Working in a recording studio - Mixing

Mixing consists in picking up all the signals that have been recorded on the various tracks of our recorder, and fusing them together into a single stereo signal. The first thing to do is to turn the mixer onto its mixing status. When a mixer is in this status on each channel, the main channel and the monitor channel are inverted. Beforehand, during the recording phase, the recorder's outputs were connected to the inputs of the monitor channels. In this case the outputs are connected to the main channels' input. This time all the channel's accessories (equalizers, filters etc.) act on the main channel in such a way that each channel can be manipulated as we please. This time too, the channels are connected to groups, but this time serve a different function. Before we take a look at this function let's picture ourselves in a real situation and see what needs doing. Let's suppose we've just made a recording on 23-tracks (again, the 24th being the time-code) and lets presume we've recorded the following instruments on the tracks:

Let's start mixing! Firstly, after having turned the mixer to mixing mode and the recorder in repro mode, turn all the faders and potentiometers back to their initial positions and turn all the buttons to off mode. This will save us going nuts in trying to understand why something isn't working as it should be: a button left on in a previous session, thinking that it had been turned off, can account for great time-losses. Then assign all the channels to the mix bus (controlled by the master master fader L and R) through the routing matrix of each channel, lift the faders, position the panoramic controls and listen to the whole sound. At this point we add various effects to each signal, in order to clean the sounds up, smooth them, add colour to them. By acting on the equalizers we try to extract from the sound the frequencies that most distinguish it, whereas we'd try and attenuate the frequencies that ruin the sound, and with compressors we give the sound its right dynamic whilst by adding reverb we give sound space. Naturally this being the art of mixing, we couldn't possibly dream of describing it all in a few lines; each person has his or her own experience, tricks, tastes. Anyhow, let's take a look at some basic techniques.