Here’s a collection of tips you might find helpful the next time a pricey piece of gear stands between you and great recordings.

Help from others

Have a friend perform: Home recording, especially for singer/songwriters and electronic musicians, often involves a single musician writing and recording all the music. But artists in this situation can find themselves too close to the song, at mix time, to make decisions critically.

Working with other musicians might initially complicate recording and mixing. However, creating a great mix depends, in part, on your ability to remove unnecessary details, and most of us are more comfortable objectively critiquing someone else’s work. So asking a friend (or some professionals) to perform a track or two will ultimately make mixing easier, and more effective.

Get more ears on the mix: With any task requiring attention to detail, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. And so it goes with mixing. A second or third opinion can draw your attention back to details you’ve glossed over.

And outside opinions needn’t come from other musicians and engineers. (Although the homerecording.com MP3 mixing clinic is a great source for free advice.) Often, regular listeners give the best feedback because they don’t think in technical terms about the production, and instead form their thoughts on how the song makes them feel. And some of the best mix feedback I’ve gotten has come from children, who are unconditioned by musical convention.

Listen on multiple systems: Hearing a mix through different speakers is a little like getting a second opinion. And professional mixing engineers rely on this technique. Chris Lord Alge, for example, keeps a portable radio near his console for checking mixes:

[E]very client who comes in here wants to hear their mixes on it. If it doesn’t sound good through 2-inch speakers on your little boom box, what’s the point? It’s got to sound big on a small speaker.

Simplify …

Avoid dogma: Our hobby (or profession, if you’re lucky) is plagued with religious arguments, like “tube gear sounds better,” and “analog sounds warmer than digital.” Regardless of each argument’s merit, these dogmatic issues over-complicate the recording process, and distract us from the importance of technique – which, of course, costs nothing!

Cut. Ruthlessly: As musicians, our egos push us to put everything we’ve got into every part we record. But virtuoso performances and great recordings don’t necessarily go together. The whole, as they say, is often greater than the sum of the parts.

In most song arrangements, over-instrumentation usually just leads to clutter. And along with being more difficult to mix, clutter rarely sounds good.

Make every part do work: Ensure that every part competing for the listener’s attention is supposed to compete for the listener’s attention.

Practice

Practice your performance before hitting record: The benefits of practice should be obvious to all musicians, but home recording fosters a “write as you record” approach to song creation.

Practice takes time. But it needn’t hamper the creative process; and in most cases it will ultimately save time. Though the tracks may take longer to record, it’s far easier – and quicker – to mix a set of well-performed, polished performances.

Not only do the performances themselves benefit from practice, but the final mix will sound more professional.

Use reference CDs: No single technique will do more to improve the quality of your mixes. Working with a reference mix is, in some ways, like getting a free lesson on mixing from a professional engineer.

Practice mixing when you’re not in the studio: Every mixing engineer should spend time listening critically to professional mixes. Set aside some time every day, say 10 minutes, to immerse yourself in a mix someone else has done. Consider the panning, which instruments take your focus, and how the focus changes as the song evolves. Try to determine the effects in use, and why they were chosen. In modern pop and rock mixes, the interplay between the lead vocal and the snare drum is particularly important, as is the bass guitar/kick drum relationship, so spend some time analyzing these parts in detail.

See Also: Create more professional home recordings

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In effect, posing one of these questions tells the world you’re an amateur. But I hope that by explaining why the questions don’t have the simple answers a rookie expects, you’ll appreciate how an experienced engineer thinks about each problem, and be better equipped to identify gaps in your own knowledge.

Questions

1. What are the best EQ settings for guitar?
Or its many variants: “What are the best compressor settings for vocals,” “what reverb settings should I use for mastering,” and so on.

This question has a straightforward answer: The best settings are the ones that sound right. But for most beginners, who haven’t yet learned critical listening skills, this advice seems trite.

Unfortunately, any other answer is meaningless. Every track, in every song, has its own unique requirements. And the best settings, for EQ or compression or any effect, are dictated solely by the requirements of the song. (See the Rule of Mixing for more.)

2. Which is the best microphone?
We’d all love to own a U87 or a C12. But engineers covet those mics because they’re reliable and versatile, not because either is inherently superior. In fact, there are as many ways to define “best” (and for that matter “worst”) as there are sounds to record. As with the question above, what’s best ultimately depends on what fits the song.

3. How do I record my song to sound like The Foo Fighters?
This question stems from the misconception that The Foo Fighters, or any band, sound the way they do because of their equipment. Acquire the same instruments and mics, the thinking goes, and you can duplicate their recordings.

