Mix knobs in weird places

As people who work on music, we’re pretty used to Mix knobs on effects, right? A knob that blends a reverb or a delay from 0%-100% feels pretty intuitive. More reverb or less reverb! Makes sense.

But, if you’re anything like me, you were a little bit weirded out when the plugin developers started putting Mix knobs on EVERYTHING. Like … how can you have a mix knob on a compressor? That doesn’t make sense! Like … you’re compressing something or you’re not … right?

It took me literally years to understand how to think about those weirdly-placed Mix knobs in a way that made sense to me. So I thought I would share it with you!

Here’s what I’ve learned: I had to stop thinking of them as Mix knobs, and start thinking of them as “put a little of the original detail back in” knobs.

Here’s an example. You know how it can sometimes happen (okay, more than sometimes) that you have dialed in the compression on a vocal, and it’s generally great, the dynamics are under control, which is good — but the vocal just sounds a little bit … dull? Like a little bit of the life has gotten sucked out of it?

But nothing you do to reduce the compression makes it better, it only makes it less controlled and less good, and also still a bit dull?

This is where the Mix knob shines. All you have to do is gently dial the Mix knob on the compressor back from 100%, to just shade a little bit of the original uncompressed vocal back in there. We’re talking taking it back to like 95%, 90% max.

And all of a sudden, there’s the vocal! It’s got all that wonderful compressed control, but the original nuance is poking through 5-10%, just enough to restore the missing detail and liveliness that the compressor sucked out.

I’ve taken this to the next level and made it an intentional part of my process. I will purposefully over-process a sound, and then I’ll back the Mix knob off a little bit, mixing some of the original detail back in. Try it with compression, saturation, distortion, tape-machine emulations, and de-essers. It’s a great trick.

Giving it 95% — jamie