[RWP] Completely new to mixing

[Chris Smart]

Hi Crystal.

well, I learned CakeTalking through reading the tutorial that comes 
with it, but that really isn't a tutorial on mixing, only on using 
Sonar and CakeTalking.

Two things I did that helped were:
1. I read lots of books on the subject, plus looking up any terms I 
needed defined online.  A good mixing book will come with audio 
examples. A couple books which I found useful were:

    * Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools, by Roey Izhaki. 
This one comes with an entire DVD full of audio examples in wav 
format, so you can hear everything being described in the text.
    * Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio, by Mike Senior. That one 
has a Website associated with it, with lots of additional content, 
including multitracks for many different songs so you have material 
to practice on.
    * Also, train your ears! I can't emphasize this enough. A good 
training series is a set of CD's called Golden Ears, produced by 
Dave Moulton of Moulton Labs.. Reading a lot is helpful, but if 
someone says there's a peak at 3K and you aren't sure what they're 
talking about, you can benefit from these CD's:
    * http://www.moultonlabs.com/full/product01

2. I also took a correspondence course through BerkleeMusic online 
in mixing. That forced me to mix a tune each week for twelve weeks, 
gave me feedback from an instructor and my classmates, allowed me 
to critique mixes from the other people in my class etc. There was 
no textbook for the course. But it gave me practical experience 
actually mixing tunes. If you don't need the structure of a course, 
books are probably the way to go.

There's no shortcut really. Someone here can tell you how to insert 
a reverb effect on one of your tracks, but telling you what every 
parameter of that reverb does, how to adjust it, what situations or 
kinds of material might benefit from certain types of reverb ... 
all of that could take a lot of explaining.

If you're serious about this, and I think you should be, unless you 
want to always pay someone like me to mix your material *grin*, dig 
in. Software manuals, including documentation for any plug-ins you 
use, mixing books, forums, online glossaries of terms, how-to 
articles in magazines such as Sound on Sound, Mix and EQ, youtube 
videos, and maybe taking a course ... it's all out there if you dig 
and keep reading and practicing everything you learn.

Of course, if you do want someone else to mix your stuff, by all 
means, check out my website at www.ctsmastering.com. I can 
professionally mix and master your material, and I'm very 
reasonable when it comes to pricing - don't just go by what it says 
on my pricing page. I'm quite willing to negotiate. :)

Chris

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