How to know when your mix is finished

[steelguitar]

Since I love proverbs, as we say "Il meglio è nemico del bene", that in English should sound more or less: "better is enemy of good", and IMO this applies to mixing too... 

Alfredo

WOW, it's amazing, you said "better is enemy of good" as a translation of "Il meglio è nemico del bene", but in french, it's litterally the same expression we use!!!
In fact, my father always said "LE MIEUX EST L'ENNEMI DU BIEN"!!!
Jean-Sébastien

[alfstone]

Since I love proverbs, as we say "Il meglio è nemico del bene", that in English should sound more or less: "better is enemy of good", and IMO this applies to mixing too...  

Alfredo

WOW, it's amazing, you said "better is enemy of good" as a translation of "Il meglio è nemico del bene", but in french, it's litterally the same expression we use!!!
In fact, my father always said "LE MIEUX EST L'ENNEMI DU BIEN"!!!
Jean-Sébastien

Of course your father was a wise man.

Nothing strange about that, after all our languages share someway the same roots...

As an example, my father's little town, right in the centre of Sicily, has a dialect with many, many words of French origin...and even the "r" is very "French", there...  

For instance, give a look at the chart in the middle of this web page:

http://galloitalico.altervista.org/caratteristiche.html


Ciao!
Alfredo

[alfstone]

Since I love proverbs, as we say "Il meglio è nemico del bene", that in English should sound more or less: "better is enemy of good", and IMO this applies to mixing too...  

Alfredo

Don't over egg the pudding - is probably the English equivalent Alfredo . . .

Mmmmhhh...thanks, Haylie, I didn't know this one...probably because pudding isn't very popular here...

 

Ciao!
Alfredo

[Rata-tat-tat]

Good read FJ... I think the hardest thing for me to overcome is the wearing of both hats. It's tough enough just getting the music on trax for me... then you add the engineering element... Sometimes I become a premature ejector... LOL.  It's done when I have reached a sense of musical pleasure!!!

[phantasm777]

sometimes i think the mixing and editing process to finalize the project is more work than doing all the instruments and singing!

[T.C. Elliott]

Lol!

 I thought I was the only one Ken - but I guess I give up a lot earlier than you do.

If I played my stuff next to any of my favourite tracks, I'd look for a new hobby.

That's actually really good advice (and some I should take a dose of.)  Find a few songs you like that also sound like what you are aiming for and then try to get your mix to sound close to this "reference tape." So for me I'd need a couple of good song that are guitar and voice only, a few that are full band but not overly cluttered... ie, one or two guitars, bass drums and vox... and a couple of punk tunes that sound good (recording quality, the music itself doesn't matter.) Reference it a few times during your mix and see what you can do to make it closer.

A related strategy is to actually hear your final mix before you start mixing. Most of us just start tweaking things till it sounds 'better' but truly good mixing engineers have a sound in mind and keep mixing until they realize that sound. That's a huge difference (and one I cannot do yet.)

[T.C. Elliott]

sometimes, even when doing a lot of tracks in a song, you have to know when to stop, rather to keep trying to improve even more upon it. I notice that sometimes in order to try and keep perfecting it you can wind up actually making it worse!

I've done this a couple of times. What I like to do is when I get to a point that mix is obviously better is to save it as a new project. Then I can reload it if whatever other work I do to it makes it worse. There have been several times I've just reloaded one track from scratch and left the rest of the mix.  Having multiple save points and unlimited undo is a necessity in my opinion.

[T.C. Elliott]

sometimes i think the mixing and editing process to finalize the project is more work than doing all the instruments and singing!

traditionally this was nearly always the case. Back "in the day" they would record the band live and then do the mix. Well, at least after multitracking.

[Daniel Storey]

... when you couldn't possibly get it any louder...