Effortless Mixing, or fighting an Uphill Battle - Mix Sessions Live Webcast Highlight 2

Описание: When mixing flows, it almost feels like the world around you disappears. Hands move, time flies, and the mix comes together effortlessly.

But when mixing turns into an uphill battle, everything feels tedious and frustrating.
And no amount of 'pushing-forward' will turn that into a great mix.

That’s usually a sign it’s time to look at your own state, your workflows - or whether the song is actually ready for mixing yet.

This clip is from a recent Mix Sessions live webcast, where I talk about recognising the difference - and knowing when to step back instead of pushing harder.

👍 if this resonates

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[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:05] what I'm trying to do here is direct you towards a more effortless mixing flow. So, you can really observe how you feel. And this translates into mixing quality quite directly. And that actually makes sense if we link it back to how musicians work. If you try to record a musician whose heart is in it, who's is not feeling well. Chances are, you won't get good takes out of them. And the same thing applies to you as a mix engineer, if you mix, you gotta look well after yourself, and you gotta be at your very best.

[00:00:38] And then mixing can feel really effortless. That's almost like a flow state where I'm getting lost in this space here between the music in front of me, my ears and the speakers, and I'm in my little bubble and time flies by it. I don't even know what's happening.

[00:00:54] Just my hands do things and it's coming together nicely. That's the kind of state that I wanna be in when mixing.

[00:01:00] But there's also the opposite, and that is what I would call the mixing uphill battle. And that feels very differently on the inside. So if you feel frustrated or you go through extensive, tedious work that's just grinding your gears and you're not feeling like you're getting anywhere, or you spend countless hours and you're not getting there, now you're up against something.

[00:01:24] There's some resistance, and that means in this metal state, chances are you can't deliver the best mix already. So, it's really important now to look at what's causing it. And there's a range of different options that I probably want to go into much more detail in another live session, but it comes down to things like, are you fighting the song?

[00:01:45] You know, is there something in the song that isn't right? Maybe it wasn't recorded well. Or maybe it wasn't performed well. Or maybe the arrangement is not cohesive, and maybe there's things in the arrangement not working. So all of these things sort of rule out a great mix. So if that's the source material you work with, well tough luck. You're not gonna get there.

[00:02:07] So, it's really important to then step back and look at it and sort those things out. Sometimes that means go back and rerecord or change the arrangement or do something about it. A look at workflows that seem very, very time consuming. Like um, drum editing could be one of those things.

[00:02:27] So, if you find yourself going through a six hour, I dunno, Tom editing session, this is totally soul-destroying, and I don't find that once I'm in this mindset. I can't snap out of it and mix creatively and beautifully straight away. So I try to get those workflows reduced to the absolute minimum. Or if that's not possible, completely separate them.

[00:02:52] So the separation of logical, rational tasks like Tom editing or arranging a session or importing files, managing color coding. Those are the things that I very deliberately separate from the creative work, and I don't do them together. ​