Hi folks!
Do you often find yourself in the mixing-stage,
and realize: "I should have arranