Music Mixing: What It Is, and Why It’s Important

When I was a kid, I started playing guitar, and along with playing guitar inevitably came reading guitar-themed magazines. As a guitar neophyte, I began devouring publications on playing guitar and writing music, delving into interviews with famous artists who talked shop about writing guitar parts and recording albums. One day I was reading an interview with Sting, who mentioned the name of the person who mixed his album.

Mixed? What did that mean, I wondered? So I asked the nearest person to me at the time, which happened to be my mom. “Mixing is when they take the recordings of each instrument and adjust the volumes to make the sound you hear in the recording,” she explained to me.

“Wait,” I asked, “you mean they record everything separately?”

This was my introduction to mixing, starting with the revelation that songs weren’t just recorded live in a studio by a whole band standing around a few microphones (at least not anymore–my mental picture of recording may have been shaped by years listening to early Beatles records which did involve much more “live” recording). After all my years of listening to music, I had never known. With that revelation in mind, I knew from then on what “mixing” meant.  Well, sort of.

There was much more to it than I thought

For the next several years, I thought mixing was simply a search for the right volume levels.  While that’s not completely untrue, it was still a very incomplete picture. It wasn’t until I started interacting directly with professional mixing engineers that I finally began to fully understand how important–and complex–mixing really was.

I tell this story because I think it’s pretty common for musicians–and very common for non-musicians–to underestimate the power and importance of mixing in the world of music. It just so happens that it’s an aspect of recording that, when done right, most people don’t even notice. However, just because it’s an unsung hero of the recording process doesn’t mean it’s not extremely important. But to really understand how important it is, you need to know what it is in the first place.

Mixing is more than just adjusting the volume levels of individual instrument and vocal tracks.  Of course, that is a big part of mixing, but it’s by no means the whole story. Mixing also involves:

Panning

In addition to volume levels, mixing engineers decide where in the stereo spectrum to place each instrument. Music is recorded and played back in a stereo field, meaning there are left and right speakers and sounds can be placed accordingly. It is imperative for all instruments to be panned to a proper place in order to get a clean mix. Not only does that help individual parts stand out and be heard clearly without infringing on another song element, but it allows for the mix to sound balanced between the left and right channels.

EQ

When you layer multiple instruments on top of each other, you start getting a “muddy” sound as they take up the same audio frequencies. A good mix engineer knows how to EQ highs, mids, lows, and everything in between so that a mix will sound “clean” and each instrument takes up only its intended place in the song. It takes a trained ear to recognize when certain frequencies should be cut or boosted for particular tracks.

Effects

Guitarists sometimes record with effects, but the vast majority of effects processing goes on during the mixing process. Things like compression, reverbs, delays, and many other effects are chosen and tweaked by the mixing engineer, who helps make what might otherwise be a dull or lifeless recording into something full and lush. Engineers must have a slew of professional quality effects processors and plug-ins at their disposal to ensure a great mix.

Automation

It would be nice if mixing was as simple as setting the volume faders in one place and letting the song finish, but unfortunately it’s a lot harder than that. Because different tracks need to be at the forefront of the song at different times–lead vocals here, guitar solo there, etc.–things like volume levels, panning, and effects need to be automated. Automation is what the mixing engineer does to program certain fades and pans into different parts of the song, so that each time it plays, that cool keyboard lick in measure ten will come up to the exact same level every time the mix is played back. This can be a very specific and complicated process, so it’s best left in the hands of a professional!

I hope this post shed a little light on what may have been a slightly mysterious step of the recording process to many musicians. As you’ve probably gathered, mixing is an extremely crucial part of making a great recording, and shouldn’t be phoned for the sake of your song’s future. Call Studio Pros today to get a Grammy-winning mixing engineer to make your song sound professional!

Posted on: July 29th, 2010