Chapter 12- Mix Theory - Posted on 2016-08-25 by Caroline Bokman

Really getting to the heart of that matter now. If you have 200 guitar takes, and 3 drummers and a horn section.... and maybe a choir, how on earth do you wrangle it so doesn't overwhelm the ears? How can you make certain things shine, even focus or blend? What are all the tools we have? How do we use them? What the the usual things people who mix do? What are the creative things people have come up with? So it begins. This week, first, set to organize all the workspace- very important, because it's gonna  get complicated quickly....and then, all overview of the tools... volume, frequency manipulation, effects, panning, fixes, enhancements,  carving, on many fronts: in the volumes, in the frequencies, and in the effects. A few tracks in a simple song can benefit as much as session with a hundred tracks. This week we go with the overview: Group things, solo things, organize and conquer, and keep in mind things for the future: single levels affect the overall level. Leave room for the mastering that is to come. Dial back things that will be compressed later, it's just the beginning, and we are going to start an on- going hands-on project in the class and at home. We have tracks to play with, organize, mess with, apply what we've learned..... I've downloaded various tracks in sessions, opened/ imported them, organized a workspace, and just started to play with where to go from here, so many options.... we glanced over eq, compression and plugins, there will be more of that soon.. for now, it's a tossed salad- later, a gourmet creation!  (As is said on the Simpsons- "You don't make friends with salad".)