Earlier, I was trying to get my hand of Andrew’s articles back in RR days…
And with the power of archive.org, here they are:
Original song
Andrew’s mix
Part 1: “The Big Idea”
Part 2: Wrestling the with THE GROOVE
Part 3: Guitars
Part 4: Synths
Part 5: Atmospheres & Transitions
Part 6: The Vocals, THE VOCALS!
Lot of great stuff (as far as I remember 
)
I don’t know about “stunning”, but it came up all right…
I mean what are the very steps
In a word, I think referencing professional material is still the key thing for me. I’ve got to have something to aim at . That is the first thing that comes to mind…
The second thing that comes to mind is “no excuses”… I try to never blame the inadequacies of the raw material for my inability to make it sound good. That’s what I’m here for. Basically every single mix or production has challenges, no matter how well it has been tracked or performed. My job is to minimise the negatives and maximise the positives. I don’t stop until that redistribution happens.
That’s all I can think of!
Wow, wow, wow!!! What a blast from the past! I thought that stuff was lost forever! Thanks for finding it!.. (BTW, for those here who were not around in the RecordingReview days, my screen name back then was “fHumble fHIngaz”.
Thanks for finding those links! Some golden stuff in there for sure… exponentially helpful to me it was and great to re-visit!
Thanks for your reply!
This is where I can’t achieve what I’m looking for… I mean I understand and I do (somehow) what you did or pro tips but it doesn’t sound as expected.
For instance, when I want to deal with low end it ends sounding thin or boomy/muddy/messy but not powerful.
Dealing with high end turns harsh or dull but not light/airy…
I was listening to your album on bandcamp and hunting for common flows I used to (low end jumping at times, lead vocal right spot on, sibiliances under control…) and nothing to find…
Mixwise, there is lot of dynamics, stereo field is well managed, bass guitar is present without eating headroom, reverb sounds without sounding fake or odd…
And it’s all the same for your writing skill, your production skill, your recording skill…
At the end, I think that it’s a matter of point of view (part of the starting point for mixing): I can’t understand what’s yours, I can’t find a way to fix mine, everyone agrees that you sound awesome… 
Thoughts of the morning, not the best ones, I have to work more/better/accuracy…
Wow, I had no idea this topic existed. I read it all and I am really impressed at the time and dedication you put into this @ColdRoomStudio! Reading it was quite lengthy so I can only imagine the time and effort it took to write it (never mind the actual mixing part). Thank you for time and dedication you put in this, it is a really rewarding read. I enjoyed diving into every step of your mixing process. And thanks @ncls for unearthing this jewel.
I have a few comments and questions, if you don’t mind.
The transient trick for the snare triggers is something I learned only recently, I wish I read that earlier. I often mix drums that have lots of ghost notes and rolls so it is definitely an important topic for me. I don’t remember if you are a Superior Drummer user but SD3 has a great feature: you can import the drums multitrack into the plugin and it will generate midi files for you. The interface is nicely designed and there is some AI that can tell a snare hit from a kick hit bleeding into the snare mic for instance.
Why aren’t you using the folders in Reaper? Just curious, because I love the folder concept, I use it all the time and I think it is a wonderful tool to keep your mix organised, navigate easily into your audio items (you can minimise subfolders etc.). Is there something groups allow that you can’t do with folders?
Mixing in mono: I usually check mono compatibility towards the end of my session, but the way you do it makes so much more sense! That is one of the things I’ve learned from your posts that is an easy and immediate improvement to my process. Follow up question: I was thinking of replacing my second set of speakers with Avantone Mixcubes. I’m debating whether getting just one or a pair, any opinion on this?
One thing that strikes me in your approach is how meticulous you are. That certainly is a huge benefit for anyone hiring you for a mixing job. However, it seems to be significantly more time-consuming than most pro mixers, how do you handle that? Also, isn’t there a risk of overdoing it?
