Premix-slave / Assistant Engineer!

[rapucore]

Hey guys!

Already discussed lightly in an another thread, this topic has been in my mind for a while actually. I didn't want to open this thread in Merch Stand as I am not offering such services - at least not yet hehe Anyways, premix-slave / assistant engineer:

Would anyone happen to stress about the fact that some of the mixes you receive aren't in their ideal shape?

In almost 80% of the stuff I have received for mixing:
1. No bleed has been cut from the vocal tracks, not even the clipping parts where the singer is yelling the engineer to "TURN IT DOWN!!!"
2. All sorts of rumbling and noise on stringed instruments - especially on parts where they really kill the mood (imagine an intricate interlude or breakdown with lots of muting that is supposed to be 110% tight with tons of fret noise and buzz )
3. Shitty drum editing as in bad crossfades, glitches and all sorts of mindless fuckery (drummers could learn to play as well? Don't record if you can't keep a beat lol)
4. Vocal tuning and timing...

Sadly, that is not all.

Nothing is as big of a mood-killer than having to pull up tracks that are muddy, have ugly resonances due to mic placement or room etc, have tons of fizz - why is it so rare to get miced-up guitar tracks anyways? In most cases guitars are just shitty DI's with six months old strings.

Don't get me started on tom tracks and other drum tracks where the hits are lost in all the leakage and bleed, wouldn't it be nice to receive cut up tracks in this situation without having to spend hours on fiddling the gates/expanders and such only to start cutting them yourself later? Yes it would.

Not the end of it either, but I'm sure you get the point. There are some milder stuff like proper phase, easy fix but would be nice to have that been taken care of as well. Of course a lot of those things should be taken care of in the recording process (that's a given) but a lot of time it isn't.

In 2014, I've mixed only a handful of tracks and an EP that had usable tracks with little to no cleanup needed. Sad thing is the EP was tracked by myself and one of the other tracks was received from an inspiring new engineer, who wanted to make sure that the tracks you receive from him are just up to par to the tracks you'd receive from the big guys. So the tracks aren't always crap but yet again, most of the time they are.

I'm thinking of starting to offer such services but I wanted to see if anyone has encountered such projects. If there's a need for a premix-slave, I'll gladly open up a Service-thread @ Merch Stand.

KEEP THOSE TRACKS CLEAN, GUYS!

Cheers,
- Aleksi/rapucore

 

[Line666]

Sadly anyone at the level of being able to do all this competently is usually not wanting to be in the position of being the person who does it for everybody else - not at a rate cheap enough to make it worth anybodies time at a semi-pro level anyway.

This leaves the whole editing process as the most boring, most under appreciated and, perhaps, the most transformative aspect of the profession.

 

[rapucore]

Fair points there.

Of course it's worth considering that not everyone are interested in such services, and only a slight margin of people have the dough to spend on this to actually end up still earning something from the project themselves.

For myself I can say that I wouldn't offer my services on hourly rate but on per-song-basis, depending on the amount of work a customer would like me to do, thus maybe adding some folk back in for the price range.

 

[HCL]

I'd be more than happy to do it, it's a lot easier/less stressful when you're not worrying about the mix and vice versa.

 

[rapucore]

Exactly. If you're handling it yourself, the cleanup process will most likely kill your first instincts, the gut feeling of the song and mix.

A premix-slave would sort out stuff that is generally unpleasant and unwanted so that the mixing engineer could have the chance to let loose from the get-go.

 

[JeffTD]

Sadly anyone at the level of being able to do all this competently is usually not wanting to be in the position of being the person who does it for everybody else - not at a rate cheap enough to make it worth anybodies time at a semi-pro level anyway.

This leaves the whole editing process as the most boring, most under appreciated and, perhaps, the most transformative aspect of the profession.

This. I've done the "pre-mix slave" thing for years and I'm just at a point where nobody is willing to pay what I think is worth it to do, and if they have the budget then they're usually going to some other guy with his own underpaid pre-mix slave.

 

[HOFX]

This also seems to be the area of most innovation / automation in computer based audio, so an increasingly dwindling market. I mean, doesn't Slate have a one button macro to time align drum tracks?

 

[Terminus]

It's being a music janitor. You do quite a huge chunk of the actual work making something passable and yet no one really knows or cares that you did it.

 

[JeffTD]

This also seems to be the area of most innovation / automation in computer based audio, so an increasingly dwindling market. I mean, doesn't Slate have a one button macro to time align drum tracks?

It's still driven by humans correcting human errors. The tools get better and better and better but there are SO many outlier cases and weirdly specific conditions that can go into someone fucking up a part that I wouldn't expect automatic editing that compares to a good human doing the edits for a good half decade or so. Keep in mind that the fundamentals behind every DAW-based drum editing program stems from Beat Detective, which was introduced in PT5 in like 2001. 13 years later and we're doing the same chop/move/crossfade thing, just automated.

 

[Winston Wolf]

Sadly anyone at the level of being able to do all this competently is usually not wanting to be in the position of being the person who does it for everybody else - not at a rate cheap enough to make it worth anybodies time at a semi-pro level anyway.

I beleive I am at the sweet spot for this, ability and rates wise fit for a semi-pro level.

I would love to do this.

Rapucore,may I steal your idea to post such offer in the merch stand?

 

[rapucore]

Damn you Winston, stealing my money!

Joking aside, by all means do so! I'll be sure to mention your services for people.