Do you feel mixing is another performance or something you let sit.

How do you prefer to mix?

  • Performance: real time mixing

    Votes: 5 38.5%

  • Let her sit: automation and other such wonders

    Votes: 8 61.5%
  • Total voters
    13
snellular5

snellular5

neil young whore
After watching one of my favourites; Daniel Lanois I was wondering who feels that mixing is almost an instrument and the mix should be a real time performance or the opposite that it can just be set and let sit throughout the song and any changes can be taken care of by automation.
I feel it's a performance myself and this video makes me shiver just watching him mix and how into he gets, its wicked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQV6uDZBKPY
Anyways any comments are welcome :)
Matt
 
I'd have to vote for "let it sit".

I dont really have the option to mix in real time and if I would it wouldn't be very efficient. I unfortunately have a lot more than fading going on. My tracking stage doesn't go as well as Daniel's. I have to add other effects then automate volumes and such. Plus I don't have a console so it's not even an option.

Any other cool videos of engineers at work? This was interesting, especially since I haven't seen many things like this.
 
I really hate those kinds of either/or questions. My answer to your question is:
The question is irrelevant.

Q. Am I a liberal or do I think the government shouldn't bail out the banks?
A. Both.

See what I mean? :p

Q. Is global warming due to the actions of humans or is it environmental, caused by things such as increased sun activity?
A. Both

And then you have scientists and politicians at each others throats trying to negate the other side. Blah.

Mixing is part of the overall music presentation. Sometimes you need to ride the faders because you feel while you're listening, other times you need to do automate several parameters in a complementary fashion, which would be impossible to do real-time, so you use automation.

It's not an either/or proposition, but rather a complementary set of tools and options that are available to you.
 
snellular5 said:
I was wondering who feels that mixing is almost an instrument and the mix should be a real time performance or the opposite that it can just be set and let sit throughout the song and any changes can be taken care of by automation.
Click to expand...
As Noisewreck said, it's not an either/or proposition. I do feel that mixing and production is - or at least can be - like another instrument or member of the band, but there's no need for it to be a live, real-time performance. It *can* be, but it doesn't *have to* be.

Usually there will be elements of both in my mixes, *if* I have a chance of being in on the tracking. But that's the rub. I am like many mixing engineers in the fact that they are not always the same guy that was there at tracking; in my case, I mix a lot of what others track themselves. That doesn't mean that them or I can't still treat the studio and the mixing desk like an instrument and "play the mix".

G.
 
The automation is another great tool. It is wonderful. You can tackle one thing at a time. When one thing is done, hit save and move on. You may come back to that place in the end. I think your an idiot if you don't use it. I say that but some mixes may not require much "on-the-fly" mixing.
 
Automation is no different than real-time mixing...it's just that you rehearse it until you like the final outcome...and then set it to automatic. :)

I'm assuming that for a recording, you are going to have one, final mix...in which case real-time or automation gets you there.
 
Mixing is an important process. You can have the best performance of a life time and if it's not mixed right it takes away from the feeling of the song, unless it's intended to sound that way to achieve a certain sound. IMO mixing is just another instrument.
 
I chose "Let her sit" although that when you mixing, it should be a great performance if you want the mix to be great, though, you can get from an awful performance a fine mix, it needs to be a good performance for my opinion.
 
I voted for performance mixing but in my case it's a bit of both. With my set up there are performance moves, panning, eq & efx changes that are impossible in real time so those are recorded as seperate stereo trax and added into the mix with faders.
Thank you for sharing those videos, just spent an hour with Lanois and understand what he does so much more, he is one of my favorite artists and producers.
 
Wicked answers guys I feel the same, I'm torn between the two of them only because of technological restrictions.
And no worries Bassbrad I'm now so hooked on Daniel Lanois.
 
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