Yamaha 12/4 Making the Most Of Your Mixer Making Better Mixes, Panning For Cleaner Mixes

Making the Most Of Your Mixer

5 Making Better Mixes

5-1. Approaching the Mix—Where Do You Start?

Mixing is easy, right? Just move the faders around until it sounds right? Well, you can do it that way, but a more systematic approach that is suited to the material you’re mixing will produce much better results, and faster. There are no rules, and you’ll probably end up developing a system that works best for you. But the key is to develop a system rather than working haphazardly. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Faders Down

It might sound overly simple, but it is usually a good idea to start with all channel faders off—all the way down. It’s also possible to start with all faders at their nominal settings, but it’s too easy to lose perspective with this approach. Start with all faders down, then bring them up one by one to fill out the mix. But which channel should you start with?

Example1:

Vocal Ballad Backed by Piano Trio

What are you mixing? Is it a song in which the vocals are the most important element? If so you might want to build the mix around the vocals. This means bringing the vocal channel up to nominal first (if your level setup procedure has been done properly this will be a good starting point), and then adding the other instruments. What you add next will depend on the type of material you are working with and your approach to it. If the vocals are backed by a piano trio and the song is a ballad, for example, you might want to bring in the piano next and get the vocal/piano relationship just right, then bring in the bass and drums to support the overall sound.

Example2:

Funky R&B Groove

The approach will be totally different if you’re mixing a funky R&B number that centers on the groove. In this case most engineers will start with the drums, and then add the bass. The relation- ship between the drums and bass is extremely important to achieve the “drive” or groove the music rides on. Pay particular attention to how the bass works with the kick (bass drum). They should almost sound like a single instrument— with the kick supplying the punch and the bass supplying the pitch. Once again, there are no rules, but these are concepts that have been proven to work well.

Music First—Then Mix

In any case, the music comes first. Think about the music and let it guide the mix, rather than try- ing to do things the other way around. What is the music saying and what instrument or technique is being used to drive the message? That’s where the focus of your mix should be. You’re using a high- tech tool to do the mixing, but the mix itself is as much art as the music. Approach it that way and your mixes will become a vital part of the music.

5-2. Panning For Cleaner Mixes

Not only does the way you pan your individual channels determine where the instruments appear in the stereo sound field, but it is also vital to give each instrument it’s own “space” so that it doesn’t conflict with other instruments. Unlike live sound in a real acoustic space, recorded stereo sound is basically 2-dimensional (although some types of surround sound are actually very 3-dimensional), and instruments positioned right on top of each other will often get in each other’s way—particu- larly if they are in the same frequency range or have a similar sound.

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