Most professional recordings have deceptive clarity. They sound, at least to listeners unfamiliar with the process, as though they should be easy to reproduce. But the question above has only one honest answer. To sound like The Foo Fighters:

• Buy quality instruments, and learn how to play them well.
• Write songs suitable for the genre.
• Arrange those songs to support Foo Fighters-style production.
• Practice. Lots.
• Record in a great live room.
• Spend time on microphone selection and placement.
• Play every part till you get it right.

In other words, there are no shortcuts, and it’s not easy. Great recordings take time and talent.

4. What vocal chain does Paul Simon use?
Also commonly worded as “I want to sound like John Mayer. Which microphones and settings should I use?”

Beginners ask this question assuming that we can recreate a track by knowing how it was recorded. Unfortunately, even if you bought Paul Simon’s complete signal chain, you’d have little success matching his recordings. His voice, and John Mayer’s voice, and of course the voice of any famous musician, is unique, as are his performances.

To sound like Paul Simon, in short, you need to have him sing your vocal

5. How do I remove the room’s ambiance from a recording?
Conceptually, it makes sense that since we use reverb to add depth, there must be some way to reverse the process.

There isn’t. If you don’t notice until you’re mixing that a guitar track has too much room sound, you have 2 options: Live with the sound, or re-record.

6. Is this mix finished?
Rookie engineers like to think there’s a golden standard sound to which they aspire, and once they’ve attained that sound, their mixes will thereafter be perfect.

We should be so lucky! In truth, our learning never stops. We continue (hopefully) to improve, but none of us is ever done acquiring knowledge, as true of recording and mixing as it is of life. But this is OK. Learning, after all, is the fun part!

To the question: As a general guideline, a mix is finished when it best represents the song. Of course, “best” is open to interpretation here as it is everywhere in recording. You need to use your ears and your gut, and make the call when it feels right. In other words, only you know when the mix is finished.

Unless someone has paid you, in which case the mix is done when the deadline arrives.

Finally, a surefire question to signal your newbie status to the world:
7. How do I use this $1,200 plugin that I just happen to have installed on my machine?
Answer: You read the manual, which comes with the software when you buy it legally.

In Closing

You’ll out yourself as a novice by asking these questions of an experienced engineer. But really, there’s nothing wrong with that. In some senses, we’re all amateurs.

Take the colleague of my friend Paul, who once asked him, “what does a compressor do?” The question seems innocent enough until you learn that this colleague has been a film industry sound engineer for over 20 years, and has worked on dozens of major motion pictures. Of course, Paul now has difficulty taking his colleague seriously as an audio professional. But the guy still works on movies as a sound engineer, so the anecdote should be comforting for the rest of us amateurs!

See Also: Tips for more professional recordings

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Of course, no two listeners hear music the same way – a truism easily proven by arguing with Linkin Park fans about what constitutes good rock – and mixing engineers themselves must contend with this subjectivity in our senses. But it often appears that music production lacks any rules; that mixing engineers essentially just follow their whims behind the console.

No “rules,” just “rule”

Indeed, most so-called “rules of mixing” are no more than guidelines. For example, “boost EQ in wide bands,” and “use a slower attack when compressing drums.” Both are great tips, but hardly true in all situations.

However, one overarching principle does apply in every mix, to every song, and to every mixing engineer. I think of it as the Rule of Mixing:

Though it may at first appear trite, this rule simply and powerfully covers the fundamental practices of mixing. A good mix supports the song, presents only what the listener needs to hear, and leaves out unnecessary distractions. Good mixing, in turn, requires keeping the rule in mind at all times to accomplish these goals.

Implications

Some of the rule’s most important implications:

Have a plan
How can you reliably judge which effects and fader moves to keep? In short, by knowing before you start mixing what you want to achieve. Mix with a clear plan in mind for the song, and every change that doesn’t get you closer to this goal is simply not needed.

Don’t use effects “just because”
If you routinely, automatically high-pass guitar tracks, or compress the kick drum and bass guitar, you’re probably violating the Rule of Mixing. Decide before adding one of these effects whether it’s really needed this time. Worded another way: Just because something worked on your last 5 mixes doesn’t mean it’s right for this song.

“Improved” can mean many things
Note that the rule doesn’t say “only do that which improves the sound” (with emphasis on sound.) Sometimes, in order to improve the end result, you need to destroy the sound, for example by adding distortion, or creating a lo-fi mix. This is perfectly OK, if that’s what the song requires.

Mixing starts long before you move the first fader
Taken to its logical extreme, the Rule of Mixing implies that in a perfect world, a mix would require no changes. Just bring the faders up, and you’re done. While that’s obviously impractical, it’s still a great thought to keep in mind when recording. The closer a recorded sound comes to the required final result, the easier it will be to adhere to the Rule of Mixing. This suggests, and not by accident, that you should form your mixing plan even before you start recording!

