Mixing is an art that takes years to develop and one never stops learning or improving. If I could only go back and remix some of the stuff I did in the 80s!
Speaking of the 80s, back then we never heard anyone talk about "glue" or "gluing" a mix. We mixed on consoles and with analog tape, so naturally we didn't hear anything about adding "warmth" either. So, all these things that you hear about gluing a mix together or advice to "bus everything" stems more from the use of a DAW for mixing, than from the art of mixing itself (did you see what I did there?).
One thing that all of my mixes have in common is that I
design a soundstage as early as possible in the process. One of the great things about those incredible 80s records is the use of reverb to create a space in which the song resides. This is something you almost never hear anyone talk about today. It's all about plugins, parallel compression, dynamic EQ and basically a bunch of
crap if you ask me. Those are just tools in the toolkit, but to say that you need
all of them to get a good mix is ridiculous. I use a hammer only when it's needed.
If you listen to the recent post of a mix I did for
@robert monahan you will hear a mix that actually has a surprising amount of reverb thoughout. Recently I was working on a mix for another studio client and he sent me a reference track by a fantastic country artist (I mentioned that in more detail in a post above). He said he would like the sparce sound on that record. I listened to it, and
the whole mix was awash with a lush plate reverb but, my client didn't hear it that way, initally. The reverb was the "glue" in that case, and this is what I am taking about when I say that I design a soundstage.
The first thing I do when setting up a mix is to listen to the drum tracks along with the bass and several of the "bed" instruments. I try to listen for the decay time of the drum hits and how it overlaps the instruments. Then, using a Vintage Room reverb, I design a room for all the instruments to live in. Back in Boston, I had a huge room to work with and I often set up multiple Neumann U-67 condenser microphones across the studio to capture the room ambiance. These days, very little is recorded that way and you have to build that room out of digital effects. Most of the track I get for mixing are totally dry and devoid of room sound. That is preferable to a bad room sound though.
I start by purposefully setting the reverb decay time longer than I know will work. I shorten the delay time until it "fits" with the sound of the instruments. Let me say that this part of the mix build is
not for the vocals, which I do separately (I'll talk about that in another post later on).
Before I go any further, please listen to this incredible mix so I can make reference to it:
All the instruments are in a room, but the vocals
are not in the same virtual space. The vocal soundstage design is very different from the instruments, and
that makes the vocal stand out more without having to be louder.
In the example above, there is a lot going on. There is some kind of short-tailed reverb, possibly gated reverb that was very popular in that era. The guitars are also in the room with the drums and there is a wonderful cohesion to this mix that goes far beyond just bussing everything or slapping an SSL buss compressor across the mix with a 4:1 ratio and the threshold barely tickling the level.
Notice that the slide guitar solo has a slight slapback echo on it. That is another technique to make it stand out from the band in the background. This brings me to the next part of the mix build: working in 3 dimensions.
AC/DC and some other guitar bands would always have something like 20 to 30 ms delay on the guitar tracks to push them back behind the drums, just like the amp line at a concert. Adding a bit of a very short delay and carefully balancing the dry mix can add a front/back element to your mix. Try to place your instruments front to back as well as left to right.
OK, so once I get my digital room built for the band, I adjust the most critical aspect -
predelay. Improperly applied, reverb predelay sounds horrible. It sounds like it's out of time with the song and "lagging" behind. That means it's set too long. The primary use for the predelay is to give the instruments or vocals an opportunity to hit the ears initially dry and then have the fill of the reverb come in under it. This prevents vocals, in particular, from being obscured by reverb. Proper use of reverb predelay also allows you to put that "wash" sound across the mix and yet have incredible clarity. Michael Jackson's
Thriller album has some of the best examples of reverb predelay ever used. There is so much "air" in those mixes and yet none of the air is masking anything.
So, while listening to my virtual room and the instruments all put into that room, I adjust the reverb predelay until I am satisfied with the sound. You'll know that when you hear it. And, btw, I generally put all the instruments into the room at equal levels to begin with, except the bass. I will look at the send levels for the drums, guitars, keboards, etc. and make sure they start out at the same level. If I push up the drums a bit more into the reverb I will push up the guitars too. Over time, I make individual adjustments to those levels until I like how it sounds. In the video above, the drums are more affected by the room sound than the guitars are, but that's how real drums sound in a real room anyway. The drums project all around while the guitars project straight out of the cabinet towards the mics. Understanding how sound travels and is picked up by microphones is crucial to getting a realistic sounding mix (if that is your thing). Of course, these are not hard and fast rules, etched in stone. These are general principles that I use to start out each mix. I normally do end up with different send levels on different instruments. In the end, my ears are the boss, not the numbers.
In a subsequent post, I will detail how I mix vocals. That topic is just too big to put into this post.