to rebook? You can attempt to recreate an analog session, but it is painful and rarely works (remember the knob/fader sheets that came in 8-Buss manuals?).

Of course, DAWS and automated boards make it easier. A ProTools mix can be called up again and again, sounding exactly the same, especially if no outboard gear is involved, and an automated console can do the same. However even an inexpensive digital board sits in a single (expensive) room and so does a hefty ProTools rig, so there wasn’t necessarily a huge change to the process when digital boomed.

However, when laptops got powerful enough to handle multi-track audio, there was a bigger shift. In my own work, that shift was immediate and dramatic. Suddenly mixes could evolve over time. I could take the laptop everywhere, checking mixes and making small tweaks in video edit suites, project studios, theaters, houses or strange headphones. Add mp3s and stronger internet, and suddenly I was sharing evolving mixes with band members or label partners remotely, reading emailed feedback and correcting mixes while at coffee shops or on planes. Not only was there no longer a time crunch every session, I was listening in different ENVIRONMENTS, which is great for translatability. The result was lower cost and better mixes.

That change in process levels the playing field a bit, giving more artists another way to strive for world class material; but it can also change the fundamental recording process. With the ability to quickly tweak and change mix parameters (and save old versions), dialing in the sound can start earlier in the chain. Mixes can evolve with the writing, which is great for genres where the mix is a fundamental part of the composition itself, and while it can certainly be a double edged sword, if managed right, it can also lead to a more integrated and rewarding experience over all, and sometimes even to smooth as butter traditional mixdown and mastering sessions later in the process. Not to mention, there is a new sense of freedom there that wasn’t there before, and we artists do love our sense of freedom.

I like to call it “evolutionary mixing”. I wouldn’t call it a replacement for the traditional workflow. As I said, there are reasons that workflow developed, and some of the freedom afforded with a new outlook can be problematic. Mixing while writing and tracking can cause a loss of perspective, for example, and sometimes easier processes foster laziness. There’s also plenty of reason to hire and learn from masters of the trade. Having a laptop and an attitude is great, but taking that material back to an old master can really create that earth shaking sense of bridging past, present and future.

Personally, I still do my best to compose complete pieces first before doing much tracking, I’m adamant about hiring a world class mastering house, and on my next project, I’ll be combining the evolutionary mixing approach during tracking and editing to put my creative spin on things with a more traditional mixdown later in the process done by a whole different (better) engineer.

That all said, it is exciting to see technology changing the process in a way that increases access and creates new art and inspiration, not only for up and comers, but also for salty veterans who may need a kick in the pants. After all, new process: new result.

I’ve been searching for a good mix for 27 years. Most of the best ones have evolved over a little time. I’m currently outside…in fact I just took the picture at the top of this… talk to me about this and other music, creativity, and outside related things on my socials… @AaronJTrumm on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

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