Big Mix Weekend

That’s what it’s been in frigid Lawrence, Kansas, as I work through our combined to-do list from the December h&s mixes.  That means a lot of hours looking at this:

HAI PLZ HAVE ACCESS TO AN INFINITE NUMBER OF DIFFICULT CHOICES ENJOYYYYY

(and that is only half of the tracks in the session :-o

We’re at the point where it’s not really fun to mix; really nitty-gritty details, trimming noise, checking pitch, and awful trade-offs like “I want this turned up 1 dB, but that obscures this other thing, and I’d boost the mids but that’s right where the vocal is…” The decisions are more technical and political than creative.  (Thank infinity I’m working in Reaper and not ProTools, though!)

I dropped a couple of the mixes in a mastering session, though, spent 30 minutes on them, and was 1) happy with the results and 2) instantly comfortable, relative to the pain of mixing.

It’ll be worth it. There aren’t really bad decisions left on the table; just different ones.