Too much thought

J

jc.harmon

New member
This thread is not about a specific style of mixing or a specific technique, but mixing in general.

I came into this field a few years ago with the mindset that engineers focus too much on what they do. I've always had the mindset that there is a thing as too much production.

Then I started going to school for recording. I think over time I've failed in my philosophy.

Take today for example. I'm currently at a recording school, and my team was mixing a metal song, which is completely different than what we've mixed in the past.

I wondered, about halfway through the session, that we might be thinking too hard about mixing, and over producing it. I've always been an advocate of "use your ears; not your eyes."

Ex. "I'm not sure if I like the acoustic guitar sound. I think we should lower 500Hz by 0.357dB......no.....let's lower 450Hz by 0.058367dB.....no that's not right....how about raising 2.467kHz by 0.98567dB."

WAAAAY to much thought put into that.

Obviously, if there is a loud roar or stubborn frequency, lower it out.

My question is, do we, as engineers, have a tendency to put too much thought into mixing? Is there such a thing as putting too much thought into mixing?........
 
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I think the main aspect here is the one of finding and keeping balance in our judgments as to which things are important or more relevant (or not) to the project or song if you will.
And by that I mean the balance we need as we have to shift between ‘micro and the global view of a production.
As an aside, your example doesn’t pin it down :)
I don’t see it as being excessive ‘stressing over the numbers’ or one’s methods for getting to their solutions, rather knowing when, where, we’re going down the wrong rabbit hole- or even when it is ‘right hole-- but far enough!
For me I don’t see this as ever not being part of an active ongoing struggle for balance.

..You know there's that grand void where both are true;
EVERY DETAIL IS IMPORTANT!
and
IT'S THE SONG/PERFORMANCE! etc
 
I'd like to say I don't put too much detail in, never as much as the OP's example, but I think you just need to get the right balance of importance. So say if there is a lead guitar riff which stands out in the mix and you want to get the sound and levels just right, then yeah I think it would be good to make sure you get that perfect, but if you are editing a small little guitar riff going on in the background which you can hardly hear then I think it is okay to just get that sounding good with the mix by using a little bit of eq and so on, then just leave it at that, not soloing and putting as much effort into it as a lead guitaar riff.

I'm not saying people shouldn't do that because I know there are people who do pay that much attention to detail but that's my view anyway.
 
There are a number of spirals into which engineers can be trapped.

The spiral of options

This happens when, for example, you are looking for a particular sound, and find yourself exploring the possibilities endlessly. In the end, you've burnt two hours fiddling away on something relatively inconsequential, and are no further forward towards completion.

The spiral of perfection

This happens when, in seeking perfection, you do stuff over and over again until it's right. The result is often dull and boring because you've played all the life out of it. And there is every likelihood that the apparent blemishes would pass unnoticed by the listening audience. The net result is a glorious waste of time and energy.

The spiral of indecision

This happens when you can't decide what to do. Should I use reverb or no reverb? Should there be a guitar lead or a key board lead? Does the vocal need harmonies or not? You explore all these possibilities and get nowhere because you can't decide.
 
gecko zzed said:
There are a number of spirals into which engineers can be trapped.

The spiral of options

This happens when, for example, you are looking for a particular sound, and find yourself exploring the possibilities endlessly. In the end, you've burnt two hours fiddling away on something relatively inconsequential, and are no further forward towards completion.

The spiral of perfection

This happens when, in seeking perfection, you do stuff over and over again until it's right. The result is often dull and boring because you've played all the life out of it. And there is every likelihood that the apparent blemishes would pass unnoticed by the listening audience. The net result is a glorious waste of time and energy.

The spiral of indecision

This happens when you can't decide what to do. Should I use reverb or no reverb? Should there be a guitar lead or a key board lead? Does the vocal need harmonies or not? You explore all these possibilities and get nowhere because you can't decide.
Click to expand...

The three spirals...yes. :D


Not trying to stir up any more analog VS digital crap...;)
...I think for those folks here who have worked with pure analog rigs at some point, most would agree that the DAW has magnified all three of the above spirals substantially.
1. WAY more options.
2. WAY more ways to pursue perfection.
3. WAY more reasons to NOT make finite decisions.

