By Tom Mulhern
You’ve probably spent a great deal of time getting your sound onto tape, whether it’s a killer lead, a sparkling rhythm part, solid drums, or propulsive bass line. But sooner or later, you have to face the final stage of completing your song: the mix.
Getting one picture-perfect track done without screw-ups is no easy task, and the natural tendency is to focus too much on that one part only, without regard for the other three (or seven) tracks, let alone what you’re going to do with the whole mess. By the time you have to mix, you may have a bigger, nastier job than if you had gone into the project with a plan of attack. Here are some tips for making the whole process just a bit smoother.
Keep the mix in mind. From the moment you power up your mixer and recorder, you should be aware of what you’re ultimately going to do with your tracks. For one thing, look at the economy of the project: You only have four, eight, or 16 tracks (unless you’re going into a professional studio), and therefore you don’t have the luxury you read about big-name players having–"I recorded four solos and took the best bits of them and made one great solo." Or, "We sent the bass direct to one channel and miked an amp and sent that to another." It would be nice to have tracks to burn, but reality is reality. If you’re using a 4-track machine, do you really want to devote three tracks to bass or snare drum? Didn’t think so. What you have to do is determine which instruments are crucial to your song, and in what amounts. Cut a few production corners. For instance, you probably want the drums in stereo, but bass can be completely mono and sound fine. Knowing that, if you can record the drums and bass together onto two tracks, you’ve cut out the need for a third (bass) track. You’ll have to be able to lay down the bass without flubs, and you’ll also need to have the drum and bass sounds perfect when you lay the tracks down. (There’s no way to separate them later.) However, this is reality, and as they say, "Deal with it."
Related to this, record with effects if you have to. You always hear that you should record your parts without effects and add them later. This is wise advice if you have enough outboard gear or patching flexibility in your recorder or mixer. However, if you only have one reverb and you absolutely need a specific ambience on the drums and another on the vocals, you have to decide which one gets reverb when you’re laying down the track. In this case, I’d put reverb on the drums, freeing your reverb unit so that you can experiment with it on the vocals later.
Every hour or two (depending on how often you rewind and rework your parts), clean and demagnetize your tape heads and guides. Each dB counts, and any gunk that accumulates, or magnetism that builds up, robs a little bit from your sound.
Building the mix. A mix should be more than just "bass in the middle, drums left and right, rhythm guitar to the left, and vocals all over the place." You should assess their relative size and intensity. Think in terms of a painting: The main subject matter (say, vocals, or the guitar solo) should be up pretty close to the front, grabbing your attention. Then, place other things around so that they complement the main subject and act as surroundings and a backdrop. Of course, this means that you have to determine what is the most important stuff in your song. If it’s got vocals, make sure they are easily heard (this may mean making them louder than other sounds). If it’s the guitar solo, make it pop out. You may want to draw a picture, as if you were viewing a stage from above. Draw where you think the guitar should be, the drums, the vocals, etc. This may help you visualize where to put them in the mix (closer to the front of the "stage," off to the left, and so forth). In fact, if this helps you, draw sketches for the song’s head, solo, chorus, or any other sections that you feel need the attention.
Practice the mix. Spend some time practicing how you’re going to mix your tracks. If possible, borrow another tape recorder with the same number of tracks as yours, and make a copy of your 4- or 8-track tape onto it. Take the tape from that borrowed recorder, and practice mixing with it on your machine, leaving your real multi-track master tape on the shelf (clearly labeled, of course). How come? Well, every time you run the tape over the heads, you’re putting wear and tear on it, degrading the signal bit by bit. Also, tape stretches, snaps, and can otherwise wear out. If you’re going to spend a couple of days (or weeks) running the tape back and forth over the heads as you practice your mixing, this will keep your real tape fresh and crisp, all ready to pop into your deck when it’s time for the final mix.
Rehearse fade-outs, muting (turning a channel off), panning, and level and EQ changes. It’s not a bad idea to reset your recorder’s timer to zero before you do this, and jot down notes to guide you, especially if you have to change an EQ or reverb setting mid-song. Just write something like "Reverb level to 5 at 120," or "Mute solo guitar from 000 to 250." Little cues like this can be very helpful. If you’re doing a lot of tricky stuff in the mix, you may want to enlist a friend to help you. For instance, while you’re twiddling knobs for all the guitar and vocal parts, have your pal maneuver the controls for the bass and drums, or change a reverb setting at the appropriate time.
Tape your mix run-throughs. Toss a tape into your mixdown machine (after cleaning and demagnetizing it), and let it record your practice mixes. Listen to them in other environments. I usually take a cassette out to my car and put it in my funky, old Radio Shack cassette player, and then listen to it on my living-room stereo. It’s going to sound very different, and it will give you an idea of what you’re doing right or wrong. Once you’ve gotten your mix pretty well rehearsed and you’re ready for the final mix, clean and demagnetize your heads and tape guides on both the recorder and the mixdown deck, pop in your multi-track master, put a fresh, high-quality tape into the mixdown deck, and record several mixes. Don’t be afraid to step outside your "script" for one or two. You may surprise yourself with an unexpectedly cool mix. And if you have the time, do a couple mixes one day and a couple the next. Sometimes a fresh perspective can make a big difference.
Don’t go overboard with effects. Finally, use only what you need, not necessarily what you’ve got, when it comes to signal processors. This doesn’t mean that you can’t occasionally be extreme and, for example, bury everything under a ton of flanging or deep in 27-second reverb. But make sure you have a reason for everything you do. Otherwise, the listener will think "cheap gimmicks" and have that in the back of their mind, no matter how good your song is.