When can you call yourself
a Mix Engineer?
Picture credit: Mrudula, Digi Sound Studio
There are many modern production techniques for your own
mixes using a Laptop or in a home studio these days. Due
to the current trend of getting DAW’s for cheaper and the
plugins at a good deal, the traditional or the conventional
way of mixing is really missing these days as they have not
even seen the old Analog mixers and also not even heard
the 2-track or 16-track tape machines and how it sounds. members and the guitarists or bassist come at different
times and implement their ideas and because of today’s
modern lifestyle, even the hearing is changed. So many
people today hear only in the small Ear Pods and judges
the mix and complaints to the engineers that the Bass
is Not good! Well, I wonder how can a small Diaphragm
produce tonne of Low end and extreme High Frequency?
Today, as we are all in the Hard Disk based (NLE - Non
Liner Editing) bases system, everything is in random
access and we can do anything at any time. The traditional
workflow has totally disappeared. So that’s why we face
a lot of sample based recordings and also there is no
contact with the musicians either! Even a teenager is now
calling himself a mix engineer, all produced on a laptop!
Everybody wants to call themselves a “MIX ENGINEER”
and sit in from of the big screen. I really appreciate this,
but what I insist is to know the old school style of analog
mixing workflow and then follow that in the DAW. What we miss in our modern digital Recording is the analog
warmth, Depth and noise and Tape saturation which is not
present in our DAW using the modern audio interfaces. So
to get that big sounding analog feel in our music production,
I highly recommend to have analog modeling plugins in
your DAW to get that Analog sound and feel in your mix to
make it more Musical rather than the machine generated
sound. In the digital process, many use countless overdubs,
playlists features by DAW or Comping which we call and
using unlimited samples from various sources on the
internet and creating complex automation to make sound
different, these are the few factors which make sound so
different when compared to the traditional approach.
In those days, the artistes use to practice well and prepare
themselves before they step into the studio as time and
cost was a major factor. Then recording them all together
in the same room with lots of Mic Bleed was a great
challenge for the Engineers and also mixing sounded
very musical, meaning that so called BLEED from one
mic to the mic was the beauty! Then the Live Drum
with the Bass Guitar amp was so well glued together
in the mix and the whole band sounded very lively.
As things change today, each artist comes separately and
sings on a click track and never meets the other band
So, to finally call yourself a “MIX ENGINEER” one should
go through the tough path of learning the analog mixers
and how to handle it a live situation in a studio or at a live
concert and then have a feel of those preamp how they
sound in your mix. Not only that, I highly recommend the
young laptop producers to know the mic placing technique
to get the best during the recording process instead of
having a mindset of “ I will FiX IT IN THE MIX”!
Happy Mixing and Learning!
Author: L. Baba Prasad. He is the owner and chief Sound/Mix and Mastering Engineer at Digi Sound Studio. He also teaches Sound
Engineering and Music Production courses. For more details, visit www.digisoundacademy.com
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The
Score Magazine
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