The Mixing Engineer's Handbook

Product Information

The next innovation was resettable consoles that would not only remember all of your parameter settings, but would automatically reset them so the assistant didn’t have to do it manually. As consoles became larger and larger to the point where 56 channels was soon considered small, this was almost a necessity. Of course, the outboard gear still had to be reconnected and reset by hand, and with some mixers using 20, 30, or even more pieces during a large mix, life in the studio became more and more complex. Etiquette. You might get away with being a jerk on a live gig since the band or others on the crew usually will put up with you (to a point) as long as you do your job well. Not so in the studio. If you make someone feel even slightly uncomfortable for any reason, chances are you probably won’t be asked to do another project, or even another day in the studio.

Not only that, plugin developers have now begun to leave the analog hardware emulations behind with new thinking about how audio can be processed and manipulated in digital domain. We also find audio plugins and apps are becoming more useful by taking much of the grunt work out of mixing, as many are now infused with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Your mix sucks. Mark Mozart

It was a great experience except that I was a kid that didn’t know the difference at the time because I’d never seen anyone else make a record. I didn’t even know what making a record was (laughs). When I first went into Atlantic studios, it was the first time that I was exposed to the whole concept of recording.

classic to alternative to jazz to classical to R&B to EDM to Latin to rap to orchestral to country), The demand for more mixing precision brought about console automation, first affecting only the console channel faders and mutes. Now it was possible to reduce the number of humans involved with a mix, since only the console parameters such as EQ and effects sends required manual dexterity. Elliot Scheiner: Yeah, they would generally start you as an assistant and I was basically like an assistant to an assistant until I learned what was going on. Obviously the technology was minimal then so you really had to know what mikes to use on what occasions and where to place them and the rest would come at a later date. But the main thing was just how to set up the room for each engineer.

Open Library

Many engineers agree that this book can be the only one you need as a reference book on mixing music. Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio by Mike Senior The only way that you can get a proper mix is if you have a hand in the arrangement because if you don’t, people might play the wrong thing or play in the wrong place. How can you mix that? It’s impossible. Today even free or low-cost DAW applications are far more powerful than what major acts were used to using from the ’50s through the ’80s. It’s an amazing time to be an engineer, if you have a handle on what the tools at your disposal are able to accomplish. In this fully updated 5th edition of the Handbook, you’ll find all the proven fundamental and advanced techniques that the pros use to help you take your music to another level.