Rendering Tracks for Mix Engineers

[rahul_mukerji]

Hi:

This is a question for anyone who is a Mix Engineer.

I'm presently done tracking and am looking to send my tracks to a mix engineer. As I look for an engineer, I wanted to start the process of readying the tracks to send. Personal preference aside, I'm guessing most Engg's have a standard format they follow. I was hoping that someone here could perhaps answer some of the Qns I had so I can be decently prepared and not waste my Engineers time !!

All my pieces are recorded in 48/24. All tracks are being bounced from 0:00 to the end of the song.

• A lot of the tracks have EQ, reverb, delay, pan setting, volume setting / tracking [envelope], fade ins and fade outs.
• The heavy guitars and lead guitar have delay and verb and sometimes phasers and such.
  
• Some tracks have percussion which were sent to a plugin to beef up the sound and increase the bass.
  
• The Drum tracks are panned for my rough mixes
  

As a Mix Engineer is your preference from your clients to

• Render each WAV without effect and without fade-ins and fade outs ?
• Render the Heavy Guitars with distortion, but without delay / reverb ?
• Send the original percussion without the plugin Or send with and without the plugin ?
• Send the plugin name they were using to get a certain effect ?
• Request all tracks be sent with 0 pan and at 0.0dB volume so you can set it as the mix requires
  

Anything else I can do to make my engineers job easy and any other advice would be most appreciated !!

Thanks so much in advance !

 

[Narrillnezzurh]

Not a professional mix engineer, but if someone were sending me raws to mix I would want them at track length, but otherwise one unaltered mono track for every input. So if you used nine drum mics, I want a mono track for each one. If you mic'd a bass amp but also used a DI, I'd want both. If you really like a software guitar tone you dialed in, include it, but also include the DI. Etc. If you have rough mixes you've already put together definitely include them, as it would shed some light on the sound you're hoping for.

In general, the engineer is in a better position to chase a sound than you, so you want to show them the sound to chase and let them chase it.

 

[shnizzle]

leave mixing to the mixing engineer. that means no plugins! but as Narrillnezzurh says,
include guitar tones as well as DI´s, everything mono (unless there´s some stereo
synth going on), drums 100% raw. leave the fades also to the engineer. the volume
balance you could keep but would also be better to leave to the engineer. basically leave
everything as raw as possible. send the engineer a demo of your mix so he can see what
you have in mind. also tell him what you have in mind. communication is very important!
it´s quite annyoing when clients don´t tell me what they envisioned and leave it all to me
and in the end they are impossible to satisfy. so also be decisive about the production.

this might also help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbqsBXivNds

edit: but please do make crossfades between takes! editing those clicks is a huge pain.
and as it´s said in the video also number and label your tracks right so the engineer just
has to pull everything up and it´s immediately at the right place. saves more time than
you´d think.

 

[JohnIce]

Definitely make a rough mix (-edit- to send separate from the actual tracks), that's better for both of you. I want to partially disagree with the other guys, your mix is your vision regardless of who helps you with it. You're hiring them for their technical skill only, not for their artistic vision so don't let them/force them to make stylistic decisions that should be up to you. Sound design is NOT a part of mixing, they're totally separate concepts in my book.

So EQ, compress, effect and go to town to get your sounds the way you want them. Make your tracks sound like you. What I'd avoid however is:

- Subtle effects, like reverbs and delays. Unless it's an integral part of your sound design
- Limiters or excessive compression
- Excessive boosting or cutting treble or bass
- Little problem fixers like noise gates, de-essers. notch filters, anything surgical like that you're better off leaving to the mixer

Just tell the mixing engineer that if there's anything that seems particularly tricky to get to sound good, they can just let you know and you'll send them the completely raw thing. To me that's a much quicker way to get what you both want than to send everything raw and force the mixing engineer to spend extra hours redoing everything from scratch.

 

[jerm]

If I were mixing a project for someone I would want everything panned to the center except for the drum kit, and no plugins/effects on any of the tracks. I'd basically want to start at 0.

 

[col]

^What jerm said. 24 bit, everything mono, even the drum overheads as separate L&R mono tracks so I can decide where to pan them myself, no plugins on any of the tracks.

 

[shnizzle]

Definitely make a rough mix, that's better for both of you. I want to partially disagree with the other guys, your mix is your vision regardless of who helps you with it. You're hiring them for their technical skill only, not for their artistic vision so don't let them/force them to make stylistic decisions that should be up to you. Sound design is NOT a part of mixing, they're totally separate concepts in my book.

