does the band have any "input" on how you mix?

[giraffe]

to me being a good mix engineer all comes down to psychology. Sure let the band sit there it is there money. You just have to find new and interesting ways of making the band feel they made all the best decisions about your mix.

Get them involved, hell most kids involved in playing music these days are involved in recording it....half of them are on this forum. */10 times someone in the band will come up with something whacky and you think....yeah, let's just try that and see how bad it really is and it turns out the most interesting part of the mix.

Gotta love it!

ditto..........

 

[Micter]

Thats so sickly true, buddy.

But you could never turn around and say to them,...

"Ok look guy.....I know all you do or dont hear is you.. but right now, im panning my reverbs so shut the fuck up"

Too funny! I swear I have played fool the bass player. Something like.....

Bass Player - Victor can you turn my bass up?

Victor - OK (as I reach for a fader but don't actually move it) How's that?

Bass Player - Better! Thanks Victor.

It just cracks me up. In all honesty I want to give the best mix I can and if I listen to everybody's suggestions the mix will sound like crap which is a reflection on me.

 

[Polska_77]

This is a small offtopic, hope you'll forgive me. When you mix a CD do you mix every song separatley, or mix one, and throw the rest in a template and maybe tweak a little or none at all?

 

[SonicAlbert]

Every song individually. For that template idea to work the songs would have to be virtually identical.

What I've done on film scores is similar though. In a film score, very often groupings of cues are related thematically. I schedule the mix session so that all the cues of the same theme are grouped together. It saves a lot of time because you usually only need to do a little tweaking between cues of a similar theme/orchestration. Then once that group is done, move on to the next.

But again, I'm talking about cues that are very similar: same theme, orchestration, etc. If you are making an ablum where the songs are that similar to each other, you might want to consider adding more variety!

But there is nothing wrong with taking a mix from one tune and applying it to the next, at least as a starting point. That can turn up some interesting results, but usually doesn't work in my opinion.

 

[giraffe]

just got a job today because the other guy the band was looking at said he liked to mix alone.

seriously, what else do you need to know.

 

[Sloan]

I mix in isolation away from everything. It's the only way.