ALL "MIXED" UP (#2)....

            This is the most difficult article that can be attempted on "the art of mixing": attempting to describe the different philosophies of blending musical recordings.
The first reason this is so tough is that I can't even know all the possible theories. Like music they can be as individual as those who create them...for instance, think of Jimi Hendrix, who used to lock the engineers out of the studio (so I have been told) to set up some of his wilder patches. Apparently he wanted to keep them secret.
    But like musicians, if engineers abandon innovation in order to fit into an accepted style, then you begin to have a recognizable "philosophy".
   There is an additional problem of philosophies that cut across each other but are not mutually exclusive. So to mix a metaphor, this article is a bit like touching the tip of the iceberg with a ten-foot pole.

    The first round of mixing theory centers around "who is your listening audience?". But not really so much "who" but "what kind of equipment do they listen on?".
     It is generally been accepted that teens and young adults are listening on cheaper (less fidelity) equipment: iPods, computers with small ear gadgets, computer speakers, etc....in the old days, it used to be "transistor radios" with itsy-bitsy speakers which weren't physically capable of reproducing many frequencies (especially lows) and sounded rather like a canary trapped in a tin can.
   So music that is geared toward young people is often mixed with an eye to making listening this way palatable...The bad news? Put this mix on an "audiophile system" and it's bound to sound horrendous, leaving the listener to wonder if it was "mixed by monkeys".
   Of course, at the other end of the scale are engineers who mix for those high-end systems. Often this is done for classical music, but not necessarily the case. The problem here is many subtle details are lost when played on a cheap system.
    My approach lies firmly in the third category; to mix so it will sound good on the vast majority of systems. Often I will have a finished tune that sounds just great on super-flat monitor speakers. But my work isn't done until I play it on cheaper home & car systems, whose "peaky" natures often make that mix sound quite different. I don't demand that the mix sound identical to the monitor version, only that things sound good and in reasonable balance, with nothing sticking out or overwhelming. If adjustments MUST be made, I take great care that the changes are small, and the "studio version" is not adversely affected.

    Next time I would like to elaborate on those aforementioned "mixing styles", just to give an example of some of the more popular.