So EQ, compress, effect and go to town to get your sounds the way you want them. Make your tracks sound like you. What I'd avoid however is:

- Subtle effects, like reverbs and delays. Unless it's an integral part of your sound design
- Limiters or excessive compression
- Excessive boosting or cutting treble or bass
- Little problem fixers like noise gates, de-essers. notch filters, anything surgical like that you're better off leaving to the mixer

Just tell the mixing engineer that if there's anything that seems particularly tricky to get to sound good, they can just let you know and you'll send them the completely raw thing. To me that's a much quicker way to get what you both want than to send everything raw and force the mixing engineer to spend extra hours redoing everything from scratch.

dude, you´re basically asking for the artist to do half the engineer´s job.
of course it´s a given to work with the vision of the band, but it´s the
engineer who makes it happen in the mix. if that band has no idea what
they´re doing chances are that rough mix will be horrible to work with and
create more troubles than it´s solving. leave mixing to the engineer!
i would only accept this if the band gave me a demo of the rough mix and i
find it good to work with. but if i´d hear any problems i would not accept
roughly mixed tracks, only raws.
i´m not pulling this out of my butt. i´ve dealt with it before and i can´t even
put into words how painful it is when i get clients who don´t know what
they´re talking about and try to tell me what to do and what sounds better.
when you hire a mixing engineer than you should also trust him to do his job
right. check out his portfolio, communicate with him, talk about your ideas
and ask for his opinion. if you´re not on the same wave lenght, don´t hire
him. if you are and you do hire him, let him do the job.

 

[KingAenarion]

As someone who DOES get paid to do this, I send this to clients:

1. 24-bit WAV or AIFF files. Mono centre panned for mono tracks stereo for stereo tracks

2. MAKE A NOTE OF THE SAMPLE RATE IN THE FOLDER TITLE, so that before I create the session I know what the sample rate is.

3. Absolutely no effects or mixing done on tracks.

Sidenote:
@JohnIce you're utterly wrong about this sorry. The idea is in the right direction, but nothing should be applied to the stems.

4. All editing already done. This especially applies to crossfades and positioning of notes. Trust me, this is time consuming and I charge by the hour.

5. No peaking/clipping. Ideally your tracks will all have been gain staged to sit at -18dBFS RMS with peaks no higher than -6dBFS. But no matter what absolutely no clipping.

6. All stems the same length please. Consolidated stems mean I don't have to work out where they go, which is time consuming, which costs you $$$

7. Include stems of everything performed. This includes DI tracks, UN-tuned vocals (as well as tuned) AND MIDI TRACKS!

8. Clearly labelled stems!!! You don't want me to be wasting your time that you're paying me for, trying to work out whether "GuitarDIBlackmachineFrontPickup" is related to "Guitar 1 5150" or "Guitar 2 Rectoverb"

9. A rough mix. Not mixed stems of the mix, but your initial vision for the song at as high a quality as you can realistically make it, with any aesthetics/panning/FX/fades etc there. I'm not you and I don't know what your vision for the song is. This is the roadmap for me, and a good rough mix saves me time, which saves you money.

10. A structure of the song. If you've got a MIDI/guitar pro of the song send that, because then I know what to reference each section as when I have questions, you have questions or when you want something changed. Further to this, a tempo map is important. If I have a structure and a tempo map I can automate tempo-based reverbs to add energy to your track. I can also insert any MIDI instruments and reinforce them where necessary from my massive library of Soft Synths.

11. a .txt or word Document in each song's folder with: reference track that you want it to sound like (realistically - I can't make a badly done home recording sound like the Black Album), any recording information you can include (mic choice, amps used, DIs used etc), names and patches for any synths/sample instruments you have used (so I can reference talking about them to you if I need to change them) and any particular stylistic considerations you have.

 

[JohnIce]

dude, you´re basically asking for the artist to do half the engineer´s job.
of course it´s a given to work with the vision of the band, but it´s the
engineer who makes it happen in the mix. if that band has no idea what
they´re doing chances are that rough mix will be horrible to work with and
create more troubles than it´s solving. leave mixing to the engineer!
i would only accept this if the band gave me a demo of the rough mix and i
find it good to work with. but if i´d hear any problems i would not accept
roughly mixed tracks, only raws.
i´m not pulling this out of my butt. i´ve dealt with it before and i can´t even
put into words how painful it is when i get clients who don´t know what
they´re talking about and try to tell me what to do and what sounds better.
when you hire a mixing engineer than you should also trust him to do his job
right. check out his portfolio, communicate with him, talk about your ideas
and ask for his opinion. if you´re not on the same wave lenght, don´t hire
him. if you are and you do hire him, let him do the job.

You're coming from the assumption that the band you're mixing (or the OP) are complete newbs who can't be trusted with their own material and whose taste isn't as good as yours. Fair enough, I'm sure that happens, but then the artist isn't taking their responsibility from a production standpoint. And if so, they need a producer as much as a mixer. So you're essentially turd polishing, not just mixing. And that's a different discussion, I'd say. Then you, as a mixer, are doing half the artist's job, the producer's job, your own job, and most likely getting paid too little for all of it. I've been there too, sample-replacing everything and even re-tracking instruments myself if I have to, but it's hardly the norm.

I see the trend going towards artists being all chicken and non-commital about their own work while mixers are being divas and demanding more and more freedom to do whatever they like, and it's a vicious circle because what really happens is that the mixer ends up having to do way too much work cause the artist is never satisfied. Unlike CLA who can mix a grammy-winning song in 3 hours, because he doesn't have to do Green Day's job for them.

Btw, I edited my original post to clarify that what I said about making a rough mix was meant to be separate from the actual tracks, if that's what confused anybody.

3. Absolutely no effects or mixing done on tracks.

Sidenote:
@JohnIce you're utterly wrong about this sorry. The idea is in the right direction, but nothing should be applied to the stems.

Again, I'm not talking about mixing, I'm talking about sound design. Trent Reznor wouldn't send a bunch of DI's and midi files to a mixer and wait for the mail man to bring back an album, is what I'm saying.

 

[KingAenarion]

Obviously we're not talking about sound design. That's a part of the composition. We're talking about aesthetic decisions and the rough mixes.

That's what a reference MIX is for. Like the whole mix. Sure include some stems of key elements if you must for aesthetics so i can hear what you were imagining... but you shouldn't be doing ANYTHING technical to your mix that I can't do myself in a constructive way.

The stems remain umixed. This is why I require a rough mix.

If you want specific delays or anything done in parallel that wasn't tracked sure include it, but don't be surprised if I do them differently to make it feel more balanced as a whole.

I had one recently where the artist wanted this really dreamy reverb soaked piano sound at one point in the song, and while the aesthetic they used was cool, the execution was horrific for a good mix. This person has a great mind for creativity, but the reverb they picked was just plain wrong, and caused all sorts of problems for what they were trying to achieve.

The rough mix gave me an understanding of what he wanted, his vision for the song, but as an engineer I'm probably going to be able to execute your aesthetic better than you can.

Like artists can be great at imagining sound design, but not always the best person to execute the idea.

Same with a chef. I know that I want a really tasty tomato sauce reduction with just a little bit of spicey kick with my ravioli, but the chef is going to be able to do it faster, with less fiddling, less problems (like needing to use extra sugar to balance out the too much chili I put in), and know which type of spicey herbs and pepper is going to give it that character, along with the flavour of the parmesan to go on top that's not going to get lost.

In my experience musicians are terrible judges of tones that will fit well in a mix, especially when it comes to low end. I have rarely used anything other than the bass DI that I've been sent, because the amp tones tend to be useless to what I want to do with it. Musicians can also be a little anal when they tune vocals, removing some of the character of the vocals, so sometimes having the untuned vocal line to put back in a flat note here and there will actually lift the character of the song a bit.

 

[JohnIce]

Obviously we're not talking about sound design. That's a part of the composition. We're talking about aesthetic decisions and the rough mixes.

We're several people talking about several things at once I think. The OP said this:

- The heavy guitars and lead guitar have delay and verb and sometimes phasers and such.
- Some tracks have percussion which were sent to a plugin to beef up the sound and increase the bass.

Judging from this I wouldn't say it's obvious we're not talking about sound design. I know you're a pro and can tell when and where that line is, I'm just not sure the OP does, or the reasonably priced mixing engineer he/she is considering for the job, and it's the over-simplified nature in some of these posts saying "absolutely no plug-ins on anything" that I'm offering an alternate view on. There's also a bit of cynicism towards musicians and recording engineers here that feels very familiar but a bit unwarranted, at least in my experience. Not everyone's a hack.

