Are you Mixing or Brutalizing your Song?

I see a lot of Indie mixes and people complaining that they can’t get it right. Worse, these people tend to struggle more over the years rather than get better/find it easier. Nothing I will say here is new but it is well worth saying again as people step over it, with the results as above.

If you find that, even after years, you are struggling with your music more than feeling that your stores are getting told read on.

Please follow links for more depth.

Following vs Brutalizing

This is a Zen vs Ego thing. Yoda would do one thing (and win).
Kylo Ren would do the opposite (and have another hissy fit).

Examples:

As already noted, if you are forcing your mix, it will always fight back. It is easy to think that you are The God of Your Song but this is not how it works. The Song is the important thing, we are here to serve the song, not the other way around. Breaking this approach will always break you. Think of it this way:

You go to dinner and there is a cover band playing standards. At every turn, they miss the feel of the songs they are torturing. You feel annoyed that they are disrespecting the songs. It is not about their gear or ability to sing, but that they don't seem to respect the Songs themselves enough to care about delivering them with respect.

Snap!

Path Forward

The path forward is to take another path. You can’t get different results from doing the same things again. This does mean some unlearning. This can be hard but that is only fear not wanting to let go. Let go, things can’t be any worse. If they are worse, you can go back to your established plans for failure 😉

• Put aside the “usual suspects” rules: DAWville has become full of some really scary ideas that now present as rules. Sadly most of these are things that were known to be a bad call in the 70s & 80s. Yet for some reason, the blind have decided these are the right solutions now. Put aside all the things that you think you know about mixing, especially if they seem like rules.
• Understand Scene & Story: This is the essence of everything. A song happens in a Scene and tells a Story. If it does neither of those things, it has no purpose and is a broken song. While the song may have a scene & story, if the mix doesn’t support (bring this out), the song will feel broken. Trying to fix broken using technical methods will only further break the song.
• Follow The Song: Obviously, if you follow the song you are more likely to do well. This is a Zen kind of grass bending in the breeze thing so there is no exact process that anyone can give you. You have to…
• Build Trust in Feeling: Music is a feeling thing. While there is a technical aspect, like tuning your E string to E (as opposed to D##), music is feeling painted in sound. Nothing is as it seems, everything is an illusion designed to lead people to certain (although not always exact) places. You can’t force music, you have to coax and trust in the feeling or it breaks and can’t be fixed (without getting back to trust).

Those are somewhat annoying things as they aren’t rote actions that you can take. Here are some actions that if taken in the Zenness of mindfulness above will help you to get there:

Tactics

• Learn Psychoacoustics: We don’t really hear sound. We interpret it in the brain. While most assume otherwise these days, we still use the very same processing mechanism for interpreting sound as mammals have since the dawn of time. If you learn how we understand sound, a lot of things make far more sense and become easier.
• Learn Four Basic Tools: Echo, Reverb, EQ & Compression are all you need to make amazing mixes. Use only these four tools – no fripperies like those silly things that claim they will do hard things for you as they only lead you to break your song (and yourself). Most DAWs come with usable tools so don’t fall for the BS delusion that you need to go buy trillions more Pro devices to make you Proful. You only need one of each of these devices. Learn to understand the basics starting where you are with what you have. IF you don’t have solid tools then these are free things that are as good as you learn to use them. These are tools I use daily (many I made myself):
  • Echo: 2020 Modulating Delay, Hz Delay
  • Reverb: Hz Multiplier, Hz Delay, R-3500 Analog Rooms ($7.50)
  • EQ: QRange, PareQ
  • Compression: AdHd Leveling Tool
  • Saturation isn’t mentioned above but does help a lot, don’t get clever, just drop it in and add a smidge: Softube Saturation Knob, Looser Tape Movement
• 5-Step Mixing: 1. Reverb, 2. Level, 3. Pan, 4. Tone, 5. Finalize. The 5-Step Mixing process is explained in this article and the attached video. It is different from the usual approach but remember that if the usual hasn’t been working, you need to try different. Let go and see what comes.
• Trust What the Song Wants: I know I said that above and here it is again. After you have had a few wins put the work aside. Go do something else (not mixing). After your mind is relaxed, listen elsewhere (lounge, bedroom) for the Scene & Story of your Song. NOTE: You must NOT be listening for technicalities, only feeling. If the illusions are feeling great, you are on the right path, take the next step. If the song feels broken then remove what you did and go again. It is an ego hit but remember the song is important here not your pride. Once you have the song shining, you will be paid back in pride (of the good kind).

Please don’t expect this to all come overnight

Mixing is an Artform and therefore a lifetime of learning, unlearning, and re-learning. The only rights and wrongs are: if the Illusions of the Scene & Story of your Song are being delivered. Some things plain don’t work – until they do. Remember always that while illusion and delusion are similar, the outcomes are very different: one raises us, the other breaks us.

The other thing to be aware of is that not everyone is destined/designed to be a great mix engineer, just as not everyone is destined/designed to be a great guitarist, singer, surfer, rally driver… If you have a strong skill in one area that may be all you get. True polymaths are very rare so if you aren’t Bowie or Prince then fret not, learn your basics, then find complimentary skillsets (just as Bowie & Prince did) and work to each other’s strength to achieve that greater than the sum of the parts thing that great bands do.