Your job as a mixing engineer is not to make sure you’re the star of the show. It’s to make sure the song is the star of the show. Every fader move, every EQ move and everything you compress should be done to get the best creative balance for the track in front of you. If you haven’t done your job quite to the standard that serves the song best, you can guarantee your clients will let you know. But how do you react to this?
Throughout my career, I’ve been blessed to work with some incredible people. They’ve all given me some form of criticism and feedback on my work and some are better at putting the message across more subtly than others! Either way, we shouldn’t get offended if our mixing is criticised. It’s simply a sign that something isn’t quite right. Rather than getting offended about our work, it’s up to us to get it right or justify and explain why we’ve made certain decisions during the mixing process.
Whatever notes your clients give you should be treated like gold dust. They’re highlighting the gaps in your game that you can improve upon right there and then with your clients (the people who pay you!) giving you the direction to get better and attract even more clients. If something doesn’t sit right with them, it’s probably because it doesn’t sound quite the way they want it to. By asking the right questions and getting some form or reference from your clients or delving into your own reference set, you should be able to quantify exactly what they want and fix it.
If you don’t have any clients yet, that’s no problem either. Send on your mix to another mixer friend of yours or just someone who loves music and get their opinion. Some sort of feedback will always help.
So, please… never react harshly to criticism. Even if you feel like you’re being treated unfairly (which happens to all of us sometimes), there’s a lesson in there somewhere for you.
Criticism is not always constructive or delivered as smooth as it can be, but it’s up to you how you deal with it. My advice is to listen to it, stay professional and remember to always serve the song and its original intention. If you’re with the artist or songwriter and they’re trying to guide you, then guess what? 9 times out of 10, they’re going to be right about what serves the song. Now that’s something to think about!
So tell me… What’s the best piece of constructive criticism you’ve received and how has it helped you as a mixer?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
Thank you for taking your time, money and resources to create this website. This is truly a life saver for me and anyone who have a passion in music creation but doesn’t have the money to pay someone to teach them. This is truly amazing! Please keep up with the good work!!…and God bless!!!
You’re most welcome, Bernard. I’m so glad that I can help you out. Thanks for letting me know it helps!
You are spot on with this. I was sure that my mix was just right, but my mastering engineer, John Mayfield, suggested that the bass guitar was lacking in low end. He suggested using some reference tracks for that particular genre and sure enough, he was right and the resultant adjustment improved the final mix.
Hey Ron – that’s awesome! I really do believe that reference tracks make that much of a difference and it’s great to hear that they helped you get a better mix. I checked out John’s studio and it looks like you’re being very well looked after!