Once the tracks are recorded, mixing is the next step. Here, at Kramer Sound Studio Recording, we do not do the mixing right away; we allow a couple of days in between the recording and the mixing, and we have good reasons to do so (unless otherwise requested by customer). Doing the mixing right the next day won’t help when it comes to objectivity; also, the artists may want some last minute changes, or maybe something added to the recording.

Mixing is the process of putting everything together and get great balance, frequency range, panorama, dimension, dynamics and interest. All the instruments have to be heard properly, and there has to be a fit in between them. The song gets to be round, polished, with a good sense of space. In theory, this sounds simple; in reality this is much more complicated.

Hear a sample from Rebecca's Motherhood song (Before Mixing) and (After Mixing).

The first step is the editing and noise removal from the tracks. The voice editing (pitch correction and intonation) requires experience and great tools. The drums may need also editing, sometimes drum sounds have to be replace because the tracking isn't accurate enough. For the editing tasks the best available tools are Cubase SX3 and Pro-Tools their accuracy is nothing short of spectacular and the result of the editing sounds very natural. We use Cubase SX3 as our first choice. Our choice of effect pluggins Wave Diamond Bundle.

Every instrument carries different amount of energy in the frequency bands and they have to be worked out so they don’t cancel each other and sound naturally. They have to be placed in space – both stereo and depth. The voices or leads have to stand out. For every type of music there is a certain idea of sound that the mixing engineer has to achieve.

The engineer has to understand the arrangement and identify the starting point (like in disco the kick is everything, or in jazz the melody), and then, using panorama, EQ, dimension (effects), dynamics (compression, gating, limiting) he starts to build from the bottom up, he has to figure out the direction of the song, making sure it has the groove and captures the interest.

Aside of the engineer experience, there are a couple of elements you have to pay attention when you're looking for somebody to mix your songs:  the monitoring system, the room acoustics and the quality of the effects-equipment-software (plugins) used.