 

[shnizzle]

@JohnIce
hm, don´t get me wrong. i do think artists usually have good artistic ideas, but as
KingAenarion says they are not always the best at executing them. that´s why i would
not accept roughly mixed tracks unless i think they are good to work with.
but after your edit i think we´re on the same page, actually. a rough mix to get what
the band is going for, but send raw tracks so the engineer can put his skills to use to
make it happen.
and about the cynicism, well... i´ll just say i do notice there seem to be more eccentric
artists than reasonable and rational ones.http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/members/kingaenarion.html have heard lots of interesting experiences from
other engineers, too. hence the strictness.

 

[KingAenarion]

There's also a bit of cynicism towards musicians and recording engineers here that feels very familiar but a bit unwarranted, at least in my experience. Not everyone's a hack.

Musicians are great. Anyone who identifies as a "recording" engineer gets giant raised eyebrows from me.

The problem actually isn't the musicians who know nothing. They tend to actually be aware of that fact. The problem is not also the musicians who are very experienced and know from experience what works and what doesn't. The PROBLEM is musicians who spend a lot of time on forums (Facebook, places like this etc) and read lots of articles and watch YouTube videos then believe they now what they're talking about when they high pass literally every track too high.

 

[JohnIce]

@JohnIce
hm, don´t get me wrong. i do think artists usually have good artistic ideas, but as
KingAenarion says they are not always the best at executing them. that´s why i would
not accept roughly mixed tracks unless i think they are good to work with.
but after your edit i think we´re on the same page, actually. a rough mix to get what
the band is going for, but send raw tracks so the engineer can put his skills to use to
make it happen.
and about the cynicism, well... i´ll just say i do notice there seem to be more eccentric
artists than reasonable and rational ones. have heard lots of interesting experiences from
other engineers, too. hence the strictness.

Sure, I think the "unless I think they're good enough to work with" part is where we started talking in circles around eachother

Musicians are great. Anyone who identifies as a "recording" engineer gets giant raised eyebrows from me.

The problem actually isn't the musicians who know nothing. They tend to actually be aware of that fact. The problem is not also the musicians who are very experienced and know from experience what works and what doesn't. The PROBLEM is musicians who spend a lot of time on forums (Facebook, places like this etc) and read lots of articles and watch YouTube videos then believe they now what they're talking about when they high pass literally every track too high.

I get where you're coming from for sure. And I think it's true in any field, the "I've seen a documentary/taken a class/have a friend who is xxx so I know" mentality.

Curious why you distrust recording engineers though? Is it because the ones you generally run into are less professional than they make themselves out to be, or do you dislike their role in general? I always thought of recording engineers as the people who get too little credit when they're good and too little blame when they suck. To me the recording engineer is a crucial part of the chain, more so than the gear and the studio used a lot of the time.

 

[KingAenarion]

Curious why you distrust recording engineers though? Is it because the ones you generally run into are less professional than they make themselves out to be, or do you dislike their role in general? I always thought of recording engineers as the people who get too little credit when they're good and too little blame when they suck. To me the recording engineer is a crucial part of the chain, more so than the gear and the studio used a lot of the time.

In my experience it's like saying "I'm a Ford Mechanic for Ford's up until 2010" or "I'm a red-meat-only chef" or "I'm a white men under 30 only Doctor"

Recording is only 1 part of the job.

It's honestly like saying I'm a "Studio Engineer", like the assumption being that you can't do live sound as well.

When people are really good at mixing but can't track real drums for .... I have the same reaction, like ???. How did you skip learning that valuable skill???

It's not that I distrust recording Engineers. It's that I distrust those who only do 1 aspect of the job.

 

[JohnIce]

In my experience it's like saying "I'm a Ford Mechanic for Ford's up until 2010" or "I'm a red-meat-only chef" or "I'm a white men under 30 only Doctor"

Recording is only 1 part of the job.

It's honestly like saying I'm a "Studio Engineer", like the assumption being that you can't do live sound as well.

When people are really good at mixing but can't track real drums for .... I have the same reaction, like ???. How did you skip learning that valuable skill???

It's not that I distrust recording Engineers. It's that I distrust those who only do 1 aspect of the job.

I see, then I get your point. I was just talking about recording engineers in a credit list sense. Regardless of how wide the full extent of your competence is, you might not always get hired to do everything. Especially since that can be a year's worth of work with some bands, from pre-prods to master. Logistically, it makes more sense for the band to cherry-pick different people for different stages in the chain, so sometimes you might end up being just the drum recording engineer for a weekend and then never see the band again.