05-06-2013, 04:51 PM
Yes, APZX,
I know that feeling. What you write makes a lot of sense to me, though, if that helps.
The "true exemplification of a song" is quite huge a call. Maybe we should carve two more focused and more technical aspects out of this discussion:
Do I understand correctly from what you wrote here that "truly exemplifying a song" for you means to achieve, among other things, not just complete definition in the first aspect, but also complete balance in the second? Where "balanced" would mean "logical", "natural", "evenly spaced" or similar?
I think there are valid reasons to mess up in both aspects.
This is most obvious in the second aspect. Think of instrument sections (strings, horns, double drums), or choirs. Most of the time I do not want to separate the individual voices within these sections. To the opposite, I want to melt them into something coherent that I can then mold into something like a canvas. Which isn't logical. Neither is a widely panned drum, that suggests that the ride has moved out of the drum kit and now lives with, let's say, the organ.
It applies to the first aspect as well. There are sounds that quickly lose texture or other valuable qualities when you add spacial information (Mike once caught me sending some bass to the default reverb... at -25dB!). I may even want to un-spacialize voices to separate (!) them from those who are well-localized.
I don't want to answer your "true exemplification" question at this point. But I could have thought "Well, that lead vocal has some 'struggle' to it. I want to underpin some motivation to that and will choke the singer a bit by placing the guitars close, so that he has something to struggle against. To underscore drama, I place them up front. I create some scenery and perspective around it and separate drums and bass from that crowd quite decisively by digging a frequency trench. And then I define the wider stage (and underscore the density of the vocal/guitar lump) by having the keyboards orbiting around the whole scene. Oh, and the tambourine... whatever." I did not think that. I did not think much at all, as I already said. But if I had thought that, I'd consider it a completely legitimate idea. Maybe not the truest to the song, but artistically a legitimate one.
So what I am saying is: I see what you mean and agree with your observations, and I am uneasy about them, but maybe for different reasons than you :-)
By the way, have you seen "The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production" by David Gibson (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Mixing-Eng...1931140456)? I only read some of the Amazon sample pages, but believe that it may establish the perfect visual vocabulary for what we are discussing, especially because (if I remember it correctly) it translates frequency into a spacial (the vertical) dimension.
Who did you say should stop writing? :-)
Marc
(05-06-2013, 01:13 PM)APZX Wrote: [...] I'm beginning to make myself question myself[...]
I know that feeling. What you write makes a lot of sense to me, though, if that helps.
The "true exemplification of a song" is quite huge a call. Maybe we should carve two more focused and more technical aspects out of this discussion:
- How much spacial discernability does a mix convey?
- How, to the discernible extent, is that space populated?
Do I understand correctly from what you wrote here that "truly exemplifying a song" for you means to achieve, among other things, not just complete definition in the first aspect, but also complete balance in the second? Where "balanced" would mean "logical", "natural", "evenly spaced" or similar?
I think there are valid reasons to mess up in both aspects.
This is most obvious in the second aspect. Think of instrument sections (strings, horns, double drums), or choirs. Most of the time I do not want to separate the individual voices within these sections. To the opposite, I want to melt them into something coherent that I can then mold into something like a canvas. Which isn't logical. Neither is a widely panned drum, that suggests that the ride has moved out of the drum kit and now lives with, let's say, the organ.
It applies to the first aspect as well. There are sounds that quickly lose texture or other valuable qualities when you add spacial information (Mike once caught me sending some bass to the default reverb... at -25dB!). I may even want to un-spacialize voices to separate (!) them from those who are well-localized.
I don't want to answer your "true exemplification" question at this point. But I could have thought "Well, that lead vocal has some 'struggle' to it. I want to underpin some motivation to that and will choke the singer a bit by placing the guitars close, so that he has something to struggle against. To underscore drama, I place them up front. I create some scenery and perspective around it and separate drums and bass from that crowd quite decisively by digging a frequency trench. And then I define the wider stage (and underscore the density of the vocal/guitar lump) by having the keyboards orbiting around the whole scene. Oh, and the tambourine... whatever." I did not think that. I did not think much at all, as I already said. But if I had thought that, I'd consider it a completely legitimate idea. Maybe not the truest to the song, but artistically a legitimate one.
So what I am saying is: I see what you mean and agree with your observations, and I am uneasy about them, but maybe for different reasons than you :-)
By the way, have you seen "The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production" by David Gibson (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Mixing-Eng...1931140456)? I only read some of the Amazon sample pages, but believe that it may establish the perfect visual vocabulary for what we are discussing, especially because (if I remember it correctly) it translates frequency into a spacial (the vertical) dimension.
Who did you say should stop writing? :-)
Marc