Chapter 12 - Posted on 2016-10-11 by Nick Wolosyn

Chapter 12 was a review on mix theory, which is one of the first and most important steps when engineering. This chapter reviews things like balance, levels, panning, and equalization. When mixing a song you need to make sure you pan the instruments where it sounds like the musicians are right in front of you performing if you close your eyes. Panning involes moving the instruments to the left or right side of your headphones or speakers, if you are panning drums they should sound like you are sitting right behind them. When leveling out your instruments it is key to really pay attention and listen closely to what sounds like it's too loud or too quiet and make sure every instrument flows smoothly while played together. Equalization is extremely important because if you don't EQ every instrument your mix will sound muddy and sloppy. Equalizing is the act of adding or removing certian frequencies, if you have a kick drum you will want to remove most of your higher frequencies becasue the kick drum doesn't requre a lot of high frequencies. This chapter also goes over preparing your mix for the master, when doing this you need to make sure all of your levels are lowered so the master has room to make the changes he needs to make in the mix. All in all this chapter taught me a lot and it prepared me to engineer the mix assignment.