where a track/inst. "sits"????

K

Kerose

New member
I am hearing "sits" alot after reading many threads around here as well as articles around the net. What exactly are we speaking about when we say "sits", as well as dynamic range.

My mixes due to shitty monitoring situation till of late, all seem super flat, as if, everything sat on the same plane. Like I wanna build a pyramid but i end up with a triangle, or, every one of my tracks are lined up directly in front of me when i listen to them, but i want them surrounding me and at different lengths. Is this a lack of dynamics??

I read some time ago about eq'ing different instruments that can be in conflict, like if they are playing notes at the same time, and the two frequencies are crossing over eachother you can use some subtractive eq to let one instrument or the other be at another part on the scale and get more separation.

Anyone care to expand on this?????...........
 
hmmm.. my newbiesh 2 cents... on giving dimension to mixes. Probably stuff you've already considered, but i'll throw em out and let smarter/more experienced people expand on them.

relative levels of tracks... well obviously.

Panning .. move things around in space.

EQ'ing.. make sure different tracks have their own 'space' in the auditory spectrum.

Effects .. i.e. a bit more reverb would tend to make something appear further off, no reverb makes it sit right in front of you.

A few things to consider/discuss i guess.
 
OK Gicantic question but I'll have a crack at it

The mix needs to have everything feel like it fits together. There is a finite amount of sonic space due to limits of human hearing and what sounds instrumnets can produce and what mics can pick up so you need to put something together that takes advantage of what you have recorded and showcases the sound as effectively as possible

EQing can be used to highlight the qualities of an instrument that make it stand out while at the same time reducing other qulities that sound muddy or compete with other key elements of the mix. it can mean that the tracks sound a little strange when solo since for example you may remove some of the bass boominess from an accoustic guitar because the Bass guitar has that part of the spectrum covered

Panning sets the instruments/vocals apart from one another accross the stereo field left to right and this separation can also prevent them from over lapping and squahing the life out of each other

Individual track volume, reverb, delay effects can make a track sound like it's either further away or right up in front of the mix creating more sense of space above and beyond simple panning left and right

When you think about your mix, you want everything to sit comfprtably in that mix, sound like it fits together with everything else thats there and makes a cohesve song. There really are no hard fast rules to how you do this it depends on th esong and the sound you are trying to achieve.
 
In a "default" untreated small room with strong peaks and nulls (35 or 40db deviation room + monitoring - or worst) you (anyone)tend to take "bad" decisions all the time (excessive eq and compression are most common IMO).

Ciro
 
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A lot of good stuff has already been said here. Let me just try it with a different spin.

Just as a painter works in several dimensions - width, height, depth/perspective, light/dark and color - music mixers work in the dimensions of width (pan), depth, volume, frequency range and time.

Getting things to "sit" well in a mix means finding the right place(s) for each instrument or track within those dimensions in order to give each instrument it's space and room to breathe, as well as to create some kind of interesting "image" for the listener (whether realistic or artificial).

"Dynamics" can mean a couple of things. Probably the most common usage of it in discussions around here is in terms of "dynamic range", which is the range in loudness between the song's quietest passages and loudest passages. This deals with the dimensions of volume and depth. One of the biggest controversies in modern recording has to do with the battle between those who believe in crushing the dynamic range to a minimum so that the entire song is as loud as possible with little to no depth, making it more "competitive" when played with other dynamics-challenged recordings, and those who believe in keeping the dynamic range more natural and less crushed in order to deliver a song that has more depth and sounds more pleasing longer, even if overall it may sound quieter than it's competition.

A second definition of dynamics relates to how the various dimensions change over time, or over the duration of the song. This is highly related to the song's composition and arrangement and not having every instrument playing balls to the wall at every measure and beat of the song, but it also has to do with mixing the song in order to support and emphasize dynamic changes in instrument location or balance as the song progresses.

G.
 
Let's extend Glen's painting analogy a bit further.

If you examine a well-painted landscape it will appear to have depth. There will be stuff that you can cleary figure out is close to you, and stuff that is further back. The two techniques an artist uses to do this are perspective and detail. With perspective, things close to you appear big and things further away appear smaller. With detail, things closer to you are highly detailed, while things further away become misty and unclear.

In building a mix, the same techniques are used. If you want your mix to be multi-dimensional (as opposed to having everything sitting on a flat, vertical plane in front of you), you need to decide what's going to be close to you and what's going to be far away from you and treat them accordingly. Things closer to you will be highly detailed and have more presence than things further away.

Typically reverb is the tool for providing depth, because a dry sound has more presence than a wet sound. Relative levels play an important part; things further away will generally be quieter than things close up.

The use of EQ is roughly analogous to an artist's use of chiaroscuro, which is the creative use of light and shade to highlight elements of a picture. We use EQ to do the same thing, as other posters have already mentioned.

When mixing, it's tempting to give equal weight to all the instruments being played. After all, they were all played excellently and all sound brilliant, and it seems a shame to 'waste' them by not having them their in front of you in all their magnificent glory. And there are some strong egos in the band who say things like, "I think the mandolin needs to come up a bit more, the guitar is overshadowing it" and "I think the guitar needs a bit more, there's too much mandolin" and so on. At times they will both be right, and at times, neither will be right. But if all instruments are competing for the front row, you will get that flat representation.

So you can try to visualise the mixing 'space' as a chessboard, with each of the pieces as a chess piece. You then try to recreate that board and its pieces sonically. In some cases, this board is static. That's not unreasonable, because hills don't swoop across the landsscape, and trees don't magically jump forwards and backwards.

But it is also not unreasonable to have chess pieces moving across the board. When looking at a landscape, your eye isn't fixed. As it moves across the picture, it will focus on different things according to what's interesting. Similarly, in the older days of single-mike radio broadcasts, the players gather around this single mike, with each moving in or out according to who was doing a solo or whatever.

As a mixer, you choose what to bring to the attention of the listener by highlighting things at different times. The handiest tool for this is actually nothingness. Empty space is important because it gives you more elbow in which to move your sonic chess pieces. If everyone is playing all the time, it is a lot more difficult. Good arrangements are the key to good mixing, because then the song tells you what needs to be done.
 
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