3.1 Spatial Mixing Concepts
Have you ever listened to a CD and found that despite it being perhaps a complex arrangement you can hear each and every instrument and voice quite clearly and distinctly, yet with everything also blended in nicely with the overall….
Kind: concept (reamix-section) Chapter: 3 Spatial Mixing Source: ReaMix (October 2009)
Have you ever listened to a CD and found that despite it being perhaps a complex arrangement you can hear each and every instrument and voice quite clearly and distinctly, yet with everything also blended in nicely with the overall total production? Have you then listened to another CD with perhaps a similar arrangement and found that it’s actually quite difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on?
The reasons for this are all about space. Mixing requires that every part in the production – every part – has to be given its own space. Without this, it doesn’t matter how creative you are in working with the dynamics and artistry of your recordings, you simply will not end up with a good mix.
Arguably, many amateur (and alas some professional) mixes are spoilt by a failure to give adequate attention to the issues of space than by anything else. That’s why we’ll be spending a little time examining some of the theories and concepts involved before going on to work through our first practical case study.
The first mistake that some (indeed, too many) make is to think of space in a mix as consisting of width alone, and that this is simply determined by panning.
Of course panning is important, but panning affects one dimension only – the placing of an instrument on a horizontal scale somewhere between 100% left and 100% right. But width alone is not enough to create a true sense of space in your mix. There are in all not one but four dimensions, all of them important.