And last but not least: more than 3 years later, have you changed anything meaningful in your process?
Well, if it is of any consolation, I have had the self-same struggles.
One thing I decided early on (and I’m talking 11 years ago now) was that I was going to stick basically with the equipment I had until I could get results I was happy with. That is, I decided that, until I could clearly understand that the equipment I already owned was holding me back, I would keep working on it. I’ve heard time and time again from pros that being familiar with how your signal chain sounds is half the battle. To this day, I still keep hearing improvement with every mix I do, so I still have the same equipment I did 11 years ago.
This is significant. There is a quote somewhere doing the rounds from Ira Glass - here it is:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
This applies so much to my experience with music. For me, taste, creativity and imagination were never the problem. Getting my skills to catch up with my ambition in those areas has always been the battle - as Ira notes.
…so when you mention this:
My starting point is one of confidence. I don’t think “This is going to be tough - there are sooo many challenges to get over”, I think: “I have the taste, creativity and imagination to make this work - this is going to be FUN, and when I’m finished, it will be satisfying to listen to it back”
What I find has helped me is never doubting my taste, creativity or imagination. It might surprise most on here to know that I’m not a naturally confident person. If there is a room full of people, you could almost guarantee that I am the least confident person in the room. However, I have to say surprisingly, I have complete confidence in those aspects of myself.
I’ve realised, I just have to find a way to make it come out of the speakers, and I don’t stop until it does.
I don’t know if it will, but I really hope the above helps in some way.
I do think being an audio person is much more a psychological game than it is a technical one. Mindset is a HUGE part. A long time ago I wrote an article for Brandon on RecordingReview called “5 Stupidly Expensive Ways to Turn Cloth Ears to Gold”. I did re-post it in the “Articles” section here, but it seems to have disappeared. (I’ll have to find out from @holster Brian what’s happened there…) In any case, here are the main points from it summarised:
# Your EARS are your most valuable hardware; your BRAIN is your most valuable software.
- Your brain trumps your ears every time – Don’t assume you just haven’t been gifted with golden ears at birth – train you BRAIN and your ears will follow
- Take the time to start NOTICING the stuff around you – how it actually SOUNDS – then you might have a shot at reproducing those sensations
- Focus on the BIG PICTURE & the things that will matter to the listener – no one cares about your snare sound.
- REFERENCE, REFERENCE, REFERENCE! Your loving sonic memories are no match for the brutal truth of your speakers.
- Post it on Bash This Recording to get a fresh perspective.
Another aspect is time. Often we hear the success stories about how a song was written in 5 minutes, recorded in 15, and mixed in an hour. This may well happen, but I’m certain that these occurrences are as rare as rainbow-coloured unicorn poo.
So many YT gurus are selling the story that the faster you write/produce/mix the better your results will be. That makes for great click-bait and no doubt sells a lot of “How to mix fast like a Superhero and Make 10 million a year” courses, but it isn’t really that helpful IMO…
…At least, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t (and never has) worked for me. The reality is much less fairy-tale like: Here is Ken Lewis telling it how it is (video time-stamped to relevant point):
BTW, I’m definitely much faster at mixing now than I was when I started out mixing more seriously 14 years ago, but I’m definitely not “mix a song in an hour” fast.
Thanks Jean Marc! I appreciate the kind comments. I’m glad someone has the patience to read it through!
I do have SD3, and I briefly explored that function, but I haven’t really got a handle on it yet. I don’t always use gating thing - it depends on the individual project.
Because I don’t want to 
Oh, I don’t doubt they are useful, I’ve just never bothered to adopt it as part of my workflow.
I don’t really know, to be honest - probably.
I’ve watched videos on folders, but it never really excited me that much as a feature. If it made a difference to the quality of the music that came out of the speakers, I would definitely look into it.
However, I find that advanced DAWs like Reaper have sooo may features, learning them all would take forever. TBH, I never bother about learning a new feature until I need to use it. If what I’m doing works, I stick with it until it doesn’t anymore.
