Trafficker: 'My Father Never Loved Me' kapu mix

[Monk]

it feels like you're trying to push your own aesthetics. i, for instance, like to smash, crush, clip, limit, compress, pump etc.

There's a time and a place though. It needs to work within the concept. I've messed with this blokes vocal as an experiment, for example. I hate it because it sounds like an amateur's arrangement and recording, as if he can't sing on time in the DT. I wanted some time shifting in my vision, but this is actually too extreme for my needs. It sounds shit to me. Nobody has commented one way or the other, such is this awesome educational forum, lol.

Now, I've never heard Frank Sinatra's vox flipped. Never heard distortion either, all of his work is silk to my ears. However, drop some Skinny Puppy, or Aphex Twin and it's a different kettle of fish. It's about applicability within the conceptual delivery.

We can have a drum kit where an illusion puts the cymbals 30 feet behind the kick, and the kick is way out in front of everything else, and the toms panned hard left and right as wide as a bus. But does this image fit the concept? What about ambiance clash? Placement, depth, localisation, masking? We can call it art, but there are values and expectations nevertheless. As mixing engineers, we ignore them at our peril. But if it's only ourselves we are seeking to satisfy, then who cares anyway, nobody is going to die. But if it's an artist who's livelihood rests on our approach, then look out, we will only get it wrong once!

If you can only do the things you need to do with any mix, irrespective of genre and it's applicability, I'm not sure how we can help one another.