Mixing is a part of music-making that needs your full attention because you need to figure out how loud a specific track will be then the rest when where they will be played (e.g. left, right or centre but only certain instruments can be panned or they wouldn’t work).
For me I wasn’t really into mixing my song there was too many variables and I just kept getting worried about how long left of the project we had I didn’t want to submit an unfinished song.
I was issued a lot of good help at this stage of the project because we never got the chance to work in a studio due to Covid so help was issued to producers if we needed it and it help that the help stuck around and made it more simpler to understand.
For me I didn’t like mixing only because how closely you had to listen to the track and how many times you had to listen to it to get the best experience out of mixing so the track got annoying quick on how hard you had to hear the piece to get the best out of it but it had to be done and I finished mixing my song to the best of my ability.
The first thing my tutor said to me about mixing was referencing your music which means you listen to a track that closely resembles yours and listen to how the producer on that track mapped the instruments from there position to there volume my reference was I Wanna Dance With Somebody – by Whitney Houston and Don’t You Forget About Me – by Simple minds.
I missed the first mixing sessions due to an English exam but I was there for the second one and Ben was teaching the lesson and he taught us about EQ and what makes it important to use on vocals to cut out the low and and work on the middle frequency he also mention compression and that if the knee is curved the vocals will be compressed but it will be more natural but if the knee goes up and straight left at an angle the vocals will compress but the attack will be more less natural able and that if the ratio is 2 : 1 then the compression will play half of the volume of the vocals (e.g. if the volume of the vocals is at 30db then the compression will kick in at 15db).
When mixing there are a lot of effects that may or may not need to be put in the specific tracks like vocals need reverb and compression so a lot of the time there is a lot of back and Forth with editing the tracks. To keep the mix organised and easy to change you need to but the instruments in groups called buses where they are named and suitable for the audio file like the vocals will go in a vocal bus and the drums in a drum bus.
Reference
Whitney Houston, 2009. Before you continue to YouTube. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3giaIzONA> [Accessed 25 October 2009].
Simple Minds, 2010. Before you continue to YouTube. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A> [Accessed 3 December 2010].