I don’t really think I’m the right person to ask about this. I’ve been mixing on the same speaker setup for the past 11 years. As I said above in my reply to @ncls, my philosophy is that, if I’m still detecting improvement in my mixes on the same equipment, then I still have further to go in my skills before an upgrade will make a difference. That said, I do listen to my mixes on a number of sources including lower-grade systems. Usually though, if I get it right on my main system, they sound good everywhere else too.
Not a lot, really. I probably use less analogue summing and tape sim plugins on my mixes these days. I used to use them on just about every single track in the mix, but these days they generally go only on the “main” tracks and busses. That’s about it really.
Wow yeah how did I miss this. Brilliant Andrew. Thanks.
It is so great to read this through again. I’m sitting with my 93 year old Dad, whose health is failing. The opportunity to rekindle the collaborative spirit is very uplifting, and Andrew has that spirit in abundance. I can’t emphasize enough how he is able to get on your wavelength, and apply his ever expanding imagination and skill set to the raw ingredients you give him.
To me, it would be redundant to talk with him about mixing techniques and preferences, since he knows all of that ahead of time.
It’s a lot more fun to work with someone who gets the feel of what you’re trying to do, and sends it back to you.
After this current adventure is over, I look forward to the next chance to get that going again.
We are blessed to have you giving so much of your time and expertise on this little corner of the internet! 
Add me to the list of people who somehow are seeing this thread for the first time. I don’t know how I missed it !
Thanks for all the effort and info that you shared with us @ColdRoomStudio Andrew! This is a very valuable thread!
me3 … though I am having a hard time following its course. Its from a time I was mia from the site.
There is a lot of scattered info from both related threads and they are quite a long read. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with the context could summarize it maybe??
The easiest way to put it into context is to say that the song was posted on Bash This Recording, and there were a number of questions about how it was written and mixed. Andrew was sort of being asked about bits and pieces of how the mix was accomplished, so it was decided that he would post his thought process in full detail, including the techniques and software he used, taking it from raw tracks to the final mix.
It evolved from a basic critique to more of a tutorial, so the threads were separated so the chronological order of his mixing process would make more sense.
Rather than answering in a “here’s what I did” format, Andrew gave a symposium into how he thinks about a song in its’ raw state and creates his artistic battle plan.
I believe the correct phrase would be Master Class. 
I ended up reading the threads for the first time. Scattered across but some great points. I liked the final mix. Good balance, good spread, ambiance and good eq cuts. I liked the reference track choice too.
Nice craftsmanship overall.
It seems I’m not the only one who missed this fantastic thread first time around! Wow this really is a Masterclass.
Thing is: three years ago my brain was probably not developed far enough to even hear the differences between all the subtle treatments of the tracks. Despite my ears being pretty lousy (I have Tinnitus and the hearing in my right ear is less than 70% in the mid to high frequencies), my brain is learning - albeit very slowly. As Andrew says: you need to do the work for a long time before you get any good. I think I do now understand what he’s doing and why. After reading this whole thread I think my problem is that I do very little referencing (I do it because you’re supposed to, but I seem to get very little out of it). The other thing is that my workflow and the plugins I use tend to vary on every song I mix. I really need to find my own basic workflow with a limited set of plugins and work from there. But the detailed description of Andrews workflow might be a good starting point to find my own (and I will keep on using Folders in Reaper ;)). Thanks a lot Andrew!
I do have one question @ColdRoomStudio. I’ve noticed how much work goes into your mixing of drums. I was wondering if this is very much different if you don’t have a live drummer to record but if you program Addicitve, BDF or another sample based plugin, or if you trigger these using using e-drums? These samples are recorded in ideal circumstances and already sound pretty good. I know you still might need to use some EQ, compression reverb etc. to match the song. But would you handle programmed drums in a very different manner? This might be a good question for a separate thread. Let me know if any one is interested in the subject.
