What's your cooking specialty? Do you make a crazy eggplant parmesan? Do you grill up the best steak on your block? Can you cook anything else?
Iron Chef is a televised cooking competition with a simple premise; pit two chefs against each other by making them cook with the same surprise ingredient such as beef or chocolate or squid or artichokes. Each chef has to come up with four or five dishes, from the appetizer to dessert, using that surprise ingredient in each dish.
The competition reveals the depth of knowledge of each chef by their ability to work with the surprise ingredient. Some chefs can easily create great dishes with any strange food, no matter how bizarre, while others suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous ingredients. You're putting trout into the ice cream machine? That's only slightly better than the chef who tried it with asparagus.
Mixing in the same room with the same band is a lot like using the same recipe every year for cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. You can do it and it can sound great, but the minute you are asked to mix in another room (cook something else) your depth of mixing knowledge will get put to the test.
Time to cook up a new recipe
There are three primary areas that make up the uniqueness of a mixing space; available equipment, the band (whatever you are mixing), and the acoustical properties of the room.
Equipment
You aren't working with the same microphones; different makes and models mean different polar patterns and frequency responses. You might have fewer microphones. Consider what you'd do if you normally mixed drums with eight microphones but in this room you only have four.
What about monitor mixing? Let's say you've been spoiled with in-ear monitors at your church (nothing wrong with that). In this room, you've got to mix four floor wedges and account for their stage volume in the mix.
EEK! What's that!?! Is that a bass amp on the stage? You've heard about these. What are you going to do? You're depth of knowledge makes the difference between “the nightmare stage amp” and “just another part of the job.”
Band
Let's say your friend invites you to guest mix at his church's mid-week band practice. They have the standard lineup, same as your usual band; lead singer, couple of guitarists, bass player, keyboardist, and drummer.
How will you mix the vocals? What do you do when the guitarist cranks up the distortion to 'grind behind' the rhythm acoustic guitar?
Consider the vocal mixing. Just because you're mixing a female, it doesn't mean you should automatically cut their lows. It certainly doesn't mean you should set their EQ settings just like the female vocalist you are used to mixing. You are dealing with different people with different vocal characteristics.
Acoustics
You might have the best equipment and you might be mixing the same band you normally mix. That's great, but here's where you are going to feel the hurt; room acoustics.
Every room has unique acoustic properties. I have mixed in two rooms of approximately the same size but with one huge difference; one had a lot of echo and the other had none. The mixing process has to take into account the acoustical properties of the room. This means if you took the same mix and played it in three different rooms, the result would be three different sounding mixes. Same mix settings, different results.
The room's natural amount of reverb and echo affect your mix, as do the room's properties related to standing wave frequency points and feedback frequency areas. It's all part of the room and it's a significant part of why mixing each unique room is like starting a mix from scratch.
Be an Iron Chef
You can be an Iron Chef. While the main ingredient is revealed at the start of the show, the chefs have been previously advised of five potential ingredients so they can plan for whichever one is chosen. You don't have to be totally surprised by your new room. You can plan for it.
Attend an event in that room so you get a feel for how it sounds. Talk with the people who regularly mix in the room and ask for mixing advice. Ask about problem areas such as acoustics and equipment limitations. The day you walk into the room, you'll have a starting point about what to expect and what you need to do.
In summary, each room is unique in its equipment, musicians, and acoustic properties. You can't expect to walk in and use the same mix settings like you do in your usual room. You'll be challenged. You'll be surprised. And when you can rise to the occasion, you'll love every minute of it.