2 simple mixing questions

I didn't read any of the comments..  Just wanted to give my unbiased opinion right away.

I always start with the section that I feel has the most power or is at least the most interesting.  That way I can maximize whatever will be the BEST part of the song first and then make moves that might support it.  Sometimes it's fader rides, sometimes it's adding or subtracting effects/layers, and sometimes it's totally removing whole instruments.  

I recently received a bunch of guitar tracks from a remote musician.  When I added it to the mix it was simply too much to have throughout the whole song.  I removed a handful of the parallel tracks and only used parts where I thought it accented appropriately.  

I let the artist hear it with and without the extra tracks and he was very much in agreement with my choices for the mix.  We were both pretty happy with the result. 

The bus comp compacts your fader moves. You have to mix into it and move faders more drastically. It will change the sound! You will get an ssl bus comp into its sweet spot and not where it’s taking the top off or if it is taking the top off, you will compensate! Even the new Massenburg plugin changes the sound even if you can’t knock out of the sweet spot by design except by uncontrolled peaks making it speed up drastically with increased distortion and some digital artifacts from super fast gain reductions. Even that has to be on early because then you will instinctively avoid the distortion!

First I process everything to sound good. Recording quality sucks nowadays. Tons of corrective eq and dynamics are needed. I will color in the corrective stages if I have all the tracks for the song in the first place but for remote recordings, the quality is so bad it needs to be corrected before another musician can overdub.

Some of these musicians did go to studios who had no idea what they were doing for sub genre music where everything often has to be recorded or processed a certain way to match a reference and often have more messed up pre processed recordings than if they did it themselves at home when yeah it would be roomy and raw but often miced halfway right and not pre processed with tons of crap that absolutely should not be on it. It’s not so much about gear as recording techniques and knowing what is done for what reason.

More interesting could mean a lot of different things but to me, that's usually going to start with musical intent & arrangement... and then, when the time comes to make mixing decisions? Be bold and take the less traveled path. Yes absolutely its a record. There's room to experiment. 

Yet in the world of mix for hire... in terms of "interesting" I tend to feel like when I'm mixing a single the decisions & overall presentation is way more conservative. I'm probably always going to make the safer, kinda stock choices. And I realize that consciously, its an active decision. 

Mixing in the context of a longer play release... full EP or album with more songs and more depth? I'm going to take chances & roll the dice on more things and maybe try and blow up some of the rule book. 

With more presentation time I can try something stupid like giant reverb throws or putting all the drums in one speaker. Where as in the context of a single? Hey... so that's what it sounds like in your head eh..? 

Long time ago as a kiddo I ended up assisting Andy Wallace on a mix session... was an HBO thing we all all the video lock gear... 

Probably the first hour he sat there listening and really not doing much. Mute something here or there... fiddle with an EQ... but mostly listening. 

Then he called out about 400 patches in basically one shot and within I dunno? Maybe hour tops the mix was pretty well framed in. Not 100% done but the form was there. 

I don't mix in sections. Can't see a reason for that but yeah sure... I might decide to start mixing by diving into the bridge & end chorus... get those reasonably together and then roll from the top and see what sticks. But ultimately the delivered song/mix is one print.

For some context my rig is the classic triangle of DAW as tape machine / baby SSL desk / 2nd DAW as 2-track. For all intents the DAW's could be tape machines. No templates here the desk ends up being the template. 

2-mix compressor is always available at the press of a button but it doesn't go in that early. Generally mid way? If it goes on too soon & before things are really formed its easy to really overcook and fight the thing. Over-modulate etc. 

I want the compressor to shape and add tone to the mix, not to mix the mix. So when I plop that insert one of the first things I'm kinda listening for is what its doing to the vocal. And then, how's it treating all the time based junk like reverb & echo tails? Are things coming forward or getting pushed back blah blah... 

Definitely some voodoo involved.  

mixing in sections: a bridge is a very fine section to do this. change radically the fader balance. yesterday i got the drums all roomy. muted the close snare, smashed the room tracks and that changed the whole thing. turned up the bass guitar, overdriven, faded in the percussion shaker and handclaps loud. very nice.

If soloing you will hear that but if you don't overdo it, when you get it in the mix, fairly aggressive 1176 peak limiting will pay off. It can keep it right up in your face.