Original subtitles

hi this is justin colletti of sonic's

group thanks for joining me for this

week's episode of the sonic's group

podcast and today we're going to be

talking about fixing it in the mix

can you fix it in the mix should you fix

it in the mix let's be honest sometimes

we run to things that we feel like

there's no other choice but to fix it in

the mix if you're gonna try to fix it in

the mix how do you do that how do you do

what they call excuse me but turd

polishing to a very high level and with

a very high degree of competency

when how should you fix it in the mix

this is inspired by a question that came

in on a recent video i did i did a video

recently called the top 10 reasons your

mix sucks and it was a fun one to do

people seem to like it but shadow now a

viewer named shadow now wrote in to say

justin question for you there is a

recording principle of getting it right

at the source he puts in quotes many of

us are unable to control the source

track getting them from live venues

getting them from clients or recording

them in imperfect rooms etc so does it

make sense to do an initial corrective

eq on most or all of the channels to

deal with poor mic placement room modes

no eq on live sources etc to rectify or

fix recording issues prior to starting

the mix process he asks

he says i recognize that this runs close

to the problem of trying to optimize

everything in solo this is something i

brought up in that episode but i'm

thinking of an initial post-tracking eq

to get a mix to a starting point before

mixing

still assuming that further mix eq would

be used does this approach have merit so

long story short of that question should

i go in and kind of try to fix

everything first in the mix before i

move on to the process of actually

mixing

for real

my general short answer to that is

no and i have a much better approach for

you that i think will get you the

results you want that i will reveal in

this podcast episode and this approach

is gleaned from my full-length course on

mixing mixing breakthroughs so i'm going

to give away

probably at the backbone of the course

the actual step-by-step process i

recommend going through in each and

every mix

with that said there is a hint of

something really good in this question

which is

are there things that i should correct

before i get into mixing that might end

up getting me bogged down in the mix

that i should get them out of the way

before i even start mixing and the

answer to that is absolutely yes i'm a

big advocate i've mentioned it countless

times on this channel of getting the

technical side out of the way as much as

possible before you start mixing so that

you have all of your effects your

template kind of set up so you don't

have to switch back and forth so many

times between technical mind creative

mind technical mind and creative mind

because all of that switching is going

to mess you up slow you down and really

reduce your productivity and your

confidence and creative flow in the

mixing process but hints at something

else in this question that a lot of

people have brought up which is are

there certain sounds i should be fixing

before i'm mixing and how do i go about

doing that and there's another question

that's related to this it's coming to

the podcast a bunch i haven't done

episode yet which is what about editing

during mixing is editing part of mixing

or should that be separate

another great question related to this

one we're going to tackle all of that so

much more go into this concept of

should i fix it in the mix and if i have

to fix it in the mix

how do i best do that and i'll give you

my step-by-step process for addressing

this kind of thing

before we get into the answers to all

these questions and a whole lot more

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you know what isn't fun though having to

