The Birth of a Song: Carving

You might think, "yeah I've got it now", everything is slowly falling into its place, all you have got to do is just a few tweaks here and there and the song is ready to go live. The more you produce music, the more you realise, mixing is just as important, if not more important, than recording itself.

Well, it certainly is important, however it is also a very different process to writing and recording. Some time ago I read that one of Nirvana's albums was recorded in 3 days and mixed in three MONTHS, and this example in itself highlights the possibly most important aspect of the process: time. You might have already listened the mix a hundred times, but if you did it in a space of a few days or a week, you likely missed a number of things that could, and possibly should be improved or fixed - or should it?

Before I elaborate on the time element further, I just wanted to stop and give some appreciation to mistakes. Yes, you read that right, mistakes. Of course, I am not on about out-of-tune vocals or the snare being all over the place, but those tiny little "imperfections" that fill a song with life. Of course, this is predominantly applicable to the type of music I make, and perhaps not so much to music that is calculated and based on a synthetic DNA, such as drum and bass or techno. In the type of music I make however, I think it is very important not to "fix" things such as the drums slowing down or speeding up ever so slightly following the dynamics of the song (as long as the other instruments follow, obviously), or the vocals being slightly ahead, as these very much add to the organic "drag" of the song and fixing these, as tempting it may be, will likely kill this drag. In my case, this is particularly important, as I play all the instruments, and I quite often make the same "mistake" in the same places in the same way on an instrument or vocal track which, when you put them on a multitrack, don't actually sound like a mistake, unless you change one to a pitch-perfect track. Instead, it will give it a personal touch, almost like a watermark. Just check out the middle eight in "We're Gonna" - there's no quantising on drums there.

Similarly, you might get weird overtones from a background noise on a vocal track, or an accidentally touched string at the end of a solo that just add some personality of the track - unless really out of place, I normally leave these in the final mix. Just listen to the second solo or the end of the first solo in "An Angel to Take Me Back", or the beginning of "One Step Closer to Heaven". See what I mean? For the latter, it was Logic doing some glitch with retaining some of the delay from where the cursor was last positioned towards the end of the song, and put it at the top when bouncing one of the final mixes into MP3. Although I couldn't recreate this error when bouncing to WAV, I loved this so much, I copied this section of the MP3 into the final master.

But back on to the time element. Yes, you might get one of the first mixes just the way you wanted to, but more often than not, by time you will notice how it could sound even better. Especially, when you are doing everything yourself, it is imperative to try and retain some objectivity in your ears, which is certainly not easy. The first and most important thing is taking breaks. Sometimes a few hours, but I always give at least a good overnight sleep between sessions to allow my ears to reset - it does miracles! 

Monitors are also crucial. I am yet to get a decent pair myself, therefore I am relying on a number of headphones and a bluetooth speaker to try and evaluate my mixes. Needless to say the best thing to aim for is something that is "honest" (i.e. no boost of low ends, no compression, etc) - no make ups, just the naked truth. How else can you judge, right? On the other hand, I also use some quite inexpensive headphones as well, and interestingly enough, when it comes to finding the right levels - particularly vocals, which I notoriously have issues with - these headphones often reveal if they are not quite right just yet. I have been taught, your monitors do not have to be high end, you just need to trust them, and trust them for a good reason. Using a reference song, one that you know inside out and have heard a thousand times on a thousand different speakers may also help, but the key thing is to be patient, and even when you are sure about what you did is already great, give it a day, then another listen. If you manage to get through a week without finding something just not quite right, you are on the right track.