Torched Laughter Studio Diary: Mixing - An Introduction

Mixing in the digital age is the equivalent of a shitty IT position.

It is repetitive, dull, and draining. Cut and Paste, Click and Drag, insert, export, apply, delete, automate, bypass, edit edit, EDIT. The eyes get bleary, the ears get fatigued. It’s Excel and a micromanaging boss all in one glorious sitting.

There are two fantastic aspects of mixing:

1) Sitting down. I haven’t sat down in the studio for 2 months. I’ve been standing away, flowing along the breeze of my own flatulence while babbling into a microphone. Since I’m too cheap to get someone to engineer (or buy a remote device,) I’ve had the privilege of running, jogging and staggering 30 feet to hit `record’ or `stop’ every time I hit a bum note. My legs are in fabulous shape.

2) The big payoff is when the music is mixed well. There are moments when you can get goose bumps from the way everything sounds. I live for those moments, especially when it’s very loud yet doesn’t hurt the ears.

I don’t think I can gauge what is a great mix. I just know what I like and a portion of the time I can get a mix to sound like what I want it to. For `Torched Laughter’ I’m looking for an unprocessed, uncluttered, well balanced sound.

The first step for the mix down process was to get some Reference Music. Reference Music is any music you like that has a production value you are either familiar with or thoroughly enjoy. The reference music is…you guessed it: A point of reference. So when I’m mucking through the `Torched Laughter’ tracks I’ll be listening to CD’s and gauging whether or not the mix is comparable, better, worse to those CD’s.

In this case, I went for 2 organic records that give me goose bumps when played loud:

Susana Baca: Espiritu Vivo

Susana