How to Mix a Pop Song - Part 7 - Examples

The act of eliminating unwanted noise from a signal, is obviously one application where it is far better to get the sound right at source. Although this article is about mixing, it is worth mentioning here what the problems are, and how they are normally solved at the recording stage.

The characteristic sound of a snare drum going "doink" is enough to make any engineer feel queasy and go green. It is probably the most often encountered problem when recording or mixing a real drum kit. The real solution of course, is to make sure that you have a drum kit that doesn't go "doink!" - but it isn't always that easy.

EQ can also be used to 'boost' or 'cut' certain frequencies to enhance the sound.

I'm so sorry - I couldn't find a better title for this section - which is a great shame because it is actually critically important, so I'd better explain myself pretty quickly.

When it comes to distance placement (and the other two subtle effects in this article - creating mix room, and auto mix levelling) we are now getting into the realm of subtle equalisation that is rarely documented - but yet frequently used - by sound engineers.

This is really something that came out of the "Tamla Motown" mixing scene, when people first realised that EQ was just as much a creative tool as a technical one.

Every mix engineer is familiar with the problem of individual parts of a mix suddenly "leaping out" on certain notes and "taking over" a mix. Modern mixing consoles provide automation to cope with this. But is this really the solution? If you've had much experience of this at all, then you will recognise that it is usually similar "sections" of the song, and similar note-ranges, that cause the problem repeatedly.