What is Audio Mixing?
You may be asking yourself the questions “what is mixing” or “why I need mixing”. Audio Mixing is when you send your project in parts (kick, snare, hi-hat, bass, etc.) to a audio engineer to enhance the project. A great mixing engineer listens to your ideas, and based on their experience should make your project better than what it was when you sent it.
What is thse point of mixing the audio?
The goal of mixing is to make the music have as much emotional impact as possible. This is of course different from genre to genre and project to project. The other goal in mixing is to make the music feel like it’s at the same quality as any other professionally done projects out there.
Can all music sound professional?
Music is all very unique to each project., and the professional music that you hear on streaming and other platforms can vary in quality. If you listen to top 40 artists you hear music that has been created (most of the time) in ideal situations for that project. Ideal writing, arrangement, recording, and production all lend itself to a fantastic mixing scenario. Where all the parts are done well and therefore make the result exactly what is expected.
We have different resources and situations in the independent part of the music industry, which could prevent us from doing things like recording in an ideal environment, or maybe you are the only writer (as opposed to a team). The fact is there are no rules to making music. Sometimes we are newer at the process and the sounds we choose are the best we can achieve with the experience we have, but may not feel like the ones you hear on the big records. We have to consider all of this to form our expectations of how things will sound in the end.
What does it mean to sound “professional”?
Some genres of music tend to be more forgiving with the quality of audio the listener experiences. Rap, Lo-Fi, and EDM, to a certain extent, can normally get by with the producers mix, but top level projects are still mixed by separate mix engineers with some exceptions. Professional can be interpreted as “the best for the project”. Is the project at its full potential? Should collaboration with a mix engineer make it better?
Do I need audio mixing for my song or project?
You have to simply ask yourself the question “am I satisfied with what I’ve done up to this point”. Mixing isn’t an overhaul of what you’ve done. I consider the work done up to that point a stepping stone to enhance the music. Some projects require very little time, some require more. The only thing you can do is allow a professional to hear the project and help you make those decisions.
Let’s Collaborate!
I’m Mark, my passion is to help people and make their music come to life! Let me use my experience and my team to get your project out to the world. Reach out to me here at mark.a.barrie@gmail.com. Reach out and Contact Me Here
