What is Mixing?

Hello again! Dezz Asante here from the TechMuzeAcademy with another MixLessons.com video quick tip. This one comes again from the Homerecording.com forums from a member who goes by the name Simon96. And this one is a short question but a big question. And he ask, “What is mixing period or I guess question mark.” And that is a huge question. But what I’d like to do in this little quick tip is to break it down into something very simple that kind of defines the essence in…from a technical perspective as to what we’re trying to do when were thinking about mixing. He says,”Let say I finally recorded all the tracks I needed, what should I do then?” And that was his question.

So essentially Simon, the goal behind putting a mix together after you’ve done all your recording and tracking and editing your arrangements so on and so forth and you put the instruments away and the musicians have left the building and you are left with the a screenful of audio tracks that make up your arrangement this is where we begin our mix. And from a technical perspective what we’re trying to achieve is the systematic distribution of all of the elements within that arrangement between the 3 spatial dimensions.

And the 3 special dimensions are some are obvious, some are not so obvious. The most obvious would be the horizontal dimension from left to right which is represented by your pan pots. Okay! How you pan these tracks from left to right. There’s also the depth dimension which is dealt with by ambience and reverbs and delays and how you push something further back in the mix. Pull something closer to you in the mix. And the third dimension which a lot of people forget to consider is the vertical dimension which is dealt with by high frequency content. High frequencies are perceived higher physically and low frequencies like the kick drum that hits you down below. So, thats how you distribute elements between the vertical dimension.

So, essentially what we’re trying to do when we’re mixing is to distribute all of the elements between those 3 spatial planes. Now, that’s a simple explanation but within that you know you can dig in very very deep into the all of the techniques and tricks is the psyhoaccoustics that surround how you go about doing this.How to go about creating space for everything in the mix if it’s a fairly complex mix. How to go about making sure that the right elements are coming down the center, the sort of sacred space in the mix as I refer to it.

And if you are interested in learning a lot more about what is mixing starting from what is mixing and digging deep into the technical details, the theory, the fundamentals, the concepts as I mentioned before the psychoaccoustics, how did auditory system works and how we as mixers create auditory illusions for the sake of this goal of creating an expressive creative and emotionally impactful mix, head on over to MixLessons.com and throw your name on the email list so that you can receive the free video training series I put togther there called “The Three Simple Steps to Amazing Home Recordings” where we go much deeper into answers to this particular question.

As I say, its a little broad for a quick tip but go to MixLessons.com. Jump on the email list and I will begin to send you those videos straight away. And while you’re there leave us a comment. Let me know what you think about the videos. Leave  us a review. I’m always looking forward to hearing how people are taking this information and using it in their own creative ways at home, in your own home studio, your own lab as I call it. And so I hope that that brief answer gives a little bit of an insight into what we’re trying to accomplish and we’ll see you on the next quick tip.