fix stuff in the mix

so shadow now brought up this question

of getting it right at the source that

can be hard sometimes we run into these

situations we're getting bad tracks from

clients we're doing mixes of songs that

were recorded live we're recording in

our own environment but it's a

compromise room or we just don't really

know what we're doing yet so we've gotta

backtrack and try to fix our recordings

in the mix how do you go about doing

this

i'll be the first person to say that you

shouldn't try to fix it in the mix

because in reality the best mixes are

almost like a formality where the mix

was practically done during the

recording and production part of the

process where every single track and

overdub that was put on this track just

sounded like a finished record every

step of the way and the best mixes come

out of productions that were approached

that way not productions where people

are like oh we'll kind of dial in the

sound real quick and we can't really

hear it let's jack it up really loud in

the mix so the player can hear it and

we'll leave it there but it's okay we'll

come back to it in the mix no

like in the actual mix like as you're

layering on each instrument you should

be like that sounds like a record that's

the ideal so that when you mix it's more

of a formality and you're just putting

some final sweetening and final

enhancements on things and those

projects are wonderful to be part of and

those mixes often turn to mixes with a

mastering engineer the master is almost

a formality we're just doing little bits

of sweetening but that takes front

loading a lot of work into amazing

rehearsals of performances into amazing

arrangements of songs into amazing

songwriting so the effort is front

loaded in that situation but it gets

great results

that said there have also been records

where things were fixed in the mix and

kind of overworked after production that

came out pretty cool a band that i like

this is you know not a huge band that

everyone knows but if you know this band

let me know in the comments down below

stereo lab i interviewed these guys for

tape op magazine years ago absolutely

great band from the 90s and they did

everything wrong in this regard where

they recorded way too many instruments

and just recorded one thing after

another so they'd have all these layers

going on i talked about the production

process and they were like we just

recorded a whole bunch of stuff and then

when it came time to mix that's when we

actually like produced the track in the

sense of figuring out when to mute

things or get rid of things or building

the parts so we would just create like

loops upon loops upon loops and then in

the mixing process we'd really figure

out how the final arrangement and song

should be and that worked for a band

like them it's not a conventional

approach but i just want to throw it out

there that you can do

everything wrong and come out with cool

results

but the ideal is get things right at the

source

so the question is what do you do when

it is your job to polish the turd i hate

saying that out loud i just hate the

mental picture of that in my mind but

it's an expression that people use

constantly

and i'll tell you what shadow now is

asking about here of going in there and

eq'ing each and every instrument to try

to see if it needs something fixed

before you even get into mixing

that's generally not something i'm going

to recommend doing

it's probably at the point of mix

not the best use of your time

even in this situation

my recommendation for the way to

approach the mix remains the same

and that is to first of all start by

listening to a rough mix that the artist

has or that you have if you haven't

listened to it already and make some

notes to yourself about what if anything

needs to be improved

what's missing what needs to change in

this mix and that happens before you sit

down to even mix things at all so that's

step number one is getting acquainted

with how the rough mix sounds maybe

hearing that in relation to some

reference mixes so we can hear how far

away from where we really want the

production style to end up like so we

have an idea of just how far we are from

where we really want to end up

and just evaluate and say what here

needs to be changed watch the low

hanging fruit what needs to be improved

so that's step one or step zero

the other step one or step zero before

you even start mixing is

setting up your session getting a

template together that has all of your

routing and your effects kind of set up

getting everything appropriately labeled

in the session so you're not doing that

stuff while you're mixing so both of

those are step one slash step zero

before you even get to mixing

now once you get into mixing my

recommendation is that you start with

nothing but volume and pan

and see how great you can get the mix to

sound using nothing but volume and pan

literally that's it handicap yourself

don't start messing around with

compression and effects and eq yet just

get a good balance of things internally

and you'll find that if you actually

front load that part of the process

really doing the best you can with

volume and pan there are so many things

you can end up not doing

where you're going and eq'ing things to

try to make them more apparent in the

mix or you're compressing something to

try to bring up its level in the mix

where you really just needed to turn the

fader up or down and you didn't spend

enough time in that part of the process

yet and you just went like a dog chasing

after a squirrel following down this

path you did not need to follow down

because you didn't finish the first task

at hand which is use volume and pant to

make as good of a mix as possible the

actual mixing part of mixing

and then from there you stop and you ask

what if anything needs to be improved

what if anything needs to change

and then that is where in my mind eq'ing

comes in

and then compression comes in

but there's a big thing that i'm leaving

out before we even get there

and that is before we even get to our

mix well we're messing around with

things like volume and pan and then

later on eq and then later on

compression and then later on are

effects like reverb and delay

that before we even get there

we've listened to the original rough mix

and made comments and notes on

what in this track isn't working and

needs to be fixed before we even start

any of that mixing stuff

this could be vocal tuning

