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music-mixing

Art vs. Science in Mixing – and Life?

August 31, 2021 by Aaron
Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work, Recording Magazine
aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, acoustics, do it yourself recording, home recording, mixing, music mixing, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine, rob chiarelli

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!

If you haven’t read a book called “Zen and the Art of Mixing”, stop now, order it, and then continue reading this.

Now that you’ve done that, I’ll tell you a story. One day not long ago I was sitting in a plush lecture hall in the Westin hotel in Los Angeles, listening to a workshop on mixing by Rob Chiarelli. If you don’t already know, Rob is a Grammy winning producer and mixer, known for working with such acts as Will Smith, Christina Aguilera, Pink, LeAnn Rimes, Janet Jackson, Stevie Wonder…and on and on and on.

Needless to say, we were all excited to hear what Rob had to say, and there were many enthusiastic mixers ready with a host of questions. As you might imagine, some of those questions were quite technical, and I remember early on somebody in the back asked something I thought of as – well – a little nit-picky. LUFS on pre-master mix buss, or something along those lines. Something that although I have the capacity to understand, would never have crossed my mind to ask, in 25 years of making records. Naturally I felt stupid.

I was prepared for embarrassment, feeling sure that Rob would pontificate in great detail on the proper way to handle whatever it was, but was pleasantly surprised when Rob scoffed. I don’t want to say he called it a stupid question (he was very magnanimous) – but kinda.

Rob’s answer was basically this: does it sound good? Does it feel good? He did talk for some time in response to that question, but the lecture was about what matters in a mix, and that’s the song. If the thing feels great, it feels great. If it sounds great, it sounds great, and if you get so caught up in the technical mumbo-jumbo and fail to pay attention to the feel of the mix, you’ll probably mess it up.

That was a great relief, but in the next few minutes, Rob did talk about some very technical points, and he did end up addressing the question in some detail. What struck me was the deep understanding he had about the science of audio, as well as the overall goal. Here was a guy who has a grasp of the balance between art and science. He hadn’t scoffed at this question because he was stumped. Not at all.

It seems this is a pretty fitting analogy for life in general. We need to understand the details, and science has the been the way we’ve achieved most of what we take for granted now. It was a physicist (Loud Tommy Dowd) who gave us multi-track recording and the fader. An electrical engineer (Max Mathews) brought us digital audio. But when we get caught in the details and forget the reason for them, we risk losing the art entirely.

We’re seeing that battle a lot lately, not just in music. Science is being thrown away when it shouldn’t be, but so is its counterpart, faith. This is a dilemma as old as history. In college lectures on medieval history, we called it the battle of faith vs. reason. In every era one trumps the other and there are always consequences.

Perhaps this is what’s so magical about music and mixing. You really can’t get it right without both. Fail to understand the science and you’re left guessing, bumbling, and making mixes that sound like cats fighting or elephants dying. Skip the crucial details and you could find yourself overloading a speaker, losing a job, or recording silence at a once in lifetime performance.

Still, if you can’t step back and feel the music, let it tell you what it needs, and worry less about technical terms, peak meters and the next fancy plugin, you could end up making cold, dreary mixes that move no one. In fact, too much emphasis on the technical and you could end up with the same muddy, screechy mix as your head-in-the-clouds counterpart.

There are two abilities that set great mixers apart from mediocre ones. One is the ability to hear details – pick out the high-hat and hear that slight 3k resonance or hear the kick phasing just slightly with the bass. The other is to turn that type of listening off and hear the big picture. Listen to the way the mix grooves as a whole unit. Turn off the brain, notice the goosebumps, and feel your head nodding. The ability to be both analytical and emotional – sometimes simultaneously – is what makes a mixer truly amazing. It may even be what music is for.

It’s hard to be two opposite things at once, or at least we’re led to believe that. But I think in mixing, as in life, the great goal is balance. I think and I feel, therefore I am a musician.

So, if you ask me whether art or science is king in mixing, I’d say they share the throne. Whichever side you tend to lean toward, I encourage you to lean the other way sometimes. See what you can find by valuing both. Maybe you’ll be able to mix art and science a little better (pun fully intended). Either way, keep doing what you do.

—–

I’m always trying to learn more about balance, art, science and sound. If you want talk about it with me, find me on Facebook @AaronJTrumm

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:

  1. Pre-Production (writing/rehearsing, etc.)
  2. Tracking
  3. Mixing
  4. 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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