As audio engineers, we’re often asked to “fix it in the mix.” Sometimes this means adding a bit of extra EQ or editing out a few unwanted sounds. Other times, it means engaging in some serious dirt polishing. And sometimes, when the occasion calls for it, you need to throw caution to the wind, ignore the usual rules, and get inventive. In this article, I’m going to discuss difficult mixes I’ve worked on and the unorthodox tricks I used to salvage them.
Say Goodbye to Boxy-sounding Drums
I once received a mix that a band recorded in their basement. These guys did a great job during tracking — it was a top-shelf home-brewed recording. That said, the drums were problematic. While the individual parts of the kit sounded full and punchy, when you pulled up the overhead and room mics, everything sounded puny and boxy — like drums recorded in (surprise) a basement.
So how did I fix it? The easy solution would be to use drum replacement. I didn’t want to go that route, though. After all, the close-miked kit sounded excellent. Instead, I replaced the room mic tracks with a convolution reverb and drum room IR. After that, I augmented the overhead mic tracks with a subtle blend of close-miked drums and the same convolution reverb/IR combo as before. The result was a huge-sounding drum mix that was completely devoid of boxiness.
Add Space and Decay to a Puny Snare
When people record at home, they often will try to minimize bad acoustics by close-miking everything. While this leads to a clean-sounding recording, it can make everything sound too dry. I often find myself working on mixes that sound like this. A few well-placed delays and reverbs often solve the problem, but the drums can still end up sounding small — especially the snare. And drenching the kit in reverb just makes it sound like tiny drums in a big room.
Sample replacement is an easy way to fix this one, and it’s my go-to solution. But what if you want to keep the original drums? If that’s the case, start by using a compressor with a slow attack and fast release to add punch to your kick, snare, and toms. Add noise gates if you need them. After that, put a gated reverb on your snare to give it more space and a longer decay. But be warned — use this reverb conservatively unless you want your drums to sound like it’s 1985.
Fix Out-of-phase Stereo Guitars
Once upon a time, I was asked to mix a guitar-dominated thrash metal song. I was told that the guitars sounded “funny,” especially when you folded the mix down to mono. After I loaded the project into Pro Tools, I discovered that it contained two hard-panned guitar tracks that were out of phase with each other. I tried nudging them every which way, but I couldn’t get the tracks to sound right. Even with adequate metering, trying to align these two tracks was an absolute exercise in frustration.
So what did I do? In a last-ditch effort, I ended up running each track through an amp simulator plug-in. Gain staging already overdriven guitar tracks was a challenge, and the amp sims changed the vibe of the guitars significantly, but I was able to coax suitable high-gain tones out of each track, all while crafting a phase-coherent stereo image.
Dealing with a Bad Comp Job
Mix engineers are often asked to correct weird mistakes. I once received a vocal track that was already comped. Unfortunately, the sound of the various segments was totally different. Not just different volumes, either. Some parts sounded close, others distant. Some were saturated, others crystal clean. Some sounded like they were recorded with completely different equipment. Sometimes it didn’t even sound like the same vocalist!
I got heavy-handed with this one. First, I compressed the entire track — twice! Then I used a saturation plug-in to add a slight distortion to the already-saturated portions of the track — just enough to imbue them with the flavor of the plug-in. After that, I distorted the clean parts until they sounded similar to the already-saturated segments. The final result not only sounded convincingly cohesive in the context of the mix, but it also became really gnarly and aggressive, fitting the punk-ish, noise-rock vibe of the song to a T. The band loved it! Who would have thought that utterly destroying a track could actually rescue it?
In Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading about my trials and tribulations. Aside from learning a few new production tricks, I hope you’ve been inspired to be creative and take a few risks the next time you’re asked to “fix it in the mix.”