vocal tuning is absolutely one of those

things where if this is the final vocal

performance and it's not all the way

there and it actually needs tuning that

tuning should be done before you start

mixing

absolutely a hundred percent

or

editing performance editing if you need

drums edited it's really not only just

drum editing it's editing drums and the

surrounding instruments so that they

really have a good pocket together and

if some of that needs to be done that

should be done before you're sitting

down to move a single fader so those are

two big things that if you're going to

fix them should be fixed

before the mix

it's part of the production process

drum editing and

vocal tuning vocal editing

that stuff out of the way first

even sometimes you might hear in the

rough mix that there's these like mouth

noises these gulps and

lip smacks i'm trying to ham these up

for the microphone right now that you

might want to get rid of and ideally

that kind of editing would be done

before you get to mixing as well and

that's part of the production process

but if you're in the position of someone

like shadow now whose position i was in

you know years ago and many people who

are listening to this right now probably

in a similar position where you're

getting tracks from an artist where

there isn't really a producer or the

artist themselves or the producer and

they're kind of new at producing so they

don't really know all the things they

should watch out for and they hand you

this track and it needs this kind of

stuff done the drum editing the vocal

tuning the vocal editing the instrument

that's obviously in need of some noise

reduction when it comes in

those things they don't know to do them

yet

and you're being handed this as the

mixer then yeah it is you your job as

the mixer to say

hey i can mix this right now and i can

definitely take it further than where it

is right now

but i think you're going to be much

happier with the results and get much

closer to the feel of the records that

you're actually trying to sound like and

stand up against if we address

some instrument editing in these

sections or some drum editing or some

vocal tuning or vocal editing

let's do that i actually listened to

your rough mix i've taken some notes on

each and let's get that stuff done first

before i start mixing because i think

you're going to be way happier and then

of course pricing and stuff is up to you

to figure out how you charge how you do

this kind of stuff but if you are trying

to get into a situation where you're

just mixing a lot of stuff and just

improving your mixing chops farming some

of that stuff out and saying sure i'll

take on the editing project and then you

actually farm out the drum editing to a

more junior engineer who you work with

who's doing the drum editing or one who

specializes in vocal tuning they do that

stuff so then it's kind of set up and

then maybe from there ideally it goes to

an assistant engineer who sets up your

session and then it goes to you that's

what mixing actually looks like at a

high level and you can actually do that

at a beginner or intermediate level as

well you don't have to be making twelve

hundred dollars a mix to justify that if

you were going to do an editing job and

it really would require two hours of

editing to do you can kind of farm that

work out to someone that you trust maybe

take a margin on top of that work that

you're farming out to someone bake it

into your rate just so it's seamless for

the artist and then have all the stuff

already tuned edited and then sent to

you so you're ready to work on it just

mixing and just focusing your energy and

your attention there not burning

yourself out in the project before you

even get ready to mix

if you're at a more beginning stage of

your career and you don't have enough

work to justify that and you could

really use the other extra hours of work

then this is an additional service that

you should probably recommend and say

well here's how much it's going to cost

for me to do this stuff and i'm going to

do it myself because i could actually

use the extra work and the extra

experience and then you just kind of

bake it into a project price for the

mixes and of course you can always give

them the option of if you really don't

want this stuff done and you just want

it mixed as is i can do that but it's

maybe not going to be as optimal as if

some of those things were done and then

you just do your best mixing what you're

given and that's it

now the situation is slightly different

if you are the producer

are you the producer who's also mixing

it are you

writing the songs arranging the songs

performing the songs recording the songs

and then editing and doing all that

stuff and then mixing it

i kind of recommend as you get further

developed in your craft that you try to

let go of some of those tasks and get

help on some of those tasks so you can

focus more of your creative energy on

the areas where you have the biggest

impact and you do the best work and free

yourself up from some of these other

tasks so that you can focus on the

things where you bring the biggest

benefit to the table and let someone

else do the things honestly more

efficiently and sometimes less

expensively if we're looking at actual

opportunity cost like the time value of

money what an extra hour of freedom is

worth to you it might be cheaper to send

this to someone else even this is just a

passion project that you don't plan on

making any money out of just freeing

yourself up from these chores and tasks

that are going to burn you out on your

music and giving them to someone else

who's going to execute them really well

can be totally justified even on

something that's just a passion project

i mean if you have a day job you might

be able to work an extra two or three

hours at your day job instead of banging

your head against the wall for eight

hours on a annoying production task that

you actually don't like doing and you're

not very good at and somebody else would

have gotten better results at it's like

you could just spend a couple extra

hours at your job that you're already

doing and then a fraction of the time

you could have given that to somebody

else to have them do that part for you

so you can focus your limited creative

energy on the stuff that you actually

enjoy doing and are inspired to do and

there are the things that you should

actually be doing

so that's something to think about

but if you are the producer on a project

