The Unexpected Realties of Being a Mixer (What No One Tells You)

[@deepnoisestudios]

I absolutely love bands that have balls to be personal and not chase a certain sound. Luckily that covers most of my clients.

[@diegofernandeztrujillo2517]

Hey Joel. Great video as always. Can you maybe consider making a video about how you would navigate getting feedback from label/management and from the band that is contradictory to eachother? (Band is happy, label wants totally different sound, vice versa) Its happening to me more and more lately.

[@joelwanasekurm]

Great suggestion!

[@TBRNashville]

Great video Joel. This has been my life for 20 years. A chameleon. Hard to creat a sought after personal style when you are attempting to match someone else.

[@joelwanasekurm]

It’s one of the biggest challenges we face. A lot of pressure not to do that.

[@MrNEWDY]

I think chasing aesthetics has always been a thing in the industry. Bands would seek out engineers, producers, and mixers to try and get a vibe, but we've just trended towards not letting the band's sound shine through. The black album came about because they wanted the guys behind Dr feelgood and slippery when wet. When you use that as a reference and compare to the black album, you definitely hear the influence of those records but it is STILL unmistakably Metallica. I feel your pain for real, it kinda kills me inside how especially in metal now people just want a very generic approximation of a particular mixer's aesthetic and want to just straight rip off a sound to a T. This is why I am placing restrictions on myself during the engineering and mixing stage of the album my band is doing. By setting a rigid list of hardware in front of myself and making our sound with just that gear, and minimal plugins, i am gonna sound unique. Whether that is good or not will be decided by the audience 😂

[@pastilance1]

Hey Joel, thanks so much for all of the information from inside the industry. I can see that you've recovered well from that dentist visit a couple of days ago. Cheers! 🍻🍻

[@KennethACrashwaggonMusic]

The chasing sound thing is weird - imo if you're chasing a particular sound,you're already too late!! I'm not a mixer by trade though. But I do take pride in letting my songs/mixes take the direction the song needs, rather than shoehorn it into a certain pre-determined sound. I grew up with the 80's heavy metal stuff, and all of the big bands at that time sounded vastly different from each other - and that's pretty much why we can tell them apart. And these days pretty much all metal bands sound exactly the same, and noone ever stands out. It's been that way since roughly 2005 - thank you mr. Wallace. You'd think there's a lesson in there. ;) I suppose that's a thing you learn with age and experience though, when copying your heroes isn't enough anymore. In metal especially though, I can't remember the last time I thought "wow, these guys are cool, and different".. It's become muzak for me really. Background noise, as I no longer find the genre interesting. Bit of a side point really, but this is something that really frustrates me as I used to love metal. 20-30 years ago or thereabouts.

[@joefh1985]

It’s interesting how much of this expertise relates to communication and artistic values, and less so the fine details of mixing.

[@joelwanasekurm]

The higher level a person works in this game the less they seem to care about specific mixing techniques and more they focus on philosophical ideas, communication, big picture mix moves and etc it seems.

[@Studio22mix]

Communication is the key, sometimes it can be difficult if a band even doesn’t know themselves what they actually want. Some are more players and performers, some really have their sound perfectly tuned and know exactly what they want. I work with small indie bands with mostly no or little recording or mixing experience. Mostly I have to talk a lot to get the info out of them. I really enjoy mixing their own sound, like how they perform live but just with better quality but still the sound of the band. Great video ❤

[@DarkTrapStudio]

Nice thanks.

[@nickdinosaur]

That situation with the artist having the vision and the mixer put in a corner reminds me of the situation with the new a7x record we were talking about a couple months back where I was thinking, did AW lose his touch, but really the band directed most of the mix.

[@alphabetsoup002]

Jeff Braun is a monster mixer. I'd love to see him on Mix with the Masters or have you guys do an interview with him!

[@joelwanasekurm]

Jeff is amazing. Maybe I’ll get him on Nailthemix some day.

[@dablizzoduve4576]

@@joelwanasekurmJeff is great but you should check out wessel oltethen I would love u to interact with this man..I call him the mixing prophet.. he has been mentoring me for years now...any one who doesn't know that man is missing a whole lot in the audio world..

