Problem-solving mixing

Part of the job of a mix engineer is to solve problems that might arise at the recording stage. Software – and creative thinking – can help!

- Ashley Thorpe

When I take on mixing work for clients, I want to give them my very best.

Something I’ve had to accept, though, is that the sound quality of what is sent through to me is not always the best.

I’m going to use a job that I took on last year as a case study to show the sorts of issues that can come up and the ways that a good engineer can go about handling them.

I mixed a five-track EP for an electronic RnB artist last year. They had recorded their vocals in their bedroom for each of the five tracks, as lockdown meant that they were unable to get into a studio.

They’d managed to do a pretty reasonable job of recording into Logic, given the restrictions. They also had very rough mixes of the tracks in Logic with the various vocal stems and component instrument tracks. When I listened through the vocals, it became clear that they didn’t have a pop shield so there were plosives on their tracks.

They didn’t have a reflection filter so there was natural room reverb. At times they were also running the mic input really hot, which was causing pops.

The simplest thing to do was to tell the artist to buy a pop shield as a bare minimum and re-record some lead vocal tracks. But for one track in particular, the artist wasn’t as happy with the re-recording as he had been for his original take. That’s when I had to do some serious creative thinking…

>Step by step 1. Case study