Mixing an album

Prettyblack

How long do you think is too long to mix an album?

6 months?

Radiosurfer

How long is a piece of string? I mix for a living and I can mix a song in half a day if that's what the budget requires. Will it be as good as if I spend a couple of days on it? No, it won't. But it will be good.
If you're just talking about mixing then I personally couldn't justify spending anything like 6 months on it. If you're talking production and recording then yeah, 6 months no problem (if you can afford it!).
There's also the other factors to consider: type of music, volume of tracks involved (I mean in each track how many parts or stems are we dealing with) and what the artist wants done with their music. I have mixed meat and two veg rock bands in half a day, I've also had pop acts that required half a day just getting the vocals to an acceptable place for the vocalist. Sorry if that's no help, I'm just trying to say that it's an area with huge variance and personally, it mostly comes down to budget and how much the artist or label can afford to spend on the mix.

Prettyblack

Pop. Reasonable budget. 1000s of individual tracks. Very very precise stuff.

Radiosurfer

Still can't see 6 months work in it. Maybe that's just because I've never had a budget that big. Maybe one of the other studio guys on here could chime in with experience of a similar project that lasted that long.

DamagedTrax

depends on the engineer. some lads are fast and can do a track in a few days.. personally im a slow mixer but i tend to put a lot of diffrent stuff and movement in my mixes so i can take anything from a few days to a few weeks for a track..

normally for pristine pop with thousands of parts i'd say 2/3 weeks per track.

Prettyblack

Has anyone worked on something for a long period of time? Purely mixing, not recording. What did the artist / management make of the timeframe?

MilanPan!c

Prettyblack wrote: »

Has anyone worked on something for a long period of time? Purely mixing, not recording. What did the artist / management make of the timeframe?

Been mixing an album for 7 months, no 8...

Artist (me and my band) have found it trying, but also rewarding... as the results are pretty spectacular... and the time has given us space to... not settle..

mgmt is patient, but also ... wishing and pushing for it to be done... and they have been for six months...

Radiosurfer

I was gonna say earlier, the only times I have experience of very long mixing projects is where the artist is mixing it themselves with little or no financial constraints i.e. they have their own studio or they are mixing it at home. It hasn't always ended well imo. (Sometimes it hasn't ended at all )

DamagedTrax

Prettyblack wrote: »

Has anyone worked on something for a long period of time? Purely mixing, not recording. What did the artist / management make of the timeframe?

the ones that dont truely care about the final product usually moan and cry. i lost one band because of it... but then i heard their latest ep and laughed personally i dont want to work with people that care so little about their product that they'll put time over quality.

quality takes time, the songs werent written in a few days, how can anyone expect them to be mixed in a few?

fitz

Tracking and editing should be given as much time as they need.
The end of my editing workflow is preparing the session for mixing.
Getting groups of parts routed to buses, reducing the amount of faders that I'll be playing with during the bulk of the mixing, making sure all the audio regions are the trimmed and faded into, etc...
Usually, once I get to that stage, I'd be hoping to have a first mix for review after two sessions...the first is the bulk of the work, the second is review and tweaking, maybe a third if there's a lot in there and the process just takes a bit longer.
After that, another session for tweaks based on feedback and having given it a week or two to get some perspective.

So, 4 or 5 days, maybe a week per track (total) I think is reasonable...
I like working quickly though, so DT's timelines above are probably the slower end of the pace scale.
Anything significantly longer than these kind of timelines and you're wasting time imo.
If you're spending that much time, you're either trying out different balances and options (meaning your production hasn't had a focused direction), or you're going back over things (possibly suggesting that decision making is an issue, possibly issues with listening environment?).

I think if a mix takes that long, then the producer has failed to do their job of realising a single, cohesive vision/arrangement for the recording of the track. That, or they're still trying to establish that vision. Or that vision is at odds with what the artist wants, which is another failure for the producer.

Mixing should be like mastering, it's a process with a well defined scope. If you're still mucking around with parts, then it's not ready for mixing yet.

DamagedTrax

fitz wrote: »

Tracking and editing should be given as much time as they need.
The end of my editing workflow is preparing the session for mixing.
Getting groups of parts routed to buses, reducing the amount of faders that I'll be playing with during the bulk of the mixing, making sure all the audio regions are the trimmed and faded into, etc...

unfortunatly these days editing has become part of the mix process (for me anyway). i usually get sent a protools session with a rough monitor mix and a message like 'i didnt comp anything so you could have the choice'... gee thanks :rolleyes:

so when i say im mixing im more than likely spending the first few days comping, editing, tuning etc.

i have one engineer that i work with and have a business venture on the way with (watch this space!) and he literally sends me sessions that are ready to mix. in those cases ive done mixes in 3/4 days. doesnt happen as often as i'd like though

fitz

DamagedTrax wrote: »

unfortunatly these days editing has become part of the mix process (for me anyway). i usually get sent a protools session with a rough monitor mix and a message like 'i didnt comp anything so you could have the choice'... gee thanks :rolleyes:

so when i say im mixing im more than likely spending the first few days comping, editing, tuning etc.

i have one engineer that i work with and have a business venture on the way with (watch this space!) and he literally sends me sessions that are ready to mix. in those cases ive done mixes in 3/4 days. doesnt happen as often as i'd like though

As I'm just mixing stuff I've tracked/produced myself, I don't have to deal with someone dumping editing or production decisions into my mixing.
I find that separating the editing and mixing, especially if you can work on something else in between, makes such a huge difference to the mix.
They're two totally different head-spaces.
One's is mostly methodical, sometimes tedious, and about fixing things, be it timing, pitch, comping points, fades, removing noises, etc...

The other is about trying to get into the vibe of the song and shaping the sound. Nothing kills that vibe like having to go and fix a sloppy vocal comp, or trying to track down where that little click is coming from.

Mixing free of interruptions for troubleshooting is the way to go imo, and that means editing as a separate session.

studiorat

For a track I've never seen before :

- House work and getting to know the song - 2 days.
- Tuning editing - 1 day
- Balancing - 2 days maybe less.
- Tweeks - 1 day.

But you never get that kind of time. You could cut that down a little as you got to know the form of the album and some songs would take less time. 6 to 8 weeks would do it.

Probably €20,000 or thereabouts would be a fair price to someone to do it.

DamagedTrax

studiorat wrote: »

You could cut that down a little as you got to know the form of the album and some songs would take less time.

.

especially in rock and indie. templates for drum/bass/guitar mixes can cut a huge amount of time.

electronic/sample based pop music is a different ball game though, i find each track needs to be started from scratch.

Squidgy Black

I think if you were to spend that length of time on the tracks, you'd end up over thinking things and making changes that aren't necessary. To be honest, I'd say 3 months would be a comfortable enough time frame, if you know what you're doing and have a decent workflow.

Another thing is also not to get bogged down on one song, I find that sometimes you have to take a step back and move onto another so you'll hear it differently when you come back to it.

PaulBrewer

If it's taking 6 months then the tracks aren't finished ...