Can Email Based Mixing Critiques Work?

21/12/11 10.57

Can Email Based Mixing Critiques Work?

Is getting email-based band feedback on mixes. Let's talk about it in this article.

Somewhere in '08 I realized that the old system of having five band mates fight for the 3.5 space on the couch while I over thought snare drum compression wasn't the best system. There were numerous downsides to this. The band really only needed to be there for creative decisions. They didn't need to be there while I notched holes for various instruments or took care of the more technical end of the mix. Mixing For Zombies After six hours of them struggling to find the will to live or struggling to beat whatever PSP game happened to be in their hands, they were then suddenly expected to have an opinion on the mix. So! What do you think? The feedback was sometimes valuable, but often times it was clear that they hadn't been flexing that perspective-maintaining muscle that most of us have been honing and toning for years. Most of them were coming out of a lethargic state that maybe only those with a free day from the Soviet labor prisons must have faced. Even if they were A-list mixers, it's hard to be useful eight seconds out of a coma. Note: This is one reason why I've always intended for my some-year super studio to ample things to do in the party room/lobby thing. Get those people out of the control room so they can be at least resemble human beings when I do need a listen. Mixing Without Your 18 Inches I never really liked feeling out a mix with someone breathing down my neck. Seriously, when I've got a few amps in the control room and all my outboard gear I often do feel their breath going down my spine. If that's not disturbing, I don't know
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Can Email Based Mixing Critiques Work?

21/12/11 10.57

what is. It's not a big deal for bands who've seen me naked and didn't request a refund. It's less desirable with clients who maybe don't have a squeaky clean criminal record. Fighting The Car Stereo First No matter how good the monitoring setup is it's never easy to get a mix to kill in the truck. I'm assuming the 30dB swings induced by deplorable acoustics, off-axis speakers that cracked six years ago, and EQ settings on the stereo that maybe only Helen Keller would have approved of lead to a mix that never sounds ideal in the truck. Even the big boys struggle with that one. Obviously, not every band member has their car stereo set like Jack Nicholson. (Just a hunch.) Even good car stereos are inherently going to push, pull, bend, rip, and tear a mix to shreds faster than anything else. That's what happens when frequency response looks a lot like a seismograph reading on a busy day. It's unfortunate that the first place they hear a mix is in the car. This doesn't mean your mix should kick MAJOR ass in the car. It just means you've got to fight the Level 8 boss in Level 2. I'd much prefer they hear the mix on their home stereos, Ipods, and alarm clocks before they fight the big guy. This is more of a psychological strategy more than anything. My Scheduling I like to mix naked. Alright, that's a lie. I'd spill coffee on my man stuff and those emotional wounds would take too long to heal. I do like to mix when I like to mix. If I wake up at 3am and can't sleep I'm not sure why I typed if - then I like being able to do my thing. There Goes Spontaneity I've also grown to love the 30 Minute Mix. This is my quick, dirty Blitzkrieg strategy I use to make sure I'm not thinking too much in a mix. I love just popping in, giving it hell, and then getting out. This doesn't finish a mix, but it keeps me from spending six hours on a mix that sucks anyway. I'll still have to go back in and finish, but there's something about the 30 minute mix that fits my personality type. This type of mixing is not really an option when the band is present. You can't really use the brainstorming side and you can't take wild changes. Even something as mundane as an EQ sweep will cause someone to go, Hey, what was that?.
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Can Email Based Mixing Critiques Work?

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You Can't Cage These Monkeys You can't implement classroom rules in a mix session. You can't tell a band No Talking and No Having Fun. That's a big reason they are there. Their day job at the plant is NOT fun and that's why they joined the band in the first place and that's probably why they want to record music. (Hint: The FUN element can not be underestimated. I cover this in depth in my upcoming book Surviving And Thriving In This BS Recording Studio Business) The problem is you will most certainly face constant distractions when attempting to work. Selling Your Soul To The Customer More importantly, somewhere in my late 20s I realized that I needed to balance my life a little bit and I need at least 1-2 nights a week with the ol' lady or the old nasty fun supply gets cut off, which turns me into a raging lunatic. So scheduling a band five nights a week has proved to be rather unhealthy to me in all arenas. So..... I shifted my mixing methods to email. This means I finish a mix, upload it, and send the band boss an email. They listen on all their respective stereos and get back to me. All the big problems are solved. I can mix when it works best for my schedule. I can actually balance my life a bit in terms of work/play/family. I avoid the distractions of having five guys in the control room They get a chance to listen to the mix on a billion stereos to find the troubled areas without going facing the Boss 8 monster in the truck first. They don't have to sit through three hours of sibilance fighting and 2dB automation swings. They can listen with a fresh set of ears.

Everything is great, right.......WRONG. There are some major hangups to this method that cost me a long, full day of work this week.
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Can Email Based Mixing Critiques Work?

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Flawed Communication The usual problem with text-based communication is it's quantized. It gets rounded to be either 0% or 100%. So what does it mean when a person says, I think the mix is alright? It CAN mean he thinks the mix is ALLLLLLRIIIIGHT (think Tony The Tiger) with a big, fat smiley face in the end. It can mean that he is 100% satisfied and we should move on to the next mix. It can mean that the mix is just alright and there's nothing about it that really excites him. That can't happen. Immediately we find ourselves requiring literary skills to express ourselves. Good luck with that on the band front. I had a band who were very particular but wanted me to have some fun with distorting and gating drums and generally breaking a lot of rules. Okie dokie. To rephrase it, they had very high standards but they wanted me to play. This is already tricky because there's a very fine line between weird and cool and weird and stupid. Based on the emails, I was under the impression that they 100% hated what I had done, but they wanted me to keep sending them mixes. For me to play the guessing game mix after mix would have been a total waste of time and it basically was. I got rather frustrated. This was a rough phase where a whole lot of stuff went wrong all at once in my life. My less-than-optimistic mindset get the impression that they were sitting around going, This is terrible! When they finally made it in for mixing (this client is a farmer and has ZERO time in the **** months) it turns out that my brain was WAY off and my mixes were way on. I was so pessimistic about the situation that I insisted we start all over. It was a 10 hour day of mixing because I wanted a fresh shot at it. The next day they told me they liked the old mix better. A lot better. In fact, they only had tiny little issues with that old mix....the one I was under the impression they HATED. Besides the normal 1-2dB tweaks here, more tom attack overall, and bringing up some shaker I buried, my instincts were very close. If I hadn't relied so heavily on ASSUMPTOIN of what some of this email communication meant I would have had a clear enough head to see that mix all the way through.

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Can Email Based Mixing Critiques Work?

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My Solution Email communication is great. When they say, The vocals are a bit low I know what they mean. If they wish the kick wasn't so boomy, I know what they mean. When they start saying Can you make the snare drum crazier? we've moved into a new realm where the English language fails. Text-based communication fails. Oralcommunication fails. The only real solution is to bring them back in to the studio where you can figure it out by grunting, showing you mp3s, etc. The second I ask, What the hell are they talking about? on the email, it's time to ditch the email-based mixing critiques. They are ready for a non-zombie session. Conclusion Having the band bouncing around your control room until they pass out is not the ideal way for you to make them happy. Relying on a bunch of gray-area text to give you specific mixing tasks is equally unproductive. The happy median is to do a hybrid. Get the mix rocking as best you can, shoot 'em an email, and let them get back to you. The second you have no idea what they are talking about, schedule a mixing session. Brandon

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