Quicksand - HB Mix

[HbGuitar]

Yes, I like also nitpicking, but quite often I dare not to do that. I have seen too many inflamed discussions around here and I don’t want to participate in them.

Amen to that brother

Nitpicking is quite diffucult, because one never knows when one enters area of taste or artistic choise.

agreed....especially if you've already spent hours working on the same session...one very quickly develops a biased view on how it should sound and often it comes as quite a surprise when one hears a mix that has gone in a very different direction

It can be very difficult to listen to a mix from the mixers perspective and add constructive feedback on how to improve the mix from that perspective. Much of the advice I read on the forum is often one mixer telling another mixer how to make the mix sound like theirs...

BUT if every now and then we had a common technical task with same reference, then we could rehearse hearing a most minor details and discuss about them. Just for the sake of learning the art of mixing. For example ”Make these track sound exactly like CLA’s mix”, then we would be extending our hearing limits and we could be finding new essential details and nuances from the mixing process that we probably won’t find if we just follow our undeveloped artistic taste or vision.

And then fi someone comments ”your kick has too much low end”, then it would not be a subjective evaluation (”your taste is bad and mine is excellent”), but rather it would mean ”when I compare you mix to CLA’s mix, your kick has much more low end”.

I read a quote once from an award winning major label pro mixer legend - cant remember their name, who said something like "the hard work in mixing begins once you start to reference your sources." And they didn't mean make this song sound like that song...its much more subtle that that...its more like make this kick sound like that kick, make that vocal air sound like this vocal air ...so you end up referencing multiple tracks by multiple artists to build a unique reference picture of the session at hand

Maybe we could establish a club of Nitpicking Patreons and sometimes try to do a common mixing task. Just to practice the art of listening. I’m sure we could find nice tasks for our selves. I think it would be worth of trying. Most of the time it would be enough to find one excellent top quality reference for a chosen song, and then go together towards that sound. Sometimes the task could be more specific: ”create similar drum sound”. Or whatever.

Anyone interested?

For sure...that sounds like fun. Doing something with other Patreon members could be really good. Maybe we could approach Mike and ask him to set up a separate section within the forum