I can't remember the amount of times I heard the saying 'you can't polish a turd' going through audio school, and after. You take it to heart and do your very best to keep the quality bar high from start to end, but on some level these things never truly sink in until you experience why they are so true for yourself.
Recently I've been doing a project that has been shaping up to be my worst mix yet. It's been pretty depressing considering the very last two things I did were quite possibly the best of my whole career so far. This project was tracked pretty shoddily. Just about everything is DI'd... poorly right into a Fireface, noisy lines, flabby bass, flat guitars, MIDI drums, the works.
In a way to rationalize to myself that I'm still a decent mix engineer, I decided to tackle one of my first ever projects again. Pulled up the tracks, cleaned, routed, and sorted everything. After maybe 3 or 4 hours of mixing I exported a rough and eagerly compared to my old version.
Now honestly both kinda work in their own way. The new one is naturally cleaner and clearer, as I have better monitoring, better tools and a better ear for what's needed. The old is kinda demo-ish sounding but it has a certain vibe that works for it. The new one oddly sounds kinda 'pushed', or like I tried ot get EQ to take it somewhere it didn't want to go. Comparing it back to professional stuff, and my last great work, it didn't really hold a candle.
Reason is that the tracking job on this first project is decent, but in many ways rough. Harsh overheads, harsh/distorted vocals, really flabby badly played bass. It dawned on me that with a roughly proportionate amount of 'mixing' on my last project, and actually on a current tracking mix on a full length I'm doing, I got a better sound. The reason is simply that the raw tracks are closer to where they need to be.
The lesson I learned is that no matter how hard you try to mix, you will always be left with the characteristics of the raw tracks, and ultimately all you can try to do is hide them to the detriment of the overall sound. My last two projects sounded good because I was able to get them sounding that way with a minimum of fuss. There is no understating the importance of good tracking. Compressors, EQs, mixing etc. is all secondary.
Recently I've been doing a project that has been shaping up to be my worst mix yet. It's been pretty depressing considering the very last two things I did were quite possibly the best of my whole career so far. This project was tracked pretty shoddily. Just about everything is DI'd... poorly right into a Fireface, noisy lines, flabby bass, flat guitars, MIDI drums, the works.
In a way to rationalize to myself that I'm still a decent mix engineer, I decided to tackle one of my first ever projects again. Pulled up the tracks, cleaned, routed, and sorted everything. After maybe 3 or 4 hours of mixing I exported a rough and eagerly compared to my old version.
Now honestly both kinda work in their own way. The new one is naturally cleaner and clearer, as I have better monitoring, better tools and a better ear for what's needed. The old is kinda demo-ish sounding but it has a certain vibe that works for it. The new one oddly sounds kinda 'pushed', or like I tried ot get EQ to take it somewhere it didn't want to go. Comparing it back to professional stuff, and my last great work, it didn't really hold a candle.
Reason is that the tracking job on this first project is decent, but in many ways rough. Harsh overheads, harsh/distorted vocals, really flabby badly played bass. It dawned on me that with a roughly proportionate amount of 'mixing' on my last project, and actually on a current tracking mix on a full length I'm doing, I got a better sound. The reason is simply that the raw tracks are closer to where they need to be.
The lesson I learned is that no matter how hard you try to mix, you will always be left with the characteristics of the raw tracks, and ultimately all you can try to do is hide them to the detriment of the overall sound. My last two projects sounded good because I was able to get them sounding that way with a minimum of fuss. There is no understating the importance of good tracking. Compressors, EQs, mixing etc. is all secondary.
