One more hyphotetical question to the pro sound engineers

[leifbone]

First of all, sorry my spelling. My question is what you do when you mix a music recording. I bet you try to make it sound as natural as possible. Make it serve the musical aspects, the musicians aspects and make the point ready for the listener to understand as clear as possible. How much do you lie your own technicue, your own touch to it? Do you do something with recording/mixing technicue so it make it your own touch to it. So other people say, yes we recognise this is as your mix? Or do you all the way serve the music or the musician. Do you have a trademark you always try to get in the mix. Or do you use totally different tecnicue on each song, as if the music only decide how you mix?

I understand if you dont understand me

 

[grimtraveller]

Do you do something with recording/mixing technicue so it make it your own touch to it. So other people say, yes we recognise this is as your mix? Or do you all the way serve the music or the musician. Do you have a trademark you always try to get in the mix. Or do you use totally different tecnicue on each song, as if the music only decide how you mix?

I think, in varying degrees, that it's a mix of all three. Each song is different, but you're you so each person will have things that may identify them. But it's all done to serve the song.

 

[ido1957]

If you put the same effects and EQ on all your mixes you could put a "trademark" sound on the song.

 

[miroslav]

I think even if you simply use a similar approach during tracking, for specific elements....that along with how you mix can add a certain "signature".

 

[Bobbsy]

Well, to answer hypothetically....

One thing to remember is that the majority of "pro sound engineers" are not doing their own recordings...rather, they are working for other people and therefore any trademark style is going to belong to the musicians (or sometimes the producer), not the engineer. If (to make up a silly example) I found myself doing a 30th anniversary recording of Abba, the end result would have to sound like Abba, not any style I happened to favour.

Of course it gets more complicated than that: quite often the "style" is the result of a collaboration between an original engineer and the musicians involved. I have little doubt that a fair part of Pink Floyd's trademark sound is a result of the work Alan Parsons did on Dark Side for example. However, the key word is collaboration. An engineer without musicians can produce an ultra low signal to noise silence and maybe some sine waves...but that ain't music.

Having said all that, I'm sure that, at the top of the profession, sound engineers DO have a "sound" they're know for and musicians and producers seek them out when they want that sound. However, for every "name" engineer like that, there are hundreds or thousands of jobbing engineers who do folk music in the morning, rock in the afternoon, a choir the next morning and then make some comic sound effects after that. It's pretty hard to develop a style when you work like that....