Of course...the DAW can also make those things a positive to some people, depending on how you like to work and your goals.
1. Having the options.
2. Being able to polish turds.
3. Not having to ever commit to only one thing.


For me...it's an endless tug-o-war.
Sometimes I love the options and ability to edit at sample-level...and sometimes I want to close my eyes and just move on.

I also find that what the OP is saying about...
Ex. "I'm not sure if I like the acoustic guitar sound. I think we should lower 500Hz by 0.357dB......no.....let's lower 450Hz by 0.058367dB.....no that's not right....how about raising 2.467kHz by 0.98567dB."
Click to expand...
...is also primarily a DAW curse/blessing thing.
The DAW has minimized listening and maximized viewing when recording/editing/mixing.
I like seeing the audio too...but it's not the same as when you just listen and turn the knob until it sounds right...rather than obsessing over visuals and numbers.

Way back, people use to say that the DAW would make recording easier....and from a home-rec perspective, that may be very true, as it brought a lot of studio power into a small package with everything all in one box...
...but I find that it makes the recording/editing/mixing process actually a lot harder/tedious and certainly slower and more time consuming because of the "three spirals".
 
Im no engineer and I haven't had much experience with sound recording but if Im ever 'overthinking' something and spending hours on it. I take a break for a while and come back to it with a fresh head.

Generally I have an epiphany and move on quicker then i thought :)
 
I think it depends on the person as well. I tend to overthink everything in life, and then I catch myself and have to remind myself to get on with it (whatever the task/thought is at hand). So this applies to me for mixing too. I obsess over recording/mixing/music/gear in general. Even when I'm not mixing/recording, I'm still thinking about it non-stop, looking at studio pictures, watching videos, listening to other home and commercial mixes, trading old gear for newer/better stuff; Always have the gears turnin'!

It's exhausting, isn't it?

:facepalm:
 
Interesting discussion going here.


Do you think the average everyday person, who is not an engineer, notices such finite and minute details, or does he or she just listen to it in general?
 
I think they just listen to it in general. They will only notice when something sounds BAD. It's like when I was showing this mix I did of some high school kids to my wife in the car. One of the tunes was a cover song and he was a terrible electric guitar player (even after a few takes). His guitar and amp tone was so bad (could NOT get a good sound with mic placement or changing amp settings, eq, etc), so I ended up using his DI with an amp sim afterwards which was 1000 times better sounding. But even then, my wife said "I don't know what it is but it sounds like he's ripping the strings off his guitar". I laughed and at which point I realized, it wasn't what I was doing nor was it anything I can fix, it was his playing that was terrible. Getting back on topic, it just goes to show he/she would never notice anything until they hear something they dislike. Something very obvious.

And that's what we need to remind ourselves of from time to time (or always be thinking of it), is that we are trying to deliver the final picture to the listener. We also need to LISTEN to it like that. Of course, we also need to use our critical listening skills at times to be able to spot a problem and fix it, but if you can't hear any problems, all SHOULD be ok.

It's a peaceful mindset to have. But I guess i wouldn't know because I tend to be a scatter brain at everything I do, as well as an over-thinker. I need to start forcing myself not to over-think things with mixing. I should start a rule like "if I've eq'ed something for more than 5 minutes and it still doesn't work, it's garbage - either work with it or scrap it". Or "5-10 minutes max trying to dial in this special effect", etc.

There is hope! :o
 
I agree that the average listener doesn't notice many of the elements we obsess about at the recording level...and to a degree, that's something to consider, but IMO, it's a very small degree.

Not to sound all artsy-fartsy about it....but IMO, we don't record to please the average listener, we record to please ourselves first.
Yes, in the end we want their recognition...but we first need to satisfy ourselves as musicians/producers/engineers, and to do that we need to, and we do in most cases, obsess about our work.
What will always seem like basic stuff to the average listener might have been very difficult and time consuming for us to do...but only we can appreciate that, and I think we always need to appreciate it. If you don't feel like you really worked at what you were doing...it's not going to be as satisfying even if the average listener thinks is pretty good.