I’m sorry it is in this format, but there is really no other choice. There used to be a provision on this site for “Articles”, which was a blog-ish format that enabled more coherence and continuity, but it disappeared quite some time ago and never resurfaced. I had posted some articles there as well, but they have since been swallowed by internet dysfunction.
Glad you made it through.
Hey Evert, glad you’re getting something from it!
I’ve always felt that raw physical hearing abilities are over-rated when it comes to mixing. Proof of that is in the fact that the current generation of “crème de la crème” mixing and mastering engineers are mostly over forty, with the majority over 50 or even 60, and some even past the “three score and ten” mark (eg Bob Ludwig is 75!) All of these people are suffering from various stages of age-related hearing loss.
As I said in my (now lost) article “5 Stupidly Expensive Ways to Turn Cloth Ears Golden”, your brain trumps your ears every time -Train your brain and your ears will follow!
This is something I’ve struggled with at times. I remember starting out and having great difficulty with programmed drums. My problem was that I tended to over-process. As you’ve noted some already have processing on them. These days, I usually tend to do either of the two following approaches with programmed drums:
If I really like the way they are processed, I’ll leave all the processing on and just tweak the levels to suit the material. However, I will usually run the entire drum kit into some kind of drum buss processing - compression and eq usually - to shape the overall sound of the drums as a kit. If, at that point, I’m pleased with the overall sound of the drums, but I feel they need a little something extra, I might add some complimentary samples (usually kick/snare) to get them to really cut through and punch.
If I think the drums are too processed-sounding, I’ll disable all the processing and render out the raw kit mics like they are part of a live kit, and then start processing from scratch. That will usually follow the same process that I outlined in the thread above.
The important thing to remember with Addictive, Superior, SSD and most other drum libraries, is that the raw drum samples are usually already treated with fairly mild (and sometimes not so mild) processing “baked in” to them. Then, in addition, the software drum player often has additional digital processing going on, and usually that is NOT subtle! Those presets are often quite extreme, and usually designed to "WOW! the casual listener, but often they are just too OTT for any practical application within a song… sometimes, untangling that processing is not a straightforward task!
Remember, there are no rules with music production - all that matters is how it sounds in the end. You can always mix and match and layer drum samples from different drum VSTis, if you have them. I’ve done that quite successfully before too.
Just like any recording, getting a good source sound is just as important with programmed drums as it is with real drums.
Lately, if I’m demoing a song, I’ll be using SSD5.5, because I can get such a great variety of realistic sounding kits with very little fiddling. Yes, SSD drums have processing baked in, but they don’t have any additional processing going on within the drum instrument, which makes them really easy to use. Nothing frustrates me more than fiddling around and getting super-tweaky with programmed drums. I like them sounding awesome straight off the bat. If they’re not, I just keep scrolling through the presets until I find something that suits.
I hope that answers your question!
Toontrack claims that unlike EZ drummer, Superior Drummer has a truly unprocessed sample library. I believe this is true because I did find that the so-called original sounds in EZ drummer sounded processed, but I don’t have this feeling with SD3 (after disabling all mixer presets obviously). Also, I love the mic bleed control feature in SD3, it can get very realistic when used properly.
EZ2 is definitely processed. You do have the ability to select different kits, which will change the room characteristics, and of course you can defeat extra compression, mic bleed, and reverb in the onboard mixer.
Overall, the emphasis on EZ2 is to allow you to slap songs together quickly, and, of course sell you expansion packs. For those purposes, and simple editing, it sounds good and is easy to use.
If you’re planning on fully programming a song it probably isn’t the best choice. EZ2 is designed to keep you away from that painstaking process, but you’ll give up flexibility and in my opinion, originality. I use it to give ideas to my real drummer, and for that it is fine.
I don’t think like a drummer, so going to Superior or Steven Slate probably wouldn’t help me very much.