Mixing Insight

[ggalen]

Most of you professional engineers probably already know this and it will seem so obvious.But to me, a solo musician, it was not.My "light bulb moment" was that I realized that in a mix, an instrument may need to sound crappy! If you solo the track out of a great mix, you might see the guitar is actually thin and weak...but only because that is its "part" in the larger sound of the overall recording.The analogy being like playing a rich chord: the individual note only has to play it's role: one frequency.And in a great mix, the guitar may be only filling a narrow frequency, and adding to the rhythm.By making the individual tracks more simple, the over mix can be both rich AND clean.I was muddying up my mixes for years by making each track sound good SOLO.OK, I get it now!