Sometimes you'll someone say, "they'll never notice it"...but the point is that you notice it, so you obsess about it...and that's OK.
 
miroslav said:
The DAW has minimized listening and maximized viewing when recording/editing/mixing.
Click to expand...
You know, I don't think it has. The DAW is simply a neutral piece of equipment. It contains oodles of features but in truth, it's the person that uses it the way you outline that is doing the minimizing and maximizing.
I find that both my DAW and my analog portastudio had tons of features which 6/20 years on I have no clue how to use/accesss. I have no choice but to use my ears !

miroslav said:
Way back, people use to say that the DAW would make recording easier....and from a home-rec perspective, that may be very true, as it brought a lot of studio power into a small package with everything all in one box...
...but I find that it makes the recording/editing/mixing process actually a lot harder/tedious and certainly slower and more time consuming because of the "three spirals".
Click to expand...
Again, I'd reply to that "it can.....". I think it's natural for human beings to get into all different ways of doing various things. I remember seeing a documentary on a Def Leppard LP in which Mutt Lange basically assembled each track note by note and was played separately by each band member and never by the whole band. This was in the analog period, I think, but I remember thinking that it was way over the top. But the potential to do it that way had existed for decades - it was therefore a matter of time before someone did it !
Also, people develop ways of working, especially when they have no deadlines to meet. Editing and mixing can be tedious but the lengths to which one takes it are not the doing of the medium.
 
grimtraveller said:
You know, I don't think it has. The DAW is simply a neutral piece of equipment. It

.... it's the person that uses it the way you outline that is doing the minimizing and maximizing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, OK...it's obvious that a DAW can't *make you* work a certain way. It doesn't control you directly. :D

My point was that it's a much bigger trap...and the reality is that many fall into it, some deeper than others.

Decisions are based substantially more on what is seen VS just what is heard.
That's all I'm saying.

In some ways, I do think that people are adjusting to the tool, rather than making the tool adjust to them...but it's normal for that to happen.
As I said...for anyone who spent a lot of time recording pre-DAW...it will be much more obvious to them. For the younger guys who practically grew up with 'puters and DAWs....it's nothing odd.
 
miroslav said:
My point was that it's a much bigger trap...and the reality is that many fall into it, some deeper than others.

Decisions are based substantially more on what is seen VS just what is heard.
That's all I'm saying.
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Put like that, I would go along with you.
One thing occurs to me though. Whole albums used to be tracked in a day or two and mixed in a day or two. By the time Ken Scott was mixing David Bowie's early 70s output, he was taking a couple of weeks to mix an album which seemed like a long time considering engineers used to be able to put together a quick mix the evening of the recording. So it occurs to me that the whole process of making a record has been taking progressively longer through the ages as the crafters have utilized their options more and more.
It's possibly over simplifying but I've long felt that what DAWs can do, engineers had been doing with tape {reading the recent books by Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott and interviews with the likes of Alan Parsons and John Leckie make this really clear} since the 50s. Just not as quick. Phil Spector extended the song "I, me mine" from being just over a minute long to nearly three by 'editing' in 1970. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a short little piece that Freddie Mercury kept adding to when they thought recording had finished. Ken Scott used to mix little bits at a time of a song and then just keep editing in what he'd done. There have pretty much always been engineers that just blast through and those that over think and over analyse. I guess that's just hopelessly human !
 
grimtraveller said:
One thing occurs to me though. Whole albums used to be tracked in a day or two and mixed in a day or two. By the time Ken Scott was mixing David Bowie's early 70s output, he was taking a couple of weeks to mix an album which seemed like a long time considering engineers used to be able to put together a quick mix the evening of the recording. So it occurs to me that the whole process of making a record has been taking progressively longer through the ages as the crafters have utilized their options more and more.
Click to expand...

Except for a few grand productions, through the '60s recording/mixing was usually a pretty quick process.