[@DeeKeiMixes]

Facts. I’m dealing with this a lot right now. I feel like I’m an artistic expression detective and my job is to figure out what they wanted the mix to sound like 😂

[@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios]

Please cover DBX 128

[@DarkTrapStudio]

The spectrum explained in this video : 1. We can't produce the tone we want, let's send DI and Midi to Engineer. 2. Can you copy this mix from [Insert top dog engineer] but cheaper

[@lylaznboi01]

Thankfully with my own band, we don't try to copy other band's sounds in terms of recording and mixing. We want it to sound like us, not like someone else. Although we're influenced by other bands and artists, it's also important to find your own identity within that. For me, coming up as a mixer, especially in the modern rock/metal area, people wanted that "Nolly" sound and very few were able to achieve that or have a better result. You can copy their chain, but you won't always sound like them. Even with a lot of up and coming bands, people are influenced by many different bands and artists and want to sound just like them. Sometimes you gotta ask them if they want to stand out as a band or sound the same as a lot of bands out there.

[@folsomaudio]

Personally I like getting DI tracks 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@joelwanasekurm]

There is no reason not to include them. I hate not getting them. I just prefer when producers do their jobs.

[@DaveyPerron]

I've encountered a similar situation to this in the composing world. Was hired to make badass tracks, but make 'em sound like this classic game. Did some cool ideas, lots of original stuff, but got hit with the infamous "this is cool, but let's make it sound more like ____." That's when I realized my role was less of a composer and more of a "fulfiller" of the director's vision. I had some issues with it until I re-framed it to myself as more of a "get the sound in this guy's head on the screen" and not so much "show off what I can do." Sometimes you are hired for what you're going to bring to the table, other times you're hired to bring some other guy's vision to fruition.

[@joelwanasekurm]

Absolutely. Good to know it’s not just mixers who experience this.

[@chrisbaseford]

This is so prevalent with the workflows and technology. Even a moderately proficient producer / writer / artist can get a decent sounding rough mix with hundreds of plugins and presets. Problem is the corner you get backed into while having to stay within that box.

[@joelwanasekurm]

Our reality every day haha 😂 I’m surprised you take peoples full sessions to mix from. I always go for stems. I don’t even want to see what that disaster looks like. Trying to figure out crazy routing etc

[@DavidDavis-FA-photog]

From what I see, understanding what the client wants is the first step. Sometimes that in it's self is a real challenge. But aside from that, it takes a lot of courage for an artist/band to be something different. As producers and engineers I feel that we have to try our best to find that unique quality of a band even if the band doesn't know they have it, and hopefully they do. If they don't, they'll want to play it safe and it's back to why they think they have to copy other success. Anyways just my 2 cents.

[@joelwanasekurm]

I do wish more artists took more risks.

[@user-xl8qs4gb2j]

seems like you have an issue with the feedback from artists being negative, when really the artist should have more artistic definition than just a single reference mix. if they hire a mixer, ask them to do their thing and tap into what the artist is doing. it's not the mixer's fault that the intentions of the artist are idiotic and artistically null.

[@joelwanasekurm]

If I had an issue with negative artist feedback I wouldn’t still be in business.

[@user-xl8qs4gb2j]

@@joelwanasekurmthe whole video and rant kinda comes off as a passive dig at artists who give negative feedback about reference mixes though

[@PerimeterAudioStudios]

@@user-xl8qs4gb2j I don't see it this way. The jest of it is that we are in a service based industry, and that you don't always get to do your own thing or make the decisions of the path to follow, in the end, the artist/producer is the one who decides, not the mixer. All too often I see mixers complain about artists not following the mixer's vision, it's not your decision to make as a mixer imho.

[@stevedoesnt]

The Nashville sound, and the general metal sound have been so stagnant for so long, it doesn’t hold my interest at all. I try very hard in my productions to encourage risk taking,and about 75% of them tend to go for it, at least a little.

[@joelwanasekurm]

Great!!