Lesson 12 - Posted on 2013-12-10 by Nathan Baker

Mixing, yay! I've done a lot of mixing over the years but usually with inferior source material and with an amateur setup, so it's always been a stretch to get truly good results. And therefore have a lot of really good sounding demo recordings! Ha! I've known forever, but am most definitely learning again, that good clean rich source material does so much of the work for you! Get a good recording and you are halfway there. Duh. I'm very excited to finally have a proper home recording setup! New computer, protools, comfy chair, and I even replaced the speakers in my monitors! It's been years since I've had any decent setup at all. Christmas came early this year! I've even got a bunch of old tracks that I saved the multitrack files intending to mix better someday. That day has come. So I've got plenty to practice with until I get an interface. I truly love mixing.

The album that we have been working on in the studio is almost fully tracked and so around the first of the year we will start the serious mixes! We had another overdub session today. Saxophone and acoustic guitar. Not the most exciting sax player to listen to for 5 hrs and the tinny hollow Ovation guitar really does not need to be there at all in my opinion, but its a usable element for these 90's-esque funk folk rock tunes, I suppose. When I was younger I couldn't sit through this kind of music, and especially not record or mix it (which I did a bit of anyhow) but I can be more objective and tolerant in my late 30's which is a large necessity for an audio engineer. Objectivity is very important! A day like today in the studio I feel a bit worthless because there is not much for me to do except open the door for the musicians when they go in and out of the control room. Abel prefers if I don't talk, and I get it, but its so hard when the sax is flat and no one notices. I can speak up later. I take notes but its just for my practice, Abel doesn't care if I do or don't, and it boggles me because he really doesn't either. He seems to be pretty good at remembering all the minute issues. Kind of blows me away. I need notes. I would be taking way better note if I was doing this myself, and I still should but it just seems arbitrary to be taking notes for no reason. He is so used to working alone that he doesn't seem to know what to do with an assistant. I try to engage him and have hom explain more but he gets pretty silent when he works, and its not safe to break that concentration if you know what I mean. I do wish he would talk out loud and explain more of what he's doing and why, but he's really not much of a teacher type personality, which frustrates me at times. I really have to pry, and then i get a short quick answer if he isn't in the mood to explain. I have less questions nowadays, and I ask them when I have them,  but I still miss a bit of what he does, and especially why he does stuff. That's all I suppose.