1.2 How Do Your Recordings Measure Up?
Before you even begin to think about mixing, you should check out your recordings, track by track, one at a time.
Kind: concept (reamix-section) Chapter: 1 Before We Begin …. Source: ReaMix (October 2009)
Before you even begin to think about mixing, you should check out your recordings, track by track, one at a time. Listen for any blemishes or errors that are likely to cause you problems when you come to mixing. It is usually better to spend a half hour re-recording a take or perhaps recording a small overdub than it is to try to waste hours of mixing time trying to cover up a multitude of sins.
You would be amazed to know how many people don’t take this simple precaution.
Moreover, always remember this when you are recording: never let anybody get away with saying something like, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We can cover it up in the mix.”
Good mixing isn’t about damage control, it’s about bringing out the best from your recorded material. Anything else will detract from, not add to, the quality of your final product. And that’s bad mixing. Please, please, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that damage control can ever compensate for to bad musicianship or bad recording.
That said, you might still encounter a situation where, for reasons beyond your control, you simply have to do the best you can with the recorded material that you have available. We’ll address this issue later.
One other issue worth mentioning here is whether you are working with “discrete” or “non discrete” recordings. By “discrete” I mean a recording where each track has been recorded and layered separately, so that there will be no bleed. By “non discrete” I am referring to the situation where several tracks (instruments and/or vocals) have all been recorded together and there is bleed between the tracks.
It is perfectly possible to create a good mix in either of these situations. There are just some differences in the techniques that you may need to apply.