Favour simplicity
An important corollary to the Rule of Mixing holds that the simpler of two identical-sounding signal chains is always preferable. If you add a plugin but don’t hear a difference, the plugin doesn’t belong in your mix. Whether the effect was too subtle to detect, or your ears simply can’t hear any change, the end result is the same: If you can’t confirm that the change is an improvement, then it’s not needed.

It’s easy to bloat a track with plugins designed to add character or warmth or depth – stereo enhancers, tube and tape simulators, harmonic distorters. But while these tools serve a purpose, their use should always be secondary to your main goal: Improving the song.

Be honest with yourself

More than anything, the Rule of Mixing keeps mixing engineers honest with ourselves. Music is subjective, for listeners and creators alike. But with the constant awareness that every change we make must improve the end result, we force ourselves to think of the mix as a bigger picture.

Phil Spector and Glyn Johns got different end results because they approached their respective mixes with different plans. But both mixes sound great, and emphasize The Beatles’ songwriting, a sure sign that both engineers followed the Rule of Mixing.

See Also: lots more mixing tips!

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Inspired by “engineering screw-ups” on Gearslutz, here’s a list of recording and mixing bloopers that made it past the mixing room onto the final release.

These aren’t performance missteps, where the band missed a cue, or the singer came in too soon. There are certainly countless examples of those but most were included intentionally, to add character or realism. Rather, the flubs below highlight mistakes in recording or mixing that could have been corrected before the track was released.

Some of the mistakes probably went unnoticed. Some, I’m sure, were noticed and begrudgingly accepted because of a deadline. But reassuringly for us amateurs, they all prove that even the pros aren’t perfect.

Botched Edits

The edit in question happens at 0:09 in the clip below. I scratch my head every time I hear it. So many questions: What went through the mixing engineer’s head? Why didn’t Clapton object? What’s powpower?

Recording and mixing engineers traditionally build a vocal track by “punching in” (re-recording a rough spot) and “comping” (building a single vocal track from the best parts of multiple takes.) Before digital editing, this was a manual procedure prone to timing errors. So the example above, recorded in 1970, is forgivable (although puzzling, because it’s so obvious.) Today, however, it’s common practice to digitally automate the punches and comps, which means the next two examples really shouldn’t have happened:

You was the first track on their first album, so the band surely aimed to make an impact. And without question, Thom Yorke bellowing high A for 8 seconds is a great hook, perhaps even the song’s defining moment… until you realize that his wail is comped from shorter sections. Listen for the cut at 0:05:

Notice how the vocal timbre changes in the middle of the word “yeah”, after “eyes deceive me.” I can’t fathom how this edit made it to mastering. Unlike the Radiohead example, which is only obvious on close listen, this cut simply sounds distracting!

Here, the tonality changes completely at 0:10, and again at 0:30. Lennon supposedly recorded a demo on his home tape recorder, and at mix time, he and Phil Spector (who produced the track) preferred the emotion in the home recording for one verse only.

Strange noises

This is the best example of John Bonham’s notoriously squeaky bass drum pedal. Jimmy Page discussed the squeak in a 1993 Guitar World interview:

The only real problem I can remember encountering was when we were putting the first boxed set together. There was an awfully squeaky bass drum pedal on “Since I’ve Been Loving You”. It sounds louder and louder every time I hear it! [laughs]. That was something that was obviously sadly overlooked at the time.

Some lessons I’ve learned from The Beatles:

• All you need is love.
• The walrus was Paul.
• If you drop a tambourine while recording, stop the tape and re-record.

I can see this slipping by unnoticed because it almost sounds musical. Almost. But listen to the clip a few times, and it becomes obvious just how out of place that tambourine is. (For more details, check out What Goes On, a fantastic reference for the little nuances like these in Beatles recordings.)

As Aguilera sings, you’ll hear a faint rhythm track in the background. This is headphone bleed – sound leaking from her headphone monitor into the microphone. (Note: I boosted the high frequencies on this track to make the bleed more obvious.)

Dave Pensado, who mixed Beautiful, discusses the noise here:

The song was about being beautiful and honest in EVERY way. That bleed is honest. It was one of the most honest vocal performances I had EVER heard. It was actually the scratch vocal.

This is another cop-out. Mixing engineers have their own version of the fourth wall, and Pensado broke it with this mix. Honest or not, the bleed reminds listeners of the technology used to record, and that distracts us from Aguilera’s performance.