and you are going to hand it off to

someone else to mix or you're going to

mix it yourself

it's part of your job being that

producer

to kind of oversee that final qc of

things and at the entry levels and the

hobbyist levels that might mean you are

going in there before the project is

being mixed and just making sure there

aren't any weird noises on any of the

tracks or maybe it means you're going in

there and doing a little bit of editing

or maybe it means that you're doing

some tuning

or as you get more advanced maybe it

means that you're overseeing that part

of the process and sending this off to

an assistant or service provider who's

helping you in one or more of those

areas

it could also be things like editing out

bleed from drums putting in what we call

strip silence in pro tools where you're

taking your tom tracks and every time a

tom isn't hitting

like manually deleting out that section

or and then computer-assisted way

deleting out those sections where the

toms aren't playing so the tom mics are

really only active when a tom is hitting

that kind of stuff can be extremely

useful to do before a mix even starts

but that's part of an editing process

it's part of what comes before we get to

the mixing stage

that can be extremely useful it can

limit the amount of cymbal bleed and

weird bleed you're getting from your

main instruments like kick and snare it

can allow you to apply more compression

to things without them sucking as much

so that kind of thing can be extremely

useful to do but it's something that

comes before the process of mixing

so my ultimate piece of advice for you

is in this situation where things do

need to be fixed yes fix as many of them

as you can as possible before you get to

the mixing stage don't consider it part

of the mix please don't find yourself in

the situation where you've got halfway

through your mix and now i've got to

stop here because now i think i want to

put in some snare samples or now i want

to go and retune the vocal or now i want

to go back and make sure we've comp

together the best vocal take or now i

want to go back and strip out a whole

bunch of bleed on tom mics or snare

drums or whatever it is

don't find yourself doing that during

the mix definitely do that before the

mix happens and don't even consider it

part of mixing because it's not

because when you sit down to mix as many

things as possible should be in order

and your whole focus should be on

enhancing the emotional impact of the

song

of taking the end listener through a

journey

where you're not switching back and

forth and going back to this idea of

fixing things that are wrong but you're

focusing predominantly on enhancement

that said this idea of having two

different types of eq

one you're doing some little bits of

corrective eq to get rid of things you

dislike in a sound and then maybe after

that you're doing another pass of kind

of broader eq where you're enhancing it

some people will do that kind of thing

where you have more subtractive eq and

then after that subtractive eq the

compression happens and then after that

compression there's some final

sweetening eq to kind of make up for

some of the things you did or just put a

little bit more lipstick on it but

that's a totally separate idea from

fixing things in the mix

and i also want to get you if i can out

of the mindset of fixing things

too much

at the mixing stage

because if you're really far off with

this production

compared to your reference mixes and

where you want your mix to really end up

being then there's one of two possible

approaches

one approach is to recognize

man

we are so far off

from sounding anything close to our

favorite records and if we really want

to get there and that's our goal

we should almost consider what we have

here a demo and we've got to go back a

tick back into the production phase to

improve things there

or we consider this like a

pre-production demo and we just

re-record the whole song now and knowing

everything that we know now going

through the process of recording it

doing all of our overdubs finalizing

arrangement mixing it and we see how far

we got we're like okay this is as good

as we could get let's consider this done

and let's consider it either an initial

release of the song we're going to put

out a better version of it later which

is something that's possible in the 21st

century or you could say to yourself

this is like a pre-production demo and

now we've learned so much about how to

make the song better that now we're

going to record it for real that's one

option

option number two is less severe now you

go back a tick in the production phase

and you try to improve things with

editing with a couple of retakes with

improving a few sounds that's another

possible approach

but then there's this final and very

valid approach of

just accept it for what it is don't try

to overwork it don't try to make it

sound like your favorite commercial

references find new references

find new references that have more warts

on them and say

it's okay this sounds like a somewhat

more homespun record because that's the

stage we're at in our production

development right now and the stuff

we're gonna do sounds a little home spun

that's all right and we've had a whole

bunch of favorite records that have a

homespun feeling and if people tried to

take those records and overproduce them

and fix everything on them they would

have gone from being an awesome home

spun sounding record to a terrible

sounding hi-fi production

because they were trying to polish let's

say an old boot and make it look like a

new boot right instead of saying this is

an awesome old boot that's been worn so

many times it's got personality it's got

vibe it's my job to brush the dirt off

of this put a little bit of a clear

shine finish on this old cowboy boot

here and now this old worn cowboy boot

is ready for another day it's got this

cool vintage vibe going but if we try to

take that old cracked up cowboy boot and

like put black shoe polish on it and try

to make it into a dress shoe

it's gonna suck

so

you have to figure out is that what

you're trying to do with your production

are you trying to take the vintage

cowboy boot and turn it into a pair of

tuxedo dance shoes with a gleaming shine

that makes them look like a couple of

black mirrors on your feet if that's

what we're going for ah

don't do that either go back and make

the

fancy tuxedo dance shoes and just like

do that or say

hey

