Top down mixing

It’s okay for a rough tracking mix but no, then I end up never fixing problems with individual tracks and can be lulled into mediocrity, eg lot of cool tube stuff requires you to really eq your tracks before or after to not sound awful and if you never get around to doing this you can miss out on the best option for your mix in favor of the merely “acceptable” option.

And sometimes cleansing your tracks really is sweeping around and around to find that resonance that’s there but no big deal when the track or mix is unprocessed but annoying as shit when it hits the cool processed. If you presume that what should be a notch is a tonal error before starting, then you’ll never stamp out the nastiness and will reject what could be cool and fit the tempo and vibe of your mix better because it will never sound good.

Compare that to building a mix from the bottom up when it sounds good after you clean up your tracks and greet when you go back and adjust them.

This is how we get too compliant and lulled into using things that always work but if everything is the same then nothing stands out for what you do. You’ve made the mix fit your mold of what a mix in that genre should be instead of letting the recordings bloom into something unexpected that you’re shaping it as it goes to sound as best as possible for what it is.

This is how we ended up with modern productions that all sounded the same. Sounding the same as everything else is sounding unexceptional. I don’t want to aim to sound the same.

I started mixing into the 2 bus recently and it saved a lot of hassle. Things really change when you add things like bus compression, this saves me from having to go back and redo a bunch of stuff a second time.

I like to start with what I think is the focus of the song, usually the vocal.

I've heard this often as well, building the song around the vocal. So, are you treating the vocal in isolation then? Or around the unmixed backing tracks?

I typically start with whatever happens to be the main focal point (vocal, drums for dancier stuff, etc) and play with different combos to find what works best and then build from there. No real set schedule, let the tracks guide things, fix what's needed, then start popping in some 2-buss stuff to support it and going from there.

I liked Dan's post about dealing with issues/resonances off the bat. Sometimes deadlines get in the way so going for feel and fix what's getting in the way of that is the best option - will often work on groups sooner than later here - but pre-mix prep work can lead to great results. Not only does it open up tracks and make them sound better even before you start mixing, but you'll likely discover things that you might've otherwise not stumbled across, subtle things that easily get lost but can be quite special when pushed to the foreground. Sometimes the artist is pleasantly surprised to hear things they didn't even know were there!

Why would the vocal be in isolation? For me its never isolated... if I'm mixing around the vocal it means the vocal is never/rarely muted. And its volume, the fader position is locked too. 

Building around = everything else develops around the vocal. Always in context never isolated. 

No idea what top vs bottom up means but often, after listening to rough mixes and raw tracks I try to establish a tangible image of what the final mix should like. 

I'll hear things I either want to do, or need to do in the case of problem solving & overall sound sculpture... and then, kinda start hacking away piece by piece until the mix starts to resemble what was in my head. 

Sometimes the mix doesn't wind up going in the same direction my head was in. Then I have to decide if the alternate development is cool, or even cooler then the initial idea..? Or does it get wrestled into conformity? 

During all that buttons & knobs, both physical analog and virtual digital get turned & pushed. And ploop..! On the other end of the sausage machine we have a mix! 

But yes mostly I think of the mixing process like a sculptor with a block of marble or wood. Chipping away until the final form is revealed like magic.  

i am always jealous off the tracks the pro mixers are getting: they sound almost finished.

so i start with fixing the recorded tracks. one by one mostly this means cutting resonances, lo- and hi-cutting. sometimes a bit of compression with a tape plugin.
THAN i start mixing. with gain staging and balancing. than its time to get the drums right with eq and comp, set up the drumbus. than the bass comes in to make a whole with the drumbus.
THAN i will insert a comp (mostly spl iron) on the mixbus.
i continue with the rest of the tracks and have a look at the spl iron from time to time. it should compress 1db at maximum.
strangely vocals come last for me ... ok, they come before tamburine and shakers :-)

*and yes, I mix into a buss comp most of the time. I routinely turn it off to see what's getting creamed, and evaluate what my sub-group comps are doing.

Man, that 2 buss approach is very very familiar here.

After years of thinking I was too cool for school and going my own ways, I've realized that the reason it's a popular approach is because it just works.  

Lately I’ve had the best luck with starting with my Spectra V610’s and Smart C1 in dual mono the mix buss (usually 4:1 with 3ms or 10ms attack time and auto release) and building my mix with those in from the top. I usually rough in my levels and panning and then start doing some EQ to address some issues (resonant bass frequencies *especially with uprights*) and try to get each instrument sounding as good as it can on its own…working with acoustic instruments I’m mostly trying to get each note on a bass even without having to compress it much and try to make each string of the instrument sound balanced. And then I’ll add some compression if needed, ride the fills and solo, and ride the vocal / vocals. I have a VCA that have every audio track on it so if I’m pushing it too hard into the mix buss chain I can bring everything down (or up if I want to hit it harder).

I also have a pair of AML ezp1a that I’ve level matched with a little 8K boost and a 100hz boost that I’ll try after I’ve got a mix I think is happening and those either make it sound better or too bright or too boomy. But their polish tends to help a lot. I’m sort of going back and forth with following that with an Overstayer MAS. Not sure if I’ve found the magic settings on that yet