Mixing is kind of like surgery – you have to cut the body open and expose the bloody mess that’s in there as you make your way to the pancreas to work on it. If you are attending a loved one’s surgery, you probably don’t want to see this, just be called in when everything is stitched back up and the patient is conscious again!
I see many “audio pancreases”, so I know how the treatment will end up. If I have a client sitting there and I start working on a sound - isolated from everything else that will be around it - and start putting some weird flanging effect on it, the client might at that point try to stop me – “that’s too weird” they might say, and we’ll have an expensive discussion about it until I can convince them that they are just looking at a bloody pancreas and to wait until I put the stitches in. In the context that sound will eventually be, they wouldn’t even hear the effect itself, but would feel something cool is going on there. With them seeing what I did, they might focus on it too much in the final mix, just because they can’t get it out of their head (like your loved one’s pancreas.)
I obviously have a pancreas fixation (I had a cat named Pancreas from 1968-1987, named by my parents, so I blame them), but I hope you get my point. When a client can hear a mix for the first time with no preconceived notions, they tend to be able to hear it more in the way the audience will; from the outside looking in. Not completely, mind you - I’ve worked with enough artists to know they can never completely step back and listen with an unbiased ear - but at least they are not looking at a pancre…OK, I’ll stop with that analogy!
Since we are usually using the internet anyway when we are working long distance, it also means we can bring unbiased ears into the equation. By having other unconnected parties listen, you can get feedback on what REALLY counts; what the public will think of your work. Even we producers do it with each other – just about every day an IM will pop up on my screen from one of the other producers asking me to listen to something and comment, and I ask the same thing of them on an almost daily basis as well.
Whether you are working long distance or not, get feedback from the people who count most – the ones who will be enjoying your music, not picking it apart. If for some reason THEY don’t like it, then you’re REALLY in trouble. If you’re going to fixate on a second tenor part that’s 1/8 step flat for one note that no one else can hear, well, that’s your money to spend – I can almost guarantee that even a great musician will miss a detail like that if there’s enough other good stuff going on in the mix! I feel myself ready to ramble off and change the subject yet again, so until next month…
Click on the wrench in the upper left-hand corner to see what else you can do.