Mixing Music

307 Pages·2016·2.89 MB·English

by  Russ Hepworth-Sawyer

Mixing Music
This series, Perspectives on Music Production, collects detailed and experientially
informed considerations of record production from a multitude of perspectives, by
authors working in a wide array of academic, creative, and professional contexts.
Initially we solicit the perspectives of scholars of every disciplinary stripe, along-
side recordists and recording musicians themselves, to provide a fully comprehen-
sive analytic point of view on each component stage of record production. Each
volume in the initial multi-authored series thus focuses directly on a distinct aesthetic
“moment” in a record’s production, from pre-production through recording (audio
engineering), mixing and mastering through to marketing and promotions. Perspec-
tives on Music Production, as a series, will also be welcoming monographs from
authors in the field of music production. This first volume in the series, titled Mixing
Music, focuses directly on the mixing process.
This book:
● Includes references and citations to existing academic works; contributors draw
new conclusions from their personal research, interviews and experience.
● Models innovative methodological approaches to studying music production.
● Helps specify the term “record production”, especially as it is currently used
in the broader field of music production studies.
Download and Listen samples for chapters 6 and 9 are available on www.routledge.
com/9781138218734 and on http://hepworthhodgson.com.
Russ Hepworth-Sawyer has been involved in professional audio for over two
decades and, in the last, mastering through MOTTOsound.com. Throughout his
career, Russ has maintained a part-time higher education role teaching and
researching all things audio (www.hepworthhodgson.com). Russ is a current
member of the Audio Engineering Society and is a former board member of the
Music Producer’s Guild and helped form their Mastering Group. Russ currently
lectures part time for York St John University, has taught extensively in higher
education at institutions including Leeds College of Music, London College of
Music and Rose Bruford College and has contributed sessions at Barnsley Col-
lege. He has written for MusicTech magazine, Pro Sound News Europe and Sound
on Sound, as well as many titles for Focal Press/Routledge.
Jay Hodgson is Associate Professor Music at Western University, where he pri-
marily teaches courses on songwriting and project paradigm record production. He
is also one of two mastering engineers at MOTTOsound—a boutique audio ser-
vices house situated in England, and now Canada. In the last few years, Hodgson
has worked on records nominated for Juno Awards, which topped Beatport’s global
techno and house charts, and he has contributed music for films recognized by the
likes of Rolling Stone magazine and which screened at the United Nations General
Assembly. He was awarded a Governor General’s academic medal in 2006, primar-
ily in recognition of his research on audio recording; his second book, Understand-
ing Records (2010), was recently acquired by the Reading Room & Library of the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Perspectives on Music Production Series
Series Editors
Russ Hepworth-Sawyer
Jay Hodgson
Mark Marrington
Titles in the Series
Mixing Music
Edited by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer and Jay Hodgson
Mixing Music
Edited by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer
and Jay Hodgson
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-18204-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-21873-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64660-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book is dedicated to those recently lost
who contributed so much:
George Martin
David Bowie
Prince
Zenon Schoepe

Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Series Introduction xii
About the Editors xiv
Notes on Contributors xv
Acknowledgments xx
Introduction 1
RUSS HEPWORTH-SAWYER AND JAY HODGSON
1 Exploring Potential of the Mix: Historical Milestones and
Expanded Perspectives 8
MARTYN PHILLIPS
2 How to Listen, What to Hear 24
WILLIAM MOYLAN
3 Proxemic Interaction in Popular Music Recordings 53
RUTH DOCKWRAY
4 Top-Down Mixing—A 12-Step Mixing Program 62
PHIL HARDING
5 Mixing in the Box 77
JUSTIN PATERSON
6 Audio Editing In/and Mixing 94
ALASTAIR SIMS WITH JAY HODGSON
vii
viii Contents
7 Pre-Production in Mixing: Mixing in Pre-Production 114
DYLAN LAUZON
8 Between the Speakers: Discussions on Mixing 122
DEAN NELSON
9 Mixing for Markets 140
ALEX KROTZ WITH JAY HODGSON
10 Mixing In/and Modern Electronic Music Production 153
ANDY DEVINE AND JAY HODGSON
11 Groove and the Grid: Mixing Contemporary Hip Hop 170
MATT SHELVOCK
12 The Mix Is. The Mix Is Not. 188
ROBERT WILSMORE AND CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
13 Mixing Metaphors: Aesthetics, Mediation and the
Rhetoric of Sound Mixing 199
MARK MARRINGTON
14 Mix as Auditory Response 216
JAY HODGSON
15 An Intelligent Systems Approach to Mixing
Multitrack Audio 226
JOSHUA D. REISS
16 How Can Academic Practice Inform Mix-Craft? 245
GARY BROMHAM
17 The Dreaded Mix Sign-Off: Handing Over to Mastering 257
ROB TOULSON
18 Conclusion: Mixing as Part-History, Part-Present and
Part-Future 270
RUSS HEPWORTH-SAWYER
Index 279
Figures
2.1 Sound quality evaluation graph of a Moog synthesizer
sound from ‘Here Comes the Sun’ (Moylan, 2015) 31
2.2 Musical balance graph of the opening measures of
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (Moylan, 2015) 39
2.3 Stereo location graph of ‘A Day in the Life’ (Moylan, 2015) 41
2.4 Sound source frequency content against stereo imaging 42
2.5 Sound stage and imaging, with phantom images of
various sizes and at different distances (Moylan, 2015) 43
2.6 Surround sound stage of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’
from LOVE 45
2.7 Phantom images between pairs of speakers in
surround sound 46
2.8 Surround sound stage of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ from LOVE,
0:00–1:09 48
3.1 Hall’s proxemic zones 54
4.1 Typical Maxim settings, inserted on the stereo Master
Fader in Pro Tools 73
4.2 Logic Pro: export ‘All Tracks as Audio Files’ menu
choice recommendation 74
4.3 Pro Tools Mix Template edit window 75
4.4 Pro Tools Mix Template mix window 75
5.1 Top: the older ES2 Synthesizer from Apple Logic Pro;
Bottom: the newer Clav plug-in. Both images are to
scale, revealing the difference in GUI style 82
5.2 A schematic of a mixMacro for one or a group of tracks,
illustrating some of the factors that define its ‘signature’ 88
6.1 Quantizing audio, 1 97
6.2 Quantizing audio, 2 98
6.3 Quantizing audio, 3 98
6.4 Quantizing audio, 4 98
6.5 Quantizing audio, 5 99
6.6 Quantizing audio, 6 99
6.7 Quantizing audio, 7 99
6.8 Quantizing audio, 8 100
6.9 Order of importance 102
ix