PERSPECTIVE

How keeping a mental list of your moves can save your mix.

by Steve Smith

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The spitting image of Yosemite Sam approaches hard, chin forward, one shoulder down, arms straight and low, swinging with every step. He's got some advice for me, and he's hot. He's even got the voice of Yosemite Sam. I half expect a “ya long-eared varmint!” He runs down the list of every problem with my mix, and every word of it lands. I tell him, “Give me a couple of minutes, brother.”

He throws both hands up, gives me a big “whatever,” and storms off into the crowd, all bristle and boots. He's right about all of it – that's the part that stings. Let's back up and I'll tell you how I climbed out.

A shot from FOH at the event.

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A WAY BACK

The habit that saved me originated in the studio, years before this festival. I would send a mix to a producer or an artist and wait for notes. The notes came back in their language, not mine, so I had to interpret them.

Warm up the vocal often meant something about the low-mids. More punch might mean the kick, or the bass, or the way they fit together, or the bus compression, or, or, or. To answer well, I had to remember exactly what I had done.

So I started keeping careful notes on every change. Every move, written down. That gave me a way back. I could revert one instrument, revert the whole thing, or split the difference between two versions. It is easy to lose the magic in a mix and never find it again. My notes saved me from that more than once, especially when the feedback landed days later.

Comparing every parameter between sessions is arduous, and you are bound to miss something. Without a process, how will you remember the EQ change you made on one frequency on one channel? The written trail was the only reliable road home.

On stage you get none of that. No days to think, no session to reopen. So I moved the same discipline into my head and ran it in real time. The narration is that notepad, kept live in my head. It writes down what my hands are already doing. That is what saved me at this festival.

The gig was a 20-minute changeover into the headliner, a tribute band with a real following. They had drawn a big crowd. Same drums as the act before them and similar instrumentation on top of that. The roles were hugely different though – a guitar that held rhythm for one band carried the hooks for this one; keys that filled space before now drove the song. Same boxes, different jobs. No soundcheck, we launched cold.

It did not sound good. I knew from the first bar that I had work to do, so I got moving. That is the moment you walked in on at the top – Sam at the bike rack with his list, right about every word, then gone in a cloud of dust. Vocal buried, keys gone, and the whole thing a mess.

That threw me. It's hard to take a punch like that and stay in your seat. My instinct was to replay the moment, to argue with him in my head, to feel the sting of it. But none of that mixes a show. So I did the thing I had trained myself to do: I started narrating the process out, in my head, one move at a time.

The narration does two jobs at once. The first is focus – when I name the problem and name the fix out loud in my mind, there is no room left to replay the guy walking away. My attention goes to the console and stays there.

The second job is memory. When I say each move as I make it, I remember it. That memory is everything when a mix goes backward. My ears lead and the words keep the record.

So I went to work. I could not hear the vocal. What is in the way? I pulled 1 kHz out of the guitar, and the vocal became clear, which helped. Now the keys: I could not find them, so I added 3 dB at 250 Hz and they stood at attention.

None of this was a formula. I had almost the same instrumentation on that stage 20 minutes earlier, already dialed in and sounding good. I was not solving a puzzle from scratch, I was narrating moves I already knew in order to stay locked in.

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BACK TO LIFE

Here is where the habit earns its keep. Every one of us knows the ‘smiling-and-dialing’ zone. The show feels good, it sounds good, and you think, “Let’s really dial it in now and make it sound like money.” You reach for that last ten percent and then it happens: you lost it. The magic is gone, and you do not know which move killed it.

Because I had been narrating every move, I had a reasonable memory of everything I had done. So I asked the only useful question: what went backward? I had lifted the keys 3 dB, so I brought them back.

I had added 8 kHz on the kick and then pulled it down 2 dB – did that pull kill the groove? So I put the kick back up. Yes, that was part of it, and the pocket returned. I did not guess my way out, I simply reversed my steps and undid them in order until the show came back to life.

About 15 minutes later, the same guy came back. Same clenched fists, only now he was pumping them in the air. The very picture of a rootin’ tootin’ dance. Big smile, loving life. He was standing in the gold of the sunset, listening to his favorite songs done right.

I felt vindicated, I will admit. Maybe he felt bad about how he came at me before. Or maybe he wanted me to know how happy he was now. He did not need words for it and neither did I. The mix had answered him.

Sam never cared how I got there. He wanted his songs to sound like his songs, and he wanted it right then, which is fair enough. The map was never for him though, it was for me. Narrating the moves keeps my head in the seat when someone knocks me off balance, and it leaves me a route back when I push a good mix one move too far.

I drew that map years earlier at a studio desk, writing down every change so I could recover a mix I loved. Live or in the studio, the process will test you. So I suggest you keep your own map. That is how you find your way home – past the big green cactus, long ears and all. LSI

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Steve Smith, aka “Steve In The Mix,” is a long-time recording engineer with numerous credits, including 17 Platinum credits, who’s now also working successfully as a live sound mixer. Find out more at steveinthemix.com.