Hello everyone it's 
When we are recording song all the individual instrument get recorded separately on to a track. the very first recording where all done mono which means we could only play it back over one speaker and it was captured over one microphone. In order to create a balance between the individual instrument we had to move the musicians throughout the room, so if someone would have to play the solo, they will have to step up and walk towards the microphone. Coming back to the modern times where most people listen to their music over two speakers or over headphones we are now working towards a stereo mix-down.
N/B: Even if you're doing or making electronic music, this is still a theory that will also apply to you.
For example, let's take a band that we are going to be recording and mixing.
And we will be placing a microphone in front of every instrument.
N/B: Every microphone is transmitting a mono signal which is been fed into the mixing console where we take care of the levels before sending same to tap.
currently, this process is mainly done with a computer, but am still going to make reference to the tap machine a lot just for the simplicity of understanding the signal flow.
So the bands have played their song and then we have recorded eight separate tracks of their instrument.
we will be starting with the mix phase, by basically feeding the whole band into two speakers. Everything is going to be fed between the left and the right speakers. We should also visualize a three-dimensional space in between those speakers were we are going to be placing our sound in.
We can move instruments forward and backwards by changing the volume by fader riding. which is simply moving sound over the Z-axis.
N/B: Moving sounds between left and right is done by changing the panning on the channel.
With the pan knob on each channel, we can move them from left and right between our speakers. when panning sound in the middle it means that the comes just as loud out of the left speakers just as loud out of the right speaker. We don't talk about panning sound into the phantom image because in the stereo mix-down we don't have any speakers in the centre.
We can kind of place instrument over the vertical axis by means of frequency.
Assuming that the bass is low and the treble is high, that means that we can basically now visualize our hold mix in a 3D space, which makes the concept of placing sound into a 3D environment a lot more understandable.
let's start off with the simple eight tracks that we have just done. Normally when we are mixing, we are using the audience view as our perspective.
We had two guitar players which were standing at both side of the room, so it would be nice to pan the first guitar a little bit to the left and the second one a little bit to the right. Doing this will create a little bit of space in our mix and will reflect the way that it was. A good rule of tom is that we always want the bass frequencies to come out of the centre. So the kick-drum and the bass-line will be placed in the centre or the phantom image. The keys were on the left side of the room and the brass section on the right, so we are going to pan that accordingly as well. This is already creating a very rich stereo image.
So let's take a look at some styles of mixing that we can apply
On this picture, we can visualize a very open and define mix. The gaps in between the instruments can be filled up with a little bit of reverbs. This can create a kind of aura around the instrument. This is something that is really open and defined so it suite well for a jazz mix for example.
N/B: This type of a mix can be good for a lot of jazz mixes, pop/rock mixes and other open types of mixes
These right here is a commercial type of mix which we called the wall of sound. The focus on this type of mix is normally less on the vocals which seems to be right in front of the band or at list in front of the music. So a lot of commercial production, either be it a pop or a dance or hip-hop or even a pop-rock type of sound, make use of this type of mixing style a lot
If we are going to take a look at a more underground type of productions it can be seen that the vocals are not that up front as in the commercial type of mixes. So it could be that the mix that you are going for doesn't have to have the vocals really up-front like in the commercial type of production, so you should always go for the sound that best fit your song in the type of production.
N/B: This mix is less focussed on the vocals and more on the total.
When we start off with a mix it kind of look like this.
It can be seen that everything is still in the middle and frequency wise, it still looks like a mess. So we normally start with the volume and the panning and placing all the instrument were we want them to be. doing these alone already cleans up the mix and makes a lot of things more define and separated. When the is still too many over-lapping frequencies and we still need to define something a little bit more, we can then filter out some of the frequencies that we don't need and highlight some of the frequencies that we need to give a little bit of extra Spackle with the use of an equalizer.
N/B: When the dynamics of a certain instrument are fluctuating too much like for example on the bass or on the snare and we want to term those picks, we can use a compressor to make sure that this stays in balance a little bit.
I hope you enjoyed this article which was an introduction to the beautiful world of mixing were so many things are possible once you just know how to. You can check out other interesting articles on EQ and Compressor through these links
thanks very much for reading I hope enjoyed it? I hope you learn something?
and I hope to see you soon.