Once it became a really big force...Rock music....and sales and Rock images grew dramatically, and everyone was setting some kind of artistic milestone...the productions started to drag out for the sake of guaranteed perfection...
...so over-producing is not just a DAW-driven phenomenon, but I still think DAWs offer an even bigger trap, and because they opened up recording to just about anyone, many more people fall into it...and certainly, the whole visual approach to recording/mixing is a DAW consequence, which can really affect choices if the eyes are allowed to rule over ears.
 
miroslav said:
so over-producing is not just a DAW-driven phenomenon, but I still think DAWs offer an even bigger trap, and because they opened up recording to just about anyone, many more people fall into it...and certainly, the whole visual approach to recording/mixing is a DAW consequence, which can really affect choices if the eyes are allowed to rule over ears.
Click to expand...

I agree totally with the main points here: that DAWs offer so many possibilities that people can be trapped into spending their time exploring those possibilities instead of producing music (this, in fact, was the thrust of my post about the trio of spirals earlier in this thread); and that computer-based recording has opened up the field to anyone who has a mind to do it.

I am not convinced, though, by the argument that DAWs have opened up a visual approach to recording and mixing. It is true that I spend most of my recording and mixing time staring at screens, but it's about the same amount of time that I would spend staring at a console and associated hardware. When I'm using a VST, I'm looking at the screen while making adjustments . . . but those adjustments are based on what I hear. This is the same as using, say, a hardware compressor, watching the levels and listening for the results. In fact, most VSTs have interfaces designed to look like their analog equivalents, and there is no conceptual difference between moving a physical knob or a mouse-driven knob on a screen.

I do concede that some people try to resolve musical problems using frequency analysers and similar other visual tools. Those things, too, though, exist in the hardware world. But I suggest that the number of people who operate that way is very few.
 
jc.harmon said:
...Ex. "I'm not sure if I like the acoustic guitar sound. I think we should lower 500Hz by 0.357dB......no.....let's lower 450Hz by 0.058367dB.....no that's not right....how about raising 2.467kHz by 0.98567dB."...
Click to expand...

Wait a minute! Three people were arguing over a few tenths of a dB? 1)Their hearing probably differs by more than that. 2)All three heads cannot be at the same spot in the mix position. 3)Their taste in sound quality probably differs by more than that. 4)Why in the hell are three people mixing one song? Differences in opinion are inevitable.

As far as paying too much attention to detail, I don't see it as a problem unless the engineer is clearly wasting time. Wouldn't you want your brain surgeon or your airplane mechanic to pay attention to minor details? That is what they get paid for and so too do audio engineers.

I agree that most listeners only hear the "whole big picture" in general, but would still notice if it were not done well or if something is out of place. Think of a show-room car on display for crowds to marvel over. Wouldn't people notice if some minor details looked ugly or were missed during cleaning? I think so. Those minor details contribute to overall quality and first impressions.
 
Hey gecko - I love this. Pretty much describes the nightmare of my existence up until very recently. Is this yours, or did it come from somewhere? I'd love to post it on my musical blog, cause it's pretty much perfect - but I don't like to do things on my blog without permission or attribution.

gecko zzed said:
There are a number of spirals into which engineers can be trapped.

The spiral of options

This happens when, for example, you are looking for a particular sound, and find yourself exploring the possibilities endlessly. In the end, you've burnt two hours fiddling away on something relatively inconsequential, and are no further forward towards completion.

The spiral of perfection

This happens when, in seeking perfection, you do stuff over and over again until it's right. The result is often dull and boring because you've played all the life out of it. And there is every likelihood that the apparent blemishes would pass unnoticed by the listening audience. The net result is a glorious waste of time and energy.

The spiral of indecision

This happens when you can't decide what to do. Should I use reverb or no reverb? Should there be a guitar lead or a key board lead? Does the vocal need harmonies or not? You explore all these possibilities and get nowhere because you can't decide.
Click to expand...
 
RawDepth said:
Wouldn't you want your brain surgeon or your airplane mechanic to pay attention to minor details? That is what they get paid for and so too do audio engineers.
Click to expand...
Yes I would want my brain surgeon and airplane mechanic to pay attention to minor details because in both those cases, not paying such attention could result in things that lead to death, which is pretty serious. The details in audio are hardly that.
No one is going to invade Iraq because the acoustic guitar on the fourth verse repeat on the third song of a 16 track album wasn't lowered at 500Hz by 0.357dB. I'd bet your life that no one would even notice !
Details in audio are often in the ear of the beholder that happens to be mixing at that moment in time.
 
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