MIXING ESSENTIALISM

CHAPTER 2

Removing something mundane from a mix can allow a more compelling sound to enter the space. If that’s true, why are we always so reluctant to cut things?

Last issue I wrote about the role Essentialism plays in good mixing practise. This issue, I’d like to explore the theme a little further, if I may.

For anyone who missed my article last month – outrageous though that seems! – ‘Essentialism’ in mixing is the art of doing less by recognising what is essential and non-essential to a great mix. Reducing your workload by learning to say ‘no’ to the elements that are ‘bringing the whole mix down’ is usually a good start, but there’s more to Essentialism than simply wielding the knife.

It’s important to recognise that this so-called act of ‘cutting out’ certain elements means different things to different people, and we need to address this first.

Mix FOMO

Not everything that’s discarded should instinctively feel like some form of ‘loss’, though that is precisely what most of us are trained and educated to feel about anything valuable that we voluntarily discard.

To some, particularly those for whom muting certain musical elements altogether feels akin to the loss of something valuable, essentialism can feel like a bridge too far. For these people, anything that involves dispensing with something – any ol’ mediocre musical element in some cases – can feel wasteful, akin to throwing out good food when there’s not enough to go around. At the extreme edge of this subgroup there are even those for whom throwing out a musical element is akin to dumping a hoarder’s stash in the skip. For this group, any loss can feel visceral – a genuine attack on the senses.

Then there’s the other fraternal audio subgroup who’ve been saying ‘yes!’ to everything throughout their entire careers, including giving a thumbs-up to every musical element contained in every production file they’ve ever encountered, whether it was a shonky tambourine part, an out-of-tune ‘bonus guitar’, or yet another melodic element competing with the other three. For this crew, identifying non-essential musical elements seems anathema to mixing, as if each sound has equal value, and that editing some out would in every instance only have a negative impact on the mix outcome. For this crew, muting a channel of audio feels like failure because they’ve grown accustomed to the idea that part of their success is bound up in knowing that their mix contained ‘literally everything in the file’.

Sound familiar?

If this is you; if some part of you remains convinced that mixing is like a game of ‘How do I make this all fit, no matter what?’ then maybe it’s time you started adopting the mindset of an Essentialist, even if only to break you out of this thinking! In a world where so many mix files now contain upwards of 200, and sometimes even 300 or more channels of audio, it seems crazy to deny that some aspect of a modern mix engineer’s role is to identify the components that are only going to make the final outcome worse, and remove them.

But if this idea remains unacceptable to you, then heed this warning: there will come a time soon where you’ll waste a good portion of your energy trying to make everything fit, and the mix will suffer as a consequence. Indeed, I’d wager this has happened to you already! You’ve probably already allowed the most ineffective, non-essential elements to take up more than their fair share of your precious time. They’ve confused the mix, reduced the impact of its essential elements and run you ragged by drawing the process out over an extended timeline.

And for what?

No-one receives a prize for pulling off the near-miracle of mixing 350 channels of mediocre overdubs, particularly when it’s clear to everyone that some of these components were sub-par at best and contributed nothing beyond their innate capacity to bring the whole mix crashing down.

The Art of Deliberate Subtraction

Learning to identify non-essential elements that contribute nothing – or sometimes less than nothing; the ‘net-negatives’, I call them – can open up your timeframe as well as the mix itself, giving you more space in both respects.

Cutting or editing out parts, in this sense – particularly early on in the process – is a form of ‘deliberate subtraction’ that has the effect of adding something positive rather than merely taking something away. It can add space, definition, clarity and time to your mix. It is not a loss at all in fact, but rather a quantifiable gain.

The important first step to adopting an Essentialist’s viewpoint is to first overcome a fundamental hurdle – the belief, unconscious or otherwise, that everything cut is something lost, a concept that stems from a habit we reinforce in our lives every day: that everything we own or possess has ‘perceived value’.

Just look at some of the stuff you own that you can’t chuck out… that ugly shirt you never wear (even to fancy dress parties), those compressors you never use, that ice cream maker someone gave you 10 years ago that you’ve never even opened.

It’s no wonder we can’t ditch overdubs we don’t like – we keep everything!

That’s why it’s so easy for us to ascribe value to every channel of audio we work with, and hard to let things go, particularly if we’ve also produced or recorded the tracks – someone spent time and good money on this recording after all, and cutting some of that out at this late stage seems like an awful waste of accrued effort, surely? It’s like throwing money away!

Not at all. Quite the contrary. By adopting an Essentialist’s mindset, by learning to find the non-contributors in your mix file and having the courage of your convictions to remove them from the timeline is all about the creation of a new, larger and infinitely more valuable entity – the great mix outcome, which hasn’t emerged up to this point.

We are not simply chucking things away in a grotesque act of wasteful abandon. We are removing the constraints of the mix in order to reveal its greatest manifestation. If you like, we’re throwing things overboard to make the ship faster or chucking out the ugly shirts so we can at least find the ones we like! What we discard at this juncture might seem like a net loss or a waste of good heavy stuff to the audio hoarder, but if it saves the mix by making the song soar to great heights, who cares what we relinquish!

Be Loyal to The Mix

So try it. Look for the non-essential elements in your current mix, or better still, trust what you possibly already know. You may have already found some – those files with ‘perceived value’ that just don’t gel with you even though you’ve already wasted more time on them than you care to admit. They seem even more burdensome now, right? They’ve doubled in ‘perceived value’, but still they insist on demanding more of your time.

Have you tried muting them? What have you got to lose … other than just the whole mix? Maybe it’s worth turning the tables on these elements by asking yourself, “Is it worth me risking my mix for the sake of these non- contributors? If I dispense with them, who will miss them and what might I gain?”

Be loyal to the mix, not its poorest contributors.

If there are files you’ve already spent too much time on, don’t feel obliged to keep them based on their perceived value. If they aren’t helping the mix – which, let’s not forget is the only thing that matters in the end – the biggest cost is in holding onto them, not letting them go. If they sink the mix, you’ve lost everything! And let’s not forget, if you do choose to cut out one or two elements that you know in your bones aren’t supporting the song, the end-listener will be none-the-wiser. They will have no grasp of what’s not there (how could they?) and no sense of loss either. They’re gone, and if their absence clearly makes things better, the listener will be given a better chance of engaging with your song!

Not every song needs editing of course, and the role of the Essentialist mix engineer is not simply about finding things to cut from a mix file. Some songs are well arranged, detailed in their musicality and reliant on subtlety. For others the confusion in the arrangement is intentional, the overlapping melodies and general mayhem all features in themselves.

Other tracks you encounter might have the opposite problem, of course. They might seem underdeveloped; the essential elements in these songs exposed by an overly simplistic arrangement. We can’t cut anything from these… ironically, we might want to add something!

So there’s no rule to adopt here, only a mindset to develop. The next time you sit down to start to mix, don’t immediately dive into your process. Sit back and listen, and if something in the track starts to nag at you and make you think: ‘What on earth is that doing here, and how the hell can that possibly do anything but bring this song down?’ – ditch it and move on!

When the mix is done and sounding awesome, will someone later question its absence?

Probably not.

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Andy Stewart owns and operates The Mill studio in the hills of Bass Coast Shire, Victoria. He’s happy to respond to any pleas for audio help… contact him via andy@themill.net.au