Audio Mixing History

The art of music mixing is by far the most elusive and difficult part of the music production process to comprehend. Of all the engineering skills one could learn, mixing audio is by far the most difficult to master. That's why, in the professional audio engineering world, it is by far the highest paying job. The record companies are well aware of this critical part of the music production process and will pay a premium for engineers that do it well. I am often humored by home recording enthusiasts, musicians and students of engineering when they fail to understand why their mixes don't measure up to what they hear on CDs. To give an analogy that may put this in perspective, let's say that you are a guitar player who idolizes Jeff Beck. You've

For those who have all five functioning properly, the most predominant sense is sight. Our ability to see something has the greatest impact on our lives. Think about all the things we say, "You've got to see it to believe it" or "seeing is believing". We are a "visionary" or have "foresight". We want to "look" somebody in the eyes to see if they are lying to us. It is the sense we trust most. By contrast, sound is lest trustworthy. We use phrases like, "That's just hearsay", "we'll play it by ear" or you should be "seen and not heard". The term "phony" was coined with the invention of telephones. It implied a lack of trust with the person on the other side of the phone because you could look them in the eye to judge if they were lying to you. In general, our innate measure of sound is not a very trusting or positive one. The truth is that sound is secondary to sight. Sound adds meaning and feeling to what we see. It forewarns us of what to look for as we are out in the world. This understanding is very important. To put it simply, everything we have heard throughout the existence of mankind is related to something we can see or at least feel. It is a fundamental part of the design of our

You can make a dance mix with a small kick and bass sound that is low in level relative to the other instruments, but no DJ will ever play it in the club. The more you understand, from an engineering perspective, what makes a particular type of music tick, the quicker you will be able to build that strong foundation from which to build a great mix. Remember that everything you do in a mix must support what the message of the song is about. There is no one way to EQ, compress or otherwise process any given instrument that will work for every song and every style of music. Each song is unique and must be approached as such. There are many common practices and methods for music mixing that are embraced by the professional engineering community. These are not hard and fast rules, but rather guidelines that are a good foundation to start from. They allow you to get from point A to point B in an efficient way. Once there, it's the creative decisions that separate the great music mixers from the amateurs. In Part 2 of the Music Mixing Process we will look closer to this