(Tutorial) - Thoughts about mixing and achiving depth

Wussup lovley steem-peeps!

I wanna share some thoughts about the task of mixing and especially how to achiv depth in your mix.

When i mix a song or a track i close my eyes and imagine a band playing on a stage. Then i imagine my track is beeing played by musicians on that stage. It doesnt matter if it's synthesized based music, this works for all kinds of music. I ask myself, where are all the elements of the mix placed on the stage and how does their position on the stage affect the sound for the listener in the sweet spot in front of the stage.

Basically there are two dimensions on the stage were a musicion can stand:

• Front - Back
• Left - Right

(the third dimension of up and down we dont need to consider. drummers can not fly, maybe the bassist can but that's another task :P )

In a classic rock-band setup you have the following situation:

• Singer / Vocals - In the top-front (most important and loud element)
• Guitarist - in the front right (but not as front as the singer, so slightly behind in presence)
• Keys - in the front left (again not as front as the vocals, more behind)
• Bassist - standing around somewere stonde :P - but the bass-amp should be more in the center than in the left or right corner
• The drummer is behind the siger in the center. but remeber that the hi-hat is a bit on the righside, the ride-cymbal a bit on the leftside etc.

Now apply this rockband setup to your music:
Where do i place my elements on that stage? Where does all the elemnts sit in dimension? If my track would be performed by musicians, synthesizers and drum-computers, where would i put these alements on the stage?
You can take a paper and make a drawing with all the elements placed in the 2 dimension. Dont forget to place the cowbell on the right spot (essential!).

A drawing could look like this:

So now lets see how we can alter our sounds in our track to give them a specific place on the stage:

Left - Center - Right:

that's easy: you can just define that position with the pan-knob

Front - Back:

now here it get's interessting. This is where the depth is at! Let's see what are the characteristics of a sound which is in the back:

• it's low in volume
• it has more reverb (with short pre-delay cause the slapback from the walls you can not hear clearly)
• it has less high frequencies (highshelf roll off)
• the stero definition is not good. when sounds are far away you can not hear so good if they are coming from left or right. they appear more in mono/center
• it has less dynamic because you cant hear it as good as a sound in the front ( -->compress more)

now let's see what are the characteristics of a sound which is in the front:

• it is loud!
• it has much high frequencies and presence
• it doesnt have much reverb, but if it has, prefere a reverb with a longer pre-delay (this simulates the slap-back delay from walls)
• the stereo definition is very good. you can hear clearly if the lead singer is standing in the middle, in the left or on the right.
• it has great dynamics. You can clearly hear if the singer sings loud or quite (--> apply less compression)

So keeping all this characteristics in mind, when you mix your track, think about each element were it sits in the mix/on the stage and apply all the above chracteristics to each sound. The tools you need for that are the usual ones: Volume, EQ, Compression and Reverb/Delay. If you follw all that ideas, i think you can achive great depth in your mix!

Especially you can see one thing clearly:
Not all elements can be big and fat, because it needs contrast! If you have one element which you want to sound super huge and fat, make all other elements around it small!
Also dont take this as a rule! Just see it as an creative way of looking at your mix and experiemnt with it!

Happy tweaking!