Overwhelmed?

If you’re in school you might be familiar with the time of year when every professor at school thinks it’s a good idea to just pile on the projects.

It’s like they get together and scheme against the students.

“Hey, how about we make the first two months really easy and then we give all the students assignments at the same time at the end of the year!”

I can almost hear the maniacal laughter from here.

It’s when the days get longer and you need to become even more efficient if you want to get the job done.

It’s the same way with large and complex mixing projects.

Oh My God There’s Too Many Tracks!

It might start easy enough. The drums start sounding good by themselves. The bass starts grooving with them but one by one it all starts sounding worse.

The guitars start clashing with the vocals. The piano gets in the way of the bass and the backing vocals are always either too soft or too loud.

It’s exactly like juggling 2 papers, 4 assignments and 3 exams in the same week. Everything needs your time, you’ve kind of half-started most of it but you don’t know how to finish.

What I tend to do is simplify.

If I know I will only get 2 hours to study for that exam I’ll make the studying as simple as possible to retain as much information.

Reading the chapters is inefficient. Reading the summaries at the back and the professor’s slides is usually enough. And it takes much less time.

You can do the same thing with a complex mixing session with too many tracks.

Simplify.

For instance:

Pick a compressor you like and use that, don’t check every single compressor plug-in on every single instrument. Have a couple different types ready to go. VCA and OPTO emulations can work for most situations.

Group and buss your tracks to simplify your track count. This immediately cuts down on the amount of automation you need to do and it can really help you manage the loudness of those pesky background vocals.

You can get as nit-picky as you want if you have the time. If you don’t, knowing how to simplify things to save time can really show off your smooth experience as a mixing engineer.

The 2 Professors You WANT to Meet

Now, there are good professors and bad professors. The ones that pile on the projects, and the ones that let you take your time.

Joe and Graham are the two mixing professors that I want you to meet. Every month they give you the multi-tracks to a different song, they mix their own versions and then they teach you how they did it. Then you’re free to go and practice your skills at your own convenience.

You learn some awesome mixing skills without any pressure. I would take that sort of learning over school any day.

Want to check it out?

It’s right here: www.audioissues.com/duelingmixes

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