Let the listener do some of the work

Something that I’ve found that can be super effective to create space and dynamic movement in a mix is to take advantage of something that I think of as memory imprinting.

(I imagine that there’s an actual psychological term for this, and that this isn’t it? This is just how I think of it.)

But anyway, the way it works is this:

• When a repeated instrumental part is first introduced, highlight it a bit …

• … and then turn it down a bit in subsequent iterations, and highlight something else.

For example: I’m working on a mix at the moment that has this lovely little repetitive guitar motif that runs under the whole song. It’s important, but also it’s repetitive.

So what I did was to do some very intentional automation on that part in the 8-bar intro to the song — really highlighting it, like, here, check out this lovely motif. And then I dropped it a couple dB at the top of verse 1 and left it mostly there for the rest of the song, occasionally highlighting it in between vocal phrases where I needed a little something to carry the narrative.

You can’t really tell that I did this; and because the riff is iconic and repetitive, the listener keeps hearing it, and the inference is that it’s just been chugging along the whole time. But now the mix has so much more space!

I also think of this as “show and hide.”

It’s ok to be manipulative at mix time — jamie