The common society might think that mixing a record is about
moving a few faders and that’s it. Little do they know, that there are much
more behind the job then just moving some faders. The main key instruments in
this job are your ears. If you don’t have a good hearing, and cannot recognize
key mistakes in the audio than you are not ready for the job. Once your ears
are used to a routine when working on a project, and you change that routine
out of nowhere than you’re in trouble. Just like the legend himself Chris
Lord-Alge says, “I am getting to old to keep up with the technology always
changing” (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may07/articles
/cla.htm). Each engineer has his or her own style of working in the studio,
and with what gear to work with. Although the technology keeps on changing it’s
hard for us engineers to keep up with it, we have to stay with certain gear for
a while so that we can adjust our ears to it, and conduct a proper mix. You see
in order to mix a record the correct way. We have to play with all the
frequencies involved in the instruments being played. When instruments are
played there are harmonics that come out which is what we listen to. The
frequency range our ears can hear is from 20Hz to 20,000KHz (http://www.dak.com/reviews/tutorial_frequencies.cfm).
As engineers we basically have to adjust all the frequencies from the
instrument in order for them to properly fit into this frequency range. See
mixing a record is not just about moving some faders. It’s about adjusting your
ears to the equipment you use to successfully adjust all frequencies into the
frequency range that is every average persons hearing perception. In order for
the public to enjoy the music we make.
