Does it need more mixing, or does it need more production?

You know how sometimes you’ll be working on a mix, and you just can’t seem to get one part of the song right? You keep adding more reverb, and turning things up, and you’re doing all this automation, but it Just … isn’t … popping?

I have learned in my practice that, when I’m experiencing this, it’s a warning sign — and what it’s trying to tell me is that what I need is not more mixing, but more production!

I ran into this just a few days ago, finishing up the new 80s kids song. The song in question has a key instrumental break, sandwiched between two extremely emotional choruses — so the instrumental needs to carry some serious emotional weight, to serve as an appropriate bridge between those two vocal moments.

I produced the music before Shannon did the vocal, and by itself the instrumental lead instrument was soaring, epic, gorgeous. But once Shannon’s (devastating) vocal was in there, the instrumental was falling short! And I found myself starting to automate. More volume. More reverb. Some delay, perhaps? Some more stereo width?

It took me SO long to realize that I needed to add more production to that lead instrument. And sure enough, as soon as I added an octave-down double of the main sound, to add more gravitas and solidity, the part snapped right into place. As soon as I correctly diagnosed the issue, the fix was simple.

I’ve heard it said that, with a perfectly-produced recording, you can push the faders up and there’s the mix. And I think to an extent that’s absolutely true! In modern workflows, we often save some stuff for mixing that makes sense to save — reverbs and whatnot — we aren’t constrained by the number of hardware devices we have, so we don’t have to print stuff quite as much as they did back in the day.

(I hear this a lot in the songs I’m studying for 80s kids; a lot of these bands clearly had access in the studio to, for example, a single AMS DMX 15-80S … but it was the best-sounding box in the room, just magical … so they would print it on like eight different instruments and also a vocal bus. What a pain in the butt! I’m glad I can tweak my many AMS DMX 15-80S plugins in context of the mix.)

Anyway, point being: if you’ve produced your song well, the mix should be pretty easy. So, the corollary: if you’re having trouble mixing your song, take a look at the production.

Working smarter, not harder — jamie