Midterm - Posted on 2017-04-29 by Tavior Mowry

For my midterm I had to mix a project during my session with Zach. At first I was really nervous about the whole situation as Zach slid back on the studio couch to see what I would do. After he gave me some instructions about what he would like to see in the session such as set tempo, song markers, etc., he pretty much just let me go. After I imported all the audio and had everything squared away, I played the track and it sounded like a complete mess. I looked back and told him "This is super muddy." He looked back with an agreeing expression, "Yeah! It sure is!" I swiveled back around in my chair and started to think about how to fix this. I was still a little nervous and hesistant about touching the board. I turned my head back one last time to clarify, "So, I can do whatever I want?" He simply responded saying "Yep." From there I threw down all the faders and started to create a balance. After a while I started to feel like I was back in my bedroom working on any other project as I usually would. Throwing compressors on channels to tame dynamics, rolling off unnecessary lows, carving out pockets in the kick and bass to make them play with each other nicely. Once I got a good balance going, Zach hopped on and showed me things he liked from my mix as well as things he would have done differently. His teachings and techniques allowed me to add new skills to my own repertoire as an engineer.