Technical screw-ups

As Rick Wright holds the last piano chord, the tape speed wobbles for a second:

This clip plays two phrases from the 2nd verse of Roxanne. Compare the reverb tail at the end of “night” and “right.” The first decays naturally and cleanly, the second ends abruptly.

Does Natalie’s voice sound odd to you on the word “parents?”

Lessons

These clips hold a couple of lessons for amateur producers and home recordists:

1) You don’t need to be perfect. The pros know this. Most mistakes will simply go unnoticed, some mistakes add character, and sometimes a looming deadline trumps all.

2) That said, there’s no excuse for releasing sub-par material when you have the time and the skills to improve it. The Incubus, Dixie Chicks, and John Lennon examples especially are obvious to the point of annoyance, and mostly just make the mixing engineer seem lazy!

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Well, mixing isn’t the magic bullet it’s purported to be. A recording is about 90 percent as good as it’s ever going to be from the moment of the first rough playback.

In order to maintain a professional level of concentration on the task at hand, and to allow the band to make a record that represents them accurately, I try not to even think about whether or not I like the record. Having said that, sometimes everybody can tell that a record is going to be awesome anyway, and of the records I’ve worked on that ended up being really great, the majority of them showed their greatness in the first couple of hours of work.

Almost any competent engineer could have done what I have. I have been incredibly lucky to be working in a music scene that spawned a huge number of distinctive, talented bands, and I made myself available to them. There is no doubt in my mind that I get some credit I didn’t earn, for working on records that were going to be incredible no matter who was in the chair at the time.

If a record needs aggressive mastering to “save” it, then aggressive mastering isn’t enough to save it.

Albini’s minimalist (by professional standards) approach to recording is something every recording engineer should aspire to. Capture the right sound at the microphone, and mixing takes care of itself.

The story saddened me deeply. I admire Martin and his accomplishments, so I empathized with his loss. But I also hope to work with music all my life, and the image of myself in Martin’s position, forced to retire from the work I love, is unappealing to say the least. More pragmatically, though, the odds are I’ll suffer some age related hearing loss anyway, and since gene therapy hasn’t progressed beyond the guinea pig stage, why would I take any chances with my hearing?

This is all fresh in my mind because of a feature in last month’s Mix magazine, Bring Down The Noise. If you haven’t spent much time thinking about the importance of your hearing, I urge you to read the article:

It’s a vicious cycle: Those who depend on their hearing to do their job put it at a risk by doing their job, day after day… But unlike a job foreman or the guy at the firing range, audio engineers are a sound-savvy group and have a pretty good idea of what they are getting themselves into.

So it should be a no-brainer: Engineers rely on their ears. The damage is preventable. Their hands are on the volume controls. Why isn’t anyone turning it down?

Why indeed? Preventing hearing loss is so easy: Limit your exposure to loud sounds. As musicians and mixing engineers, we even have an advantage over others who work in noisy environments. The volume knob!

The best defense

All musicians are at risk for hearing damage, not just live rock performers. So we all need to take some precautions. Experts commonly recommend a few easy steps that musicians and recording engineers should take to prevent hearing loss:

• Wear ear plugs like they’re going out of style. (I know they were never in style.) Disposable earplugs are cheap, so keep them everywhere. I have a pack in my studio, another in my gig bag, and a third in my glove box.
• Have your hearing tested every few years. We all fear the hearing test, or more specifically the possibility of failing. But it really is better to know if you’ve done, or are still doing, damage. The test takes half an hour. And for a recording or mixing engineer, there are few sounds sweeter than the audiologist’s voice announcing “your ears are fine.”
• Take breaks while you’re mixing. Your ears adapt to music at any volume, and over time loud gradually seems less loud. Take breaks to keep your ears honest.
• Realize it’s never too late. If you’ve already got ringing or some other form of tinnitus, you can at least stop it from getting worse. Even if you have a high frequency notch in your hearing, you can still learn to compensate, and produce good mixes. But if you take a “damage is already done” attitude, it’s a safe bet you’ll end up like George Martin.

And one last tip, specific to mixing engineers:
Be extra careful if you mix with headphones:

Another hearing phenomenon that seems to be more noticeable with headphones is a decreasing sensitivity to sound levels over time, as the ears adapt to loud sounds. The listener perceives a gradual drop in loudness even though the volume control setting hasn’t changed. The acoustic isolation of headphones tends to highlight this dulling effect. It is all too easy for headphone listeners to turn up the volume to the point where hearing is at risk. Interestingly, most people find it difficult to distinguish between 85dB and 100dB SPLs, despite that the latter is more injurious to hearing…

Finally, while it’s obviously no substitute for having your ears checked by a professional, you can test your ears’ frequency response right now using your computer and a pair of headphones. (And there’s no way to fail the test!)

