One of the more interesting aspects of music production is how passionate some folks are over how to accomplish certain tasks and aspects of mixing like dynamic range, compression and just loudness. A lot of this passion is rooted in limitations of earlier technology that dictated hard ceilings due to completely unforgiving artifacts when those limitations were exceeded that really don’t exist today in the world of 64 bit DAWs, but persist with those of us old enough to remember 16bit recording and even older, the limited dynamic range with analog. Folks will straight up get in forum fights when they hear pumping or slight distortion without any recognition of the genre or the intention of the producer--they just think they did it wrong. The problem with this line of thinking is that there is no wrong. While I’m not going to go full postmodern with life, I do strongly believe that there is right and wrong, I am going full postmodern with mixing–there is no right and wrong, and you’re doing yourself a disservice in your craft if you’re beholden to certain ‘rules’ that may not apply to the genre you’re producing.
I’ve been fortunate enough to chat with and pick the brains of a lot of accomplished engineers and one thing that has always struck me is how different they go about accomplishing similar things. Another is how many iconic sounds were complete accidents. The backbeat hit on four in Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ is from hitting a gran cassa drum case with a 2x4, a sound they stumbled onto when a screwdriver fell on it while testing snares. Some of the huge Beatles guitar sounds are from plugging directly into the console and overdriving it (effectively also ruining the console). The iconic guitar sound from Money for Nothing is due to a mic nearly falling over on its stand and pointing at the floor, a configuration the engineers tried and later failed to replicate. All this to say, keep an open mind, and if it sounds right, it is.
Like most folks in this business I have heroes, albums I think sound spectacular, and a sound I aspire to get. However, one thing that took me way too long to realize is that you don’t mix a dance track the same way you would mix a Steely Dan album, and a lot of those lessons you would take from that type of production may actually be antithetical to the sound you’re going for in a different genre. If you slam a jazz band, it’s going to sound awful, but if you mix a dance track like a jazz band, it’s not going to sound like other dance tracks, and as much as we scoff about the loudness wars, even with streaming normalization, unless you’re established, you have to keep up with the joneses to keep from being ignored, and while there are many ways to accomplish this, you have to mix hot and compressed. One of the fun things about electronic music is that new sounds sell, so if you have a limiter in the wrong place but it’s doing something cool, it’s in the right place.
Another trap many of us old heads fall into is the established process of mixing to a level with a kind of tacit understanding that we need to leave room for mastering. I can’t believe I’m typing this, but we don’t need to do that most of the time if the goal is actually releasing a lot of music, and in the new economics of music, you have to release a lot of music. A lot of young producers I’ve talked to don’t bother or even really understand the need for mastering. They mix hot, do a couple sanity reference checks, then upload. I’ve heard a lot of these mixes, and they sound great. They’re not an Alan Parsons Pink Floyd production, but they weren’t going for that. They jump out, and they bite. Granted, if you’re going to spend the money to press to vinyl or another medium that has hard limitations, mix with the intent of mastering, but if you’re producing an electronic in the box production that’s going to a streaming service and no physical media, you probably don’t need to do the extra step if you have a good loud and dynamic mix from the get go. Mix it loud and proud to release it. If any pony tailed dude who has been tinkering with the same song for a year gives you guff, show him your release schedule.
There’s no one way to accomplish a task while producing and mixing. Just do it, learn, and if you can’t figure it out, humbly go to YouTube while avoiding fighting in the comments.
