Mixin’ & Fixin’

Mixing, at least for me, is that weird liminal space between the composing, recording, & producing phase of a project and actually getting the song mastered & released.

It’s hard.

You know you got to go through hell
Before you get to heaven

‘Jet Airliner’ – Paul Pena

For the uninitiated, mixing is the part of the process where all of the parts of a multitrack recording are brought together into a final stereo “mix”. In other words, mashing a big muddy mess of audio into something listenable by humans.

I mix my compositions myself. I know, most pros will tell you that, like editing your own novel, it’s a bad idea to mix your own stuff. It’s a choice. In addition to being a cheap Yankee, I really want to learn how to do it.

I’ve mixed a ton of my own stuff over the years and I’ve achieved the critical mass of mistakes that allows me to say, “I think I can actually do this.” Still, it’s hard.

It’s also a lot of fun. I get to put myself and my ears in the listener’s frame of reference and pretend I have no idea what went into these compositions. I have to drop all preciousness about my creative work and attend to the technical “product” that I’m trying to produce. I say “product” because the composition and the recording are not the same thing.

My compositions are built from recorded audio and assembled on a laptop. One could say that the recording and the performance are one and the same. But I can take that composition, hand it to a pianist and some string players and they can perform it. They can do that now, they could do that a century after I’m gone. The composition is still the composition.

My recording that I’m mixing now is a snapshot in time of my composition as performed by me, in 2023, mixed and released to fans in 2024.

So why am I bringing this all up in a post about mixing? Well, this is why it’s hard. I have to stop being me the composer and shift my entire perspective to you, the listener. I have to hear my compositions with an ear so critical, I have to be willing to sacrifice things that don’t work, sound wonky, or just don’t fit, objectively and subjectively.

Composer me cries a little when I mute something I liked but in the end, my hope is it pays off and you will have something you can enjoy and if I’m really lucky, vibe to. That’s why it’s fun.

Needless to say, I got work to do. See you on the other side, meanwhile, me and my ears are locked in the cellar.