Originally Posted By: bluage
.....The only thing I'd ever read about mixing was to adjust track volumes just short of clipping...


as I indicated in my post, to my ears something I can only describe as a diminishment of the "fullness" of the sound, a thinning, seemed to occur in the wake my adjustments. My intuition tells me that maybe I was looking too closely at the graphic representation of the panning controls -- the way the green level light splits into two columns to display the relative increase or decrease of the signal while panning right or left -- instead of listening. What I mean is, perhaps my misdirected attention to the visual display affected the way I was hearing the sound of the instrument(s).



If that's what you've read, you've been reading the wrong books.

Might I suggest an investment in Mike Senior's book called Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio. A number of folks here have this book as do I. Mike starts where your mixing starts and that is with your speakers. I think you will find this to be an excellent book to own.

Regarding "lights" and levels.... yes, volume cures a multitude of woes but it also covers up twice as many problems. You should be mixing at a low volume on halfway decent speakers. Mixing loud makes it sound better, but you're missing the important things. The folks who listen to your mix at a lower level will be disappointed in many cases, by the substandard mix that you missed due to volume.

As mixing engineer.... and that is your job title when you mix your own mixes, it is your job to find the problems in the mix and fix them, not bury them in volume and gagged track faders.

When I mix, I will occasionally look at the meters just to see where I am relatively speaking. I do want to have the meters in the green 99% of the time. I don't live or die by the meters.

If you have nice full tracks, and if you're using Real Tracks, that is rarely an issue, you should be able to have a full sounding mix if all you have is a piano and a vocal. It's actually easier in many respects, to work with a project having just 2 to 4 tracks in it and have it sound good as opposed to having a project with 12 or more tracks and making it sound good. We all fall victim to the "if I have it I need to use it" syndrome and mixing 12+ tracks with that mindset results in a mess of noise and mud.

My latest song has 6 rhythm guitars. A mixture of acoustic and electric. Only 2 of them are at any decent level where they can be heard. The others are 10dB or so down from 0dB in the mix. Barely audible.If I had run all 6 just short of clipping, can you imagine the cacophony of guitar noise that would have been? Same thing is true of the vocals. There were 5 tracks but you can only hear predominately one lead. If you listen carefully, you can hear the others in the background is a few places. There are other tracks that ride with faders pulled all the way down until that track is needed for a few seconds, and then back to the bottom. The B3 organ is one of those.

Mixing is an art. Levels, panning, use of EQ, applying FX, all of it matters and all of it takes time. You're off to a good start. Refine it a bit, learn some new things and you only get better with time and doing.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.