Michael Miller - Idiots Guides: Mixing Music

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize theres no such thinghow could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone to understand everything there is to know. So when you come across a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you know better.

You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one, and youre okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just the next thing. You know what you dont know, youre confident enough to admit it, and youre motivated to do something about it.

At Idiots Guides, we, too, know what we dont know, and we make it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work, asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible way possible.

After all, thats our promiseto make whatever you want to learn As Easy as It Gets. That means giving you a well-organized design that seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic. It means controlling the pace youre asked to absorb new informationnot too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It means giving you a clear progression from easy to more difficult. It means giving you more instructional steps wherever necessary to really explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more illustrations wherever its better to show rather than tell.

So here you are, at the start of something new. The next chapter in your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but youve been here before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end of this book, you wont be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little less complicated than it was before. And well be sure your journey is as easy as it gets.

Mike Sanders
Publisher, Idiots Guides

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First American Edition, 2016
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This book is dedicated to my six wonderful grandchildrenin chronological order, Collin, Alethia, Hayley, Judah, Lael, and Jackson. Together, they provide an interesting mix in my life.

Contents

Introduction

I love playing and listening to music. Im a drummer by nature, although I also can plink out a few chords on a piano and strum a little on the guitar. Ive done some composing and arranging in my day, and Ive written a fair number of books about these and other music-related topics. (Check them all out at my website, millerwriter.com.)

I also happen to know my way around the recording studio. Im a bit of an aficionado of the classic days of studio recording and of the recording and mixing engineers who made those golden sounds happenwith far fewer resources than we have today. There was a lot of magic in the mixing back then, whether were talking the live mixing of a Frank Sinatra recording, the groundbreaking manipulation of four- and eight-track machines for The Beatles and The Beach Boys during the 1960s, or the more polished sounds from the multitrack sessions of the 1970s and 1980s with performers such as Steely Dan and Michael Jackson.

Of course, recording and mixing has changed a lot since then. The glory days of recording in a big (and expensive) professional recording studio are long gone, as are the days of magnetic recording tape and huge analog mixing boards. Today, recording is, as often as not, done in a small or even home studio, one or two tracks at a time on a personal computer running sophisticated multitrack recording software. This same setuphardware and softwareis typically used to mix those recorded tracks, which means the entire process can be done by just about anyone with a personal computer, an audio interface box, and a microphone or two.

As much as I revere and respect those golden days of studio recording, technology really has democratized the recording process, enabling artists without much, if any, budget to produce (and distribute) professional-sounding CDs and digital tracks. Thats a good thing.

However, even when you have all the necessary technology at your fingertips, skill is still involved in making and mixing those recordings. Just because you have access to a PC or Mac and a copy of Pro Tools or Logic Pro doesnt mean you have the knowledge or skills required to create a commercial recording. Theres a lot you need to know and do to turn those recorded tracks into a quality final product.