Began mixing the first song of the Before the Harvest project called Air Balloon, today. With audio work, especially with recording at least, mixing is kind of like bringing a lot of different instruments together into one overall product. I think mixing can also make it easier to listen to a song. It reminds me a little of how an orchestra works: there is a conductor who is leading the music to some extent and the audience can pick out different instruments playing at different physical locations in the orchestra. The instruments in the orchestra are not all in the same exact place, which makes it easier to physically hear individual groups of instruments to some extent. In mixing, the person mixing is kind of like the conductor and the listener is like the audience. The person mixing can also get some separation between instruments and “tracks” in a composition by moving the instruments and tracks to different sides (e.g. left, center, right) of the listening space. Tracks are individual recorded parts that can make up a recorded song (for example, an electric guitar might be a track). This separation that can happen when mixing helps prevent the listener from getting overwhelmed by all of the instruments seeming to come from the same exact location in the listening space. Mixing can help the various tracks mesh well together.

Been working on separating the instruments out in the mix and adding things like EQ and reverb to certain parts of the mix. Trying to get the vocals to be somewhat easy to listen to from an audio standpoint. It’s been a while since I’ve mixed anything, though, so I’ve looked back into some mixing tips. In some ways, I like how this song is turning out… but the perfectionism is telling me that it could still be different/better.

In spite of wanting to have a perfect product, I want to aim for “better” this time, and not “perfect”. This is a common theme that I want to remember during this project, though, because it is easy for me to forget this.