The Art of Mixing (Part 2 of 4) by Josh

This week, I’m going to go into more depth on two of the five elements of a mix that I talked about last week in Part 1 .

Hopefully this information will make your collaborations here on Indaba sound even more professional!

Balance

To recap, balance refers to the volume relationship between different musical elements in a mix.  Balance is probably the most clearly evident part of mixing –  when you see an engineer adjusting the faders on a mixer, they are working on achieving a volume balance.  You want to make certain musical instruments, such as lead vocals and a guitar solo, stand out over the backing elements of the song.

The key to achieving good balance starts with identifying what level of importance each musical element should have in the mix, in accordance to the song that you are mixing.  For instance, in a Mariah Carey song, you should recognize that her renowned voice is going to be the key element, and adjust the levels/faders accordingly.  However, if you are working on a techno song, often times the drum and bass elements are right up there with the vocals, if not at a higher volume level. 

Don’t adjust balance purely on the dB readings or the light meters on your mixer, which can be deceiving.  Due to the complexity of sound wave frequencies, sometimes a sound with a lower dB meter rating can appear to sound louder than one with a higher ‘reading.’  Use the meters as a guide, especially to prevent ‘clipping,’   but rely on your ears as the final

Frequency

A quick primer: frequency refers to the “pitch” of a sound, from deep sub-sonic bass to shrill highs. Every instrument or is made up of a bunch of different frequencies, but each one has a prominent frequency centered somewhere along the spectrum.  For instance, a bass guitar is heavy in the lower frequencies.  The tool for adjusting frequencies is EQ, or equalization, which lets you raise and lower the volume (dBs) of each frequency. 

The real complexity with frequency balance comes in when you combine several different instruments together.  When you layer sounds that are heavy in the same frequencies, they tend to clash and create an unbalanced mix.  For instance, a piano, bass guitar, kick drum, toms, guitar, often have a lot of overlapping frequencies in the low-mid range.  When placed in the same mix, you’ll probably get a muddy sound. The trick to frequency balance is to make sure that all frequencies are properly and evenly represented.  This can be done in several ways:

• Carve out a frequency spectrum for each individual offending instrument using EQ – Ex. lower the high-mids on a piano, raise the high-mids on a guitar
• Change the volume level of an offending instrument – Ex. lowering a bass drum signal will help fix the conflict with the bass guitar
  
• Remove offending instruments that are not crucial to the mix - Ex. take out an extra layered kick drum sample

I hope these tips help you out with your mixes.  The most important tool is your ears, so if something doesn’t sound right to you, experiment with volume, pan, and EQ.

Next week I’ll continue with:

• Pan
• Dimension
• Dynamics
• Interest

Let me know your thoughts!