Clueless wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2024 00:14 CEST
sthauge wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2024 19:50 CEST
7 Automation and more automation. Get the nice short notes or a hit or two on a drum come forward to spice up the listeners experience of the song. Tips, the brass at the end.
This is definitely something to ponder on
Yes it is. Like most here I'm learning - there is a lot to learn. This is the first time I gave this a proper go and looking back I could have done more and better. It also distracted me from some of the basics this time. There are so many aspects to mixing.
Getting to know your tools is a must, but involves so much critical focussed listening (which we're also learning to do), it becomes habit. At the same time we can forget to close our eyes and listen to the song/arrangement/intensions as a whole.
Automation - the artistic / emotional part of mixing, leading the listener through the arrangement. We poor humans can't take in too much at once if there's a lot happening, but if our attention is drawn to one or two things at a time (in addition to the vocals, groove), we enjoy that, usually without realising it's deliberate. For mixers this should be an advantage? If you listen to the arrangement, there are musical stories to pick out, tension to exaggerate etc. If you make a mix so that you can hear everything equally all the time, it's harder to follow he intention.
An example is the guitar solo which interplays with the keyboard, the wail, the electric guitar etc. If your mix focusses only on the lead guitar, the rest being left flat and balanced, you need to hear it well as it's all that's obviously happening? The solo becomes a loud solo on top of the other instruments. which might appear to be merely waiting until it's over... but they aren't just waiting. If you can hear this and automate the other instruments to enhance this existing interplay in the arrangement - so the lead guitar is really leading the other instruments rather than dominating - it will have more musical interest and movement - those instruments are panned already right? That's just one example of one section of the song, but if you can apply this general philosophy throughout you will also create more space and less fighting between instruments to be heard. That's good for the listeners attention and enjoyment - to be lead through rather than straining to work out the relevance of what each instrument is playing with no guidance.
Something to start playing with while you ponder.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Most people would do this more or less last. You can automate literally anything but it starts with finding that clip gain on a vocal track can save your compressor(s) having to overwork... or reduce the everlasting deep ring in those toms, or tame the occasional loud kick. Endless possibilities just for that which are mostly to avoid unnecessary amounts of compression so not really artistic, more like donkey work. One thing leads to another though. I think next I started to automate faders because it I wanted something louder for a section or even a moment and it had a compressor on the track, clip gain just fed more signal into the compressor, paradoxically making it sound quieter. Want something wider in the chorus? a crescendo of reverb? Echo just on that last syllable? Lush acoustic guitar in the intro, thinned out for the rest of the song (my intro needs that attention), Automate a plugin. There's no end to it. It's been said that a static mix is a boring mix.
Volume is the main thing to automate though, and for that compressors and multiband dynamic eq to duck just selected frequencies can do some "automation" with side chains better and faster than other methods . Common examples:
Duck the bass with a side chain from the kick.
Duck a guitar/keyboards/anything with a side chain from the vocal.
Duck vocal echos and reverbs with a side chain from the vocal. Or any instrument.
Just thinking out loud.