Willow Creek Yamaha PM10
Monitor engineer Josh Gonzolez mixes on a Yamaha PM10 console at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill. Photo courtesy of Willow Creek Community Church.
As the industry continues to make powerful on-board DSP and plug ins more common place, going back to the basics can be a very effective way to both clean things up sonically and make your mix shine.
The creation and use of space in your mix, by panning and managing high- and low-pass cutoff (HPF and LPF) filter frequencies, are two basic fundamentals, and are imperative steps to achieving an intelligible and punchy mix. They also provide the sound engineer with an opportunity to be creative.
By using the entire stereo field, we are able to mix a large number of inputs without overcrowding the mix. This is crucial when working with a high channel count and any application where there are drums with stereo overheads. Personally, I prefer to pan my overheads 70-80 degrees wide and then move the toms around to find where they best sit within the stereo field, while maintaining proper phase alignment. They will often jump out at you and become more present when you have them properly placed in the mix.
Sound Productions - Greg Narkiewicz
Greg Narkiewicz has been with Sound Productions since 2005 as a sales account manager and recently as backline rental manager. He enjoys music composition, playing drums, and freelance recording projects in his spare time.
Another great use of panning is to get a good overall balance of the mix. For example, if there are four background vocals, individually mic’d, I would typically pan two left and two right to help create balance. Of course, this is also where the opportunity for creativity presents itself. Perhaps alternatively, I may want all four background vocals on the left if I have a cello quartet available to balance them out on the right. You may also want to take advantage of panning to make use of, or enhance space throughout the stereo field. For a lead singer, I often deploy a stereo reverb or delay and pan the effected signal to the left and right with a very long pre delay setting, while the dry signal stays put in the middle.
Another fundamental that’s equally important and effective is simply adjusting the high and low pass filters on a per input basis. I like to refer to this as acting as the “frequency police.” This is a very effective way to clean up a mix, as well as provide an optimal signal to feed into your favorite DSP/plug-in. Although it’s a widely known and common practice to use HPFs on vocals, I think it is often underutilized, or even forgotten, when addressing “everything else.” This is especially true when you’re mixing on the fly, with little to no time for setup or soundcheck. Does your bass guitar really need to be passing audio 10 kHz and above or can that space be better utilized for cymbals, snare, shakers and such? Does the snare drum really need to be occupying valuable frequencies below 85 Hz ? Highly unlikely. Of course, where you draw the line is highly subjective, and again, a chance to exercise some creativity to shape the sound of your mix to your taste and application.
In addition to regulating cutoff frequencies by using HPF’s and LFP’s, using subtractive EQ as a means to carve out space for certain sound sources that may be of higher importance in the overall mix. If I have an acoustic rhythm guitar, background vocals and piano, I may scoop out some mids to provide more space for the main vocals to shine through.
Focusing on these fundamentals will give you a solid foundation and a good starting point to achieve a great mix.
