How Long Do You Spend On Your Mixes ?

[nonreversebird]

Im really amazed at the answers here.

If you are the musician or the band and you are recording yourself on whatever gear you have you SHOULD ABSLUTELY NOT MAKE A TIME LIMIT for mixing.

I remember in the 80s I went to this studio, if you want to call it that, and my band paid this guy to record and mix us. It was horendous. He had know Idea how to record a Classic style hardrock band. He was familiar with Country. I still dont trust a studio to make my music come to life. I dont want any friction from an owner or engineer. That will ruin everything. The concept of mastering has now become a very blurry subject to me after reading many posts on this message board. Therefore I am going to do all the EQing, Limiting and Compression if I have to to get the best mix I can. I need a Finalizer like From TC electronic and only for a final polish. Nothing even remotely extreme. I find new things to do in my mixing to improve my music every day. So this gauge at the beginning of the post should only apply to recording engineers working in a studio on other peoples work.

I still need that one peice of gear to get that sonic glassy touch and I am almost done. I will be happy with that. I accept to not have a 100 grand recording but my music isnt supposed to even sound like that.

Personally I feel Rock and Roll has become nothing but production and very few decent bands and songwriters are out there.

 

[xfinsterx]

When i mix my own material?
I mix a song till its finished.

When i mix for a client?
Could take 3 hours, could take 3 weeks.
Just depends on the source material's quality, how produced you want it to sound, and how much budget the artist has.

 

[nonreversebird]

Im done , a little over a month.

I guess I can talk some detail with you people. First off if you are recording completely digitally. That is no tape , all on computers using software like whats in my sig.

You can play perfect and lay down some good tracks but when you have several wavs playing at the same time your hardware must be able to play it. My equipment is outdated and barely hangs. I found at the end of my mixing that I heard things in my songs that were just not going to happen. In one case after a month of listening to a song everyday I started getting annoyed at a picking issue during a rythmn part. It stuck out and became irritating. Now thats after a month before I noticed it. So I took the tracks and edited each portion that was "bad" by simply reducing the volume and then I did a Click removal on the tracks. It brought my song back to life.

So since this forum is called "HomeRecording.com" it should be noted that all the engineers here posting are posting from a perspective of being an actual paid engineer in a studio not at home. I recorded and did everything in my apartment. I am very happy with what I have now. I am also convinced for the home recording musician it is a good idea to explore mastering at the software level and hardware level before turning over your EXTREMELY hard work at mixing your stuff.

You take your music and listen to it on a nice stereo at a super low volume and if you here a click or pop even a faint one , is this going to be exceptable? Thats the reality of home recording with equipment that is affordable.

I will admit I learned some things from the big boys here but that is how you get good at something. You must learn how to do it and listen to others.

Take your time on your mixes and dont rush them. Learn at a low volume how the bass and the kik and the snare work together. Its very difficult.

 

[earworm]

what i read in "behind the glass" is that if u spend more than 3 hours on a mix....something's wrong...
blabla, depends on the situation,

but this time its the same rule for me,
i'm on a band that wants the same kinda sound on each song,
they want the cd to sound like how they sound live,
no special thingies, no extra guitar riffs, yes, backing vocals cause that can be done in real situations too...

the recording is just OK,
its 10 tracks of music
10 songs
1.30 minutes per song

just have to make sure it sounds decent, doesn't have to blow people away, thats what the band told me ! 'keep it real',

so i'm not gonna waste my time playing with reverbs,
just some eq-ing, limiting, bit of compression and stereo image-ing...

thats gonna take me at least 30 hours (make it 60 cause i know i'll spend longer) , but i'm on a deadline, so can't afford to mess around too much

i think in a way its true, if u gotto spend days on a mix,
whats wrong then?

(ps, thats also what they teach in the school of audio engineering,
you book the analog 24-track studio for 3 hours, do a mix of one song,
not enough time? too bad, gotto redo it next time...)

 

[fraserhutch]

Herwig, what means this "dinner jazz"? I am intrigued by the combination. Should label reps be booking their flights to Ghent to investigate the next musical trend? Imagine Homer saying "Mmmmm. Dinner Jazz!"

Um, dinner jazz is not a new concept - I've been playing it for over 20 years, mostly for weddings

Here's a link to a dinner jazz songbook: http://www.musicroom.com/se/ID_No/0139/details.html

I am not an accomplished mixer - so it takes me anywhere from 4-6 hours to a couple of days to render something that won't injure the listener

 

[gravehill]

I voted 5-12 hours but if there had been an option for 2-5 hours I would have chosen that instead. That said, as I'm normally working on computer based stuff with minimal amount of live instruments a lot of basic mixing is already done in composing/arranging phase. The 2-5 hours in the end is basically just fine tuning of some little details and adding effects.

 

[Fieva]

I mix quite a bit during the recording. After the recording, I do test sessions of the product in different sound environments. After the test sessions, I'll usually catch things that I missed during recording, so I'll go back to the mix and fine tune it. Depending on the complexity of the track, it could be anywhere from a few hours (4 or more) to about 12 or 13 hours. I usually tend to mix early in the morning when my mind is clear and during the afternoon when I tend to have more energy and concentration.

 

[Carter]

About 10 hours for me... But it just depends on the material....

 

[mr.rich]

i tend to use a 16 track. i spend about 4-5 hours on the first song. then most of my bsics should be in their holes some what. after that each song falls into place in a couple hours.

 

[Gorty]

I also use 16 tracks, most of my music is instrumental. Depending on the style of music I am mixing I tend to go over my mixes sometimes days apart, sometimes I might recall a particular tune and have another listen, maybe a tweak here and there.
Learning little tricks and reading how others go about their mixing in this forum has helped my mixing.
The stage I am at with my recordings (learning about the certain frequencies of certain instruments, compression, applying reverb, eq types and applications etc) has me tweaking for days. Due to this learning curve I am riding at the moment my mixes are taking longer than ever before, but I believe they are sounding better.

I will keep going until the mixes sound good, without any further tweaking each time that I listen, days sometimes weeks apart.

Then again I have learnt to have patience and restraint, also the only client I have to deal with is YOURS TRULY!!

 

[KonradG]

Wow. Alot of quick mixing. Doesnt anybody go back to retrack a vocal? A guitar part? Drums? Perhaps double sometyhing with a dif mic? Am I the only one that has spent several weeks to a couple of months mixing a song? Usually the more tracks in a song the longer it takes. Songs with 50+ tracks (which double when you take into account doubling, and delayed panning) can easily take weeks.

i spend weeks on the song and days on the mix.

like someone said above, a good performance makes a good mix. if you've spent a couple months on mixing a song, somethings wrong