You often thought of remixing as a sign of engineer weakness. So for example say you are mixing a project, happy to mix it down and send it to your friends for listening. Your friends will then tell you that the mix sucks and does not sound good.
So you would feel you are failure at audio mixing? – NOT. It is just your friends may have different expectations as to how the mix should sound like. I was surprised that remixing is a normal even in the commercial and professional environment of music production and audio recording. Let’s have some story…
When I read the story of Nirvana last album “In Utero“; the album most important singles was remixed. The first version of the mix was done by Steve Albini and the other mix was done by Scott Litt. So how does this happen?
Recording labels expect the singles of the mix to be radio friendly and with sound formats similar to the rock sound released in those years. Steve Albini mix sounds great but sounds very raw (fewer effects more live sound) and less processed. This is what the producer and Kurt Cobain initially expected the album to sound like but record label has some different expectations when it comes to the mix. So they decided to hire Scott Litt to remix the key songs “Heart Shaped Box” and “All Apologies”.
The rest of the songs are still mixed by Steve Albini and one of my most favourite songs in the album is not the singles. For example Serve the Servants, Dumb, Tourettes and Scentless Apprentice.
First Lesson in Remixing: Do it for Perfection
It is never bad to remix over and over again. Time is the only enemy here but if you aim for perfection you should never be afraid. There are lots of factors that can affect how your mix should sound like, so you would be altering the following settings below to get the results you need:
a. EQ of instruments
b.) Compression
c.) Reverb and other effects
I have written and produced 35 songs in my music catalog under my own publishing with around 21 of them recorded and 10 of them which are multi-track studio projects. The rest are live acoustic recordings. The mix that you can listen on “My Works” and in my other websites is the first version of the mix. I am using a very crude system on my first mix but at least I manage to complete the mix and get results.
When I listen to some of my mix today, I still noticed a BIG room for improvements in all aspect. Since my long term goal is to partner with a record label to distribute some of my best songs; I am planning to remix (or even re-record some vital parts) most of the song projects before I pitched songs to them.
Second Lesson in Remixing: Trust and Respect the Producer/Client Vision of the Mix
I have once a client which has a particular vision and goal as to what the mix should sound like. So they send the recordings of their song to different mixing engineers and get a sample of their work. One of the mixing engineers hired was me.
So I sent to them a sample results. Then they provide a feedback that it was the first time that the vocals sounds so clear but they like the instrumentation to also dominate the mix. One engineer they hired does the opposite. The vocals were buried in the mix and the instrumentation is dominant drowning the vocals.
So I happily remixed the song and trust the client vision. So I simply cut 2000Hz Q=1.4 -9dB for all string and keyboard instruments other than the vocals before increasing their instrumentation level in the mix. This is to prevent conflicting with the vocals as the instrumentation volume is increased. I send to them the remix version and they are happy and accepted my mix as the best version.
If you are on your first time to accept the client for audio mixing, always be prepared and accept that you will be remixing the work. This is normal and you should take it as a learning opportunity.
Third Lesson in Remixing: Always backup and never delete your remix
Now you made several remix version of the song; you should never delete the old mixes and always backup those files. Why?
1.) There might be chances that you will not be happy with the new version of the mix so you will be reverting to the old mix.
2.) You might be using some effect settings on the old mix which are not present on the new mix but would like to incorporate it. So if you still have the old session files, you simply need to open it and check what effect settings you are using. If you delete it, you will spend a lot of time figuring out what are those settings.
I recommend you will organize your old and remix session files, project files as follows:
Organizing your remix
Content last updated on August 5, 2012