Linkin Park’s singles often inspire the question “haven’t they already written this song?” An mp3 that does the rounds from time to time mixes Numb (on the left) and Pushing Me Away (on the right) to illustrate this with almost comical effect: All Linken Park Songs Sound Exactly The Same.

As shown below, and forgive the hyperbole, much more than they sound the same all Linkin Park songs look the same. And while it’s easy to criticize the band for their overuse of a formula that’s by now cliche, the similarity between their tracks at least holds a lesson on the importance of song arrangement in pop music production.

The Linkin Park Formula

The standard Linkin Park structure looks like this:

1. Quiet intro: Each song has a relatively quiet two-measure intro.
2. The instrumental kicker: The full band come in together on the down-beat, and play two or four high energy measures, usually instrumental.
3. Quiet verse: The song eases off for a verse or two, heightening the dynamic contrast between the song’s sections.
4. Heavy chorus: Usually the same chords established in the kicker, with Chester screaming over top for added emotion.

Here’s how it “looks” in practice. Each image below shows the audio level in (roughly) the first 90 seconds of a Linkin Park song. Note that I adjusted the tempo of a few tracks for better visual alignment:

What I’ve Done

Faint

Somewhere I Belong

Crawling

Numb

Lying From You

If the pattern isn’t clear to you, mouse-over each image to highlight the 4 sections: Intro, kicker, verse, chorus. And click the title to hear the song on Youtube.

There’s nothing particularly surprising or innovative about the structure. But its repeated use by Linkin Park is clearly successful: They’re one of a few acts still selling lots of CDs.

Why It Works

There are several reasons why this song formula works, and whether or not you record pop music, understanding the reasons will make you a better producer:

Dynamic contrast: Our senses are drawn to change (remember why we listen to reference tracks while mixing?) so we find dynamic, evolving sounds more interesting. The up-and-down of a typical Linkin Park song grabs listeners’ attention on an instinctive level.

Memorable hooks: Because it’s often jarring, the kicker at the start of Linkin Park’s songs is memorable, and makes for a great hook. Pop songs hit or miss mainly on the effectiveness of their hooks.

Familiarity: For lovers, it breeds contempt. For pop music artists, familiarity breeds fans. It’s a truism in the traditional music industry that to succeed, a band needs a “sound.” Linkin Park’s re-use of the same basic song structure makes their music instantly recognizable, and lets their listeners feel immediately comfortable with new material.

Again, you may not write or record pop music. You may even despise the stuff. But knowing why a band would choose to re-use a formula like this will help you make better decisions about your own song arrangements (even if only to avoid having your music compared to Linkin Park.)

Cheap Gimmick?

What does this say about Linkin Park’s music?

On one hand, the band and their producers deserve kudos for finding and exploiting a successful formula. They’re in the entertainment business, after all, and appealing to fans is any entertainer’s number one job.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to view the six images above as a statement on the music industry. The major labels decry the actions of listeners who download music from free sources. But this is the alternative they offer: The same song, repackaged six different ways. The vast majority of music listeners who aren’t Linkin Park fans ask the same question I did in the first sentence, “Haven’t they already written this song?” And the obvious follow-up question, “Why would I pay for it more than once?”

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Clearmountain is one of my idols (his work with Radiohead notwithstanding.) And while he’s arguably the most famous mixing engineer on the planet, he doesn’t mind sharing advice with us amateurs on how to mix:

I mix at various monitoring levels, through different speaker systems, in a somewhat random order. I also use a bit of overall compression and, of course, make the important things louder and the not-so-important ones quieter. I’ve found a good, generally useful technique is to make sure there’s no unwanted extra low end coming from instruments other than the bass and kick drum. Doing this will almost always make the bass sound better, louder, and clearer.

Sound On Sound also has an interview with Clearmountain that discusses many of the artists he’s mixed, and his favorite equipment. But it wouldn’t be Sound On Sound without tips:

With pop music, I tend to focus on the lyric and the lead vocal more than anything else, trying to get a sense of what the song is. That matters more than anything; more than what the drums or guitars are doing, although I know a lot of people tend to start with the drums and the rhythm parts. I tend to start with the vocals, and then I might get into guitars and keyboards. I’ll try to find effective pan settings for everything, thinking of it like a stage.

you’re going to get a better sound recording electric guitars on analog than digital. If you’re going digital, you may want to use a bit more compression than normal, maybe dial more low-end because digital is like a clear pane of glass. And it’s important to make sure the guitars have been set up well, that the intonations are in good shape so the players are not having a tuning nightmare.