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I was watching CSI Las Vegas. I came up with a question about prepping music for a club scene. I'm wondering if this is stupid...here goes!Hypothetically, you are creating a club track that is supposed to be on the house PA in a "hot club" scene like CSI typically has. Would you master it so that there is an appropriate amount of the correct "room sound" present or do you mix as normal, like you would on a cd. Or should anyone be adding different rooms to cd mixes in the first place...(i.e. should your whole cd sound like it was recorded all in the same place)$1 to the first one who can follow that one...

Anne,Mix for CD. You have no way of anticipating how the sound design team will integrate your piece into the overall ambience. Making a mix sound a certain way is based on the aesthetic of the style. Acoustic music such as jazz, bluegrass, folk, etc., "may" benefit from a treatment such as what you mention but typically a studio recording of rock, pop, etc., is really not meant to be a realistic representation of "everyone in the same room at the same time". There are exceptions, of course, but most pop music recordings have evolved to be hyper-real productions, and audiences accept that what they are hearing is completely manufactured and not meant to be a "record" of a live performance.HTH..Mazz

Thank you, Mazz. I had thought about this more, and realized my confusion was definitely regarding pop music. I'm going to guess the mix standard of "hyper-real" for pop etc. is the same for country these days?

Anne,I can't answer for country and my statement is pretty general. I strongly feel that the mixing style should be dictated by the music and what serves to make the songs be presented in their best light. Commercial concerns certainly enter in and are important but a traditional country band would probably not be well served by a slick pop production and a slick pop-country band may not be shown in it's best light by a more traditional mix.But there really aren't any rules, just taste, experience, ears and artistry.Mazz

Sept 3, 2008, 4:38pm, anne wrote:I was watching CSI Las Vegas. I came up with a question about prepping music for a club scene. I'm wondering if this is stupid...here goes!Hypothetically, you are creating a club track that is supposed to be on the house PA in a "hot club" scene like CSI typically has. Would you master it so that there is an appropriate amount of the correct "room sound" present or do you mix as normal, like you would on a cd. Or should anyone be adding different rooms to cd mixes in the first place...(i.e. should your whole cd sound like it was recorded all in the same place)$1 to the first one who can follow that one... I would mix it as though it was going on a CD, as the sound engineers of the show will master all the tracks according to the visual they will be used for. IMO, of course.

Yep, they got people for that, jes' make sure the production is appropriate to the style and and quoted era, if any.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

Sept 3, 2008, 6:35pm, mazz wrote:Anne,I can't answer for country and my statement is pretty general. I strongly feel that the mixing style should be dictated by the music and what serves to make the songs be presented in their best light. Commercial concerns certainly enter in and are important but a traditional country band would probably not be well served by a slick pop production and a slick pop-country band may not be shown in it's best light by a more traditional mix.But there really aren't any rules, just taste, experience, ears and artistry.MazzMaybe "mix the music to the genre" is the best way to put it. For example a Hip Hop track will be a lot heavier on the bass/percussion end than a Country track. If it's coming out of a 2in speaker from a portable radio in the scene, the post-production sound people will take care of making it sound as though it's being played through that radio, or from the next room, or inside a car from three blocks away or whatever. But if it's a Hip Hop track and it isn't mixed like a Hip Hop track to begin with then it kind of lost before it had a chance to enter the race.