The 3rd Pass Mix Fiasco

Recording a full length album is a long and complicated process that most people never get to watch, be privy to, or even understand.

The common perception amongst the music laymen is that bands can fart out albums in their sleep (probably because many of them do), or someone just presses a magical "create album" button.

Obviously not all of you share this notion, but few people really understand the struggle, frustration, monotony, and drama that can transpire from creating a work of music or art.

To illuminate one particular example of this, I'm going to share with you a little story about Envinity's almost finished 3rd album.

But first off...

WHAT IS MIXING?

Most music listeners have a vague idea, or no idea at all about what mixing is. I mean, once you record all of the instruments, it sounds good and it's ready to go right?

No.

On occasion, I've told people I have to go home and do some more mixing, and they respond with, "Oh, cool, you have turntables?"

Sigh.

No.

Not that kind of mixing.

Mixing can make or break a song.

A simple way to look at it is adjusting each instrument so they all fit together in the best possible way. You can't have the bass guitar way louder than the vocals, right? And that snare drum is WAY too quiet, that needs to come up. There we go.

In addition to that you have to shape the sound of the parts (with EQ so that the vocals don't have too much low end, and the keyboard parts have a little extra brightness, etc ), give it width (panning each instrument within the left and right stereo spectrum, so they each have their own breathing space horizontally) and depth (effects like reverb and delay which put the instruments closer or farther away from the listener).

Needless to say, it takes a lot of time.

Mixing really is an art form, and the subtlety and nuances of getting a good sounding mix is generally left up to those with years of experience.

Unfortunately for me, I don't have the money to pay someone to mix my projects for me, so I do it all myself. Oh who am I kidding, I like having control over what I do.

With that explained, let's move on to...

THE SECOND PASS MIX

You may not know this, but I had a first pass mix of the new record done about a year ago.

Are you angry?

The first mix was never meant to be the final, perfect version. But even with it's glaring flaws, it was exciting, as it was the first time we could hear this whole album with all of the recorded drums, guitars, bass, and vocals together.

Unfortunately, due to some fun life distractions (I was going broke had to find another day job), I had to take time off from mixing a new version of the record.

After things got more settled, and with some help from friend Thomas Drinnen, I created a 2nd pass mix which far surpassed the chunky 1st version in near every way. Parts that were buried in the mix now stood out, like guitar parts or vocals that I had apparently shat on from a mixing perspective.

I burned off a copy for the band, and waited for a while to refresh my ears and get some feedback from the others. (By the way, this is the mix I used at our album premiere party earlier this year).

3RD TIME'S THE CHARM

The reception for the new mix pass was quite positive, but after putting some distance between me and the 2nd pass mix, I had time to digest what was still not working, and what needed to be worked on and improved.

In my mind, a lot.

So, after gathering my strength for yet another audio battle, I spent another month straight just doing super detail mix passes, bringing out all of the subtle nuances of the parts, eq, effects, balance etc. I worked long, boring, fatiguing hours listening intently for weeks on end and finally produced what I hoped to be the best version of the album so far.

THE BIG TEST

Excitedly, I burned it off on a disc, and headed up to my dad's place to show it to him, and to test it out on his big stereo.

Confidently, I put the CD in the player and pressed play.

This was going to sound badass. I was looking forward to my dad hearing all of the new enhancements to the mix, and the strong definition of the drums and vocals.

As we listened, I was confused by the lack of impact in the percussion, the guitars disappearing into the background and vocals being swamped behind the rest of it.

Wait...

This does not sound right. I just worked on this for a month straight making this thing sound awesome (for the 3rd time no less). As the songs continued to play, I became more and more frustrated, embarrassed and eventually defeated.

That's it! This sounded like shit (probably an exaggeration. I do that).

Overcome by frustration and anger, I ejected the CD not 4 songs into playing, and stormed over to the trash can. In a moment of dramatic stupidity not seen since my teenage years, I childishly started folding the CD, and snapped it into shards all over his kitchen floor.

"Well, that was dramatic," my dad said patronizingly.

I said nothing, and instead threw myself on the couch to sulk in my own failures.

I didn't speak for about half an hour.

It impacted me so strongly because I had been working on this for what felt like forever, and I still could not make anything sound right (so far).

This album had been five years in the making, I'd been mixing it since August of last year, and I just spent an intensive month listening to this over and over everyday thinking I was getting everything to sound miles better, when in fact, it sounded like donkey splooge to me.

After cooling down, I decided I was going to do one more brand new, ground up mixing pass (though I did not look forward to having to do it... again). This time I was going to go even deeper into the underlying fundamentals of the sound, retooling it completely from a sonic perspective.

Which is where I am now.

4TH TIME'S THE CHARM

After finishing a version 4 pass a little while ago, I've continually made incremental updates to it, finessing it and shaping it into a drastically more clear, separated and powerful mix.

And yes, the difference this time is amazingly better. (few, that's a relief!)

I because I know the question will be asked, yes, it's almost ready to go.

Not every musician has to deal with this type of drawn out process, nor should they have to. Making a record is a challenging process regardless if takes a few months, or a few years.

But, if any of your musician friends tell you that making albums is easy, they aren't doing it right.