this is a pair of beat up old vintage

cowboy boots we took the dirt off of it

we put some clear shine on it and we

didn't try to make it into something

that it's not

even if you want a new pair of cowboy

boots

you're better off going back and making

that from scratch than trying to make a

new pair of cowboy boots out of an old

pair of cowboy boots

although i guess you could also go

through the process of taking an old

pair of shoes putting a new sole on them

and even though they're an older pair of

shoes you can still get some more life

out of them and they're still in pretty

good shape so all you had to do was go

back and remove that old sole that you

could stick a finger through put a new

sole on it and it's still a pretty good

shoe and i guess that would be the

analog of going back and doing a few

retakes or doing some drum editing which

is often warranted especially if you're

comparing your work to

major releases in modern styles of

popular music

but there's also some good sounding

major releases out there that have some

warts on them and you don't need to go

in and sanitize everything

that in my opinion is not one of the

jobs of the mixer and it's not one of

the goals of music production in general

it's not to sanitize everything and go

through every track and remove every

last little squeak and noise necessarily

and if you go back and listen to some of

your favorite records and you listen

really carefully on

really good speaker systems you may

notice some squeaks and some other

things if you get into a really super

critical mindset the kind of mindset

that you apply to your own stuff when

you're criticizing yourself and trying

to figure out everything that's wrong

with it if you actually took that

mindset and applied it to some of your

favorite records you could find

blemishes and problems on them as well

that's why it's so important

in the mixing process and in the music

production process to be able to again

and again step back zoom out and say

what if anything needs to change

and instead of getting your microscope

out and looking underneath every little

corner of the rug to find every last

little speck of dust that you might have

missed

you look at the room and you say

is anything out of place is anything

where it shouldn't be did someone leave

a dirty dish somewhere you look for the

things that obviously need to change

instead of pulling the refrigerator out

from the wall to see if there's any dust

behind it you should be doing that to

your refrigerator i don't know if you do

it more than once or twice a year i

think you're crazy and i don't even know

if i do it that often most people

probably don't and here's where my

endless analogies for today kind of

break down because

record production isn't like cleaning a

room

you basically never ever need to pull

out your refrigerator and clean behind

it whereas if you live in a house you

need to do that only very rarely but in

music you basically need to do that

essentially never you really only need

to do that if something smells terrible

in the kitchen and you checked

everywhere and you're like ah

let's pull out the fridge and see if

there's a dead mouse behind there and if

something smells really terrible in your

record maybe there's a dead mouse behind

your proverbial fridge and that's when

you go in and take out your magnifying

glass and dive deep into figuring out

there's something wrong here i don't

know where it is let's solo every track

and figure out what the problem is

because that happens sometimes you get

to a section of song you're like

something sucks no idea what it is time

to loop this section and solo every

single track one by one i guess that is

the corollary to pulling out the

refrigerator so you can vacuum behind it

which if you do that every single time

you clean your kitchen you're absolutely

crazy

all right well i hope this episode was

useful for you if i do any more

analogies today they're becoming

increasingly more tortured i just made

all these up on the spot and planning

these advanced i hope they work let me

know what your favorite analogy was from

this episode or if you have one of your

own let me know in the comments down

below i just want an analogy that's

better than turd polishing i just hate

that image

anyway thanks for joining me for this

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that i know about mastering you can

check out the full-length course on

mastering called mastering demystified

over at masteringdemystified.com

or if you like so many people in audio

and music production need help learning

to really hear and use compression and

limiting with confidence i have the new

full-length course that's all about

compression over at

compressionbreakthroughs.com you're

going to find a ton of great conceptual

frameworks in these courses and also a

ton of great audio examples that will

make these principles clear to you i

hope you check out those courses and

enjoy them another thing i want to get

for you since you made it this far in is

a discount on some plugins if you're

interested in izotope plugins and they

make some great stuff check them out

over at izotope.com sonic scoop where

you can get 10 off anything they make

that's izotope.com sonic scoop they make

great plugins for mastering for mixing

and an amazing noise reduction suite for

when you do have to like pull out the

preferable refrigerator and clean behind

it in your mix and you need to do some

serious noise reduction the rx bundle is

fantastic or you can get their music

production suite pro bundle which has so

many of these tools built into it

there's usually a seven day free trial

but at that link isotope.com sonic scoop

you can get a 30 day free trial

definitely check it out also shout out

and thanks to focusrite i'm talking into

a lovely claret interface right now they

make some of the best values out there

and interfaces they've recently come out

with the new claret octopre which has

eight channels of great preamps at an

affordable price with a great feature

set check them out over at focusrite.com

and last but not least soundtoys

sponsoring this podcast from the

beginning making some of my favorite

creative mixing effects in the known

universe so much fun to use such cool

tools trout anything they make for free

for 30 days over at soundtoys.com

thanks for hanging out with me for this

week's episode of the sonic scoop

podcast this has been justin coletti of

sonic scoop

see you next time