Maintaining the Edge in Modern Mixing
My girlfriend, Maria, and I were on a short road trip (not by choice, we were escaping last month’s fires in LA) and were listening to Oasis’ Definitely Maybe album. It’s a great album to drive to: it sounds so gnarly and raw and powerful, with blaring half stacks, bright and loud cymbals, and Liam’s vocals pushed to the edge. When the album ended, Apple music started shuffling songs that it thinks is like Definitely Maybe and for the most part, it did a good job and played some fun tunes that we wouldn’t have listened to otherwise. However, when a song from one of the Gallagher brothers’ newer solo albums would come on, I would get about thirty seconds in and need to hit skip. We had no interest in solo Oasis material.
Don’t get me wrong, I think their new albums are pretty solid solo efforts, but what bothered me was the sound of them in the context of other songs recorded twenty, thirty years prior. The new stuff sounded so “good”. There were no more guitars that were too loud and too harsh, the brashness of Liam’s voice was tamed, and the chaos of what makes Definitely Maybe great just wasn’t there. Maybe that was a sign of maturity from them, a sign of growth in record making. I’m sure their tastes changed over the years, and they let go of some of that angst from their youth. But man, those albums sound so boring next to any of those songs that were shuffling through from past decades. I think it’s because of a few things; the nature of the artist getting older, and the techniques and technology used to make these newer recordings.
How can we get our mixes to have that same energy and edge like the records we love from the past?
Analog vs Digital
The first thing we can do is to introduce a little chaos into the mix. Most of the recordings we listened to on that road trip were analog recordings mixed on a large format console and mixed down to tape which inherently adds more variability to the recordings. I would argue that no two 1176s sound exactly the same, that every piece of equipment used back in the day, no matter how well maintained and calibrated, sounds unique unto itself. The same can’t be said for most of the plugin suites that we use today.
While I don’t think it’s necessary or practical to mix on a large format console or to tape, I do think it’s ideal to have a few pieces of outboard analog gear to run a mix through, or even individual elements of a mix (oftentimes that’s even more beneficial). By getting a tactile response from equipment we will often make bolder decisions because we’re not concerned with how many dBs of gain reduction we’re getting with a compressor or which exact frequency we’re cutting or boosting with an eq. And sure, you could use a midi controller to map settings to different plugins, but it still isn’t the same as running some signal through circuits, tubes, transformers, and chips. Not only does the analog version sound more unique, but the gear also never sounds exactly the same from day to day, and human recall is definitely prone to error; thus, chaos can ensue.
Leave In Some Teeth
There have been a lot of developments with active eq plugins in the last few years with plugins like soothe2, Gullfoss, and Pro-Q4 that have been pretty amazing. The things that these types of plugins can do is truly incredible. However, if you want to maintain the edge of those older recordings, I think you need to use these types of plugins very sparingly. It makes sense why they have become so ubiquitous; more and more recordings are being made in less-than-ideal acoustic spaces, typically with inferior microphones and recording equipment. These types of plugins can help make bad source audio sound better, but I think that can become problematic.
Are we being true to the source and the situation of the recording by using these tools? Like if a vocal was recorded in the back of a tour bus, using a shitty sounding microphone, into a low-quality mic pre with little headroom, into a cheap converter, should we accept that is what it should sound like? Perhaps I’m being too much a purist, but I think there are ways of maintaining the integrity of what was recorded. (Now if the artist or producer loaded up the source audio with a bunch of plugins to achieve a sound, and you are receiving those files to mix, sure, try and maintain their point of view).
If something is distorted in an unpleasing way, distort it more until it’s pleasing! If something is thin sounding, make it even thinner and filtered, making more room in other elements of the mix. A vocal too compressed? Compress is until every detail is blown out and we can hear every breath loud and clear. If there’s an element to the recording that is giving it some kind of character, some kind of point of view, we should try and exaggerate that element, not take away what is making it interesting.
I also feel that sometimes these active eq plugins can make the music feel a bit robotic and a bit two-dimensional. I think there are more musical ways of helping sounds that are too harsh, or too thin, or too…whatever. By smoothing out every frequency, we leave nothing left to be pushed into the shadows of the mix, thus losing any sense of depth. We can get these “HDR” sounding mixes where all the frequences are all sounding smooth all the time. Would Oasis’s Definitely Maybe sound as legit if they tried to tame all of those brash guitar tones coming from their amps? Would we have gotten to hear Liam scream-sing “sunsheeeeeiiinne” if the guitars and drums were all smoothed over?
Instead of reaching for soothe every time a sound is unpleasant, think about if the sound should be intentionally unpleasant. Or try boosting frequencies around the problem areas of the audio to balance it out. Or try some harmonic saturation with some analog (or digital, just trying to make a point!) gear to make those edges a little more bearable while maintaining their bite.
Nice
When someone describes a mix as sounding "nice," I can't help but feel a slight twinge of disappointment. It's the audio equivalent of describing food as "fine" or calling a film "okay" – it suggests a fundamental lack of engagement with the work. Music should evoke something more visceral: it should sound massive, or haunting, or aggressive, or ethereal, or warm, or razor-sharp. "Nice" often means we've played it too safe, smoothed out too many edges, and homogenized the very elements that could make the mix memorable.
I find that mixes that get the "nice" treatment usually suffer from over-processing with more modern tools. Every frequency is perfectly balanced, every transition is flawlessly smooth, and every potential surprise has been meticulously ironed out. We've become so focused on technical perfection that we've forgotten that some of the most impactful records of all time were decidedly not "nice." Think about the way the snare absolutely rips through "In Bloom" by Nirvana, or how the guitars in My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow" sound like they're shredding the speakers apart. I feel like I’m on drugs when I’m cranking up MBV in the car. These mixes demand attention – they grab you by the collar and force you to engage with them.
The "nice" epidemic might also stem from our modern listening environments. With so much music being consumed through tiny earbuds or smart speakers, there's pressure to make everything sound pleasant and inoffensive across all platforms. But in pursuing this universal palatability, we risk creating music that doesn't truly move anyone on any system. Great mixes should have personality, they should take risks, and sometimes they should even make listeners a bit uncomfortable. After all, if you're not occasionally getting feedback that a mix is "a bit harsh" or "maybe too aggressive," you might not be pushing hard enough to create something memorable.
Listening to those Gallagher brothers' records – old and new – reminded me that our job as mixers isn't just technical, it's preserving the spirit and energy of the performance. Sure, we have incredibly powerful tools at our disposal now, but maybe the real skill lies in knowing when not to use them. Sometimes the best thing we can do is step back and let the chaos breathe, let the rough edges catch, and let the music do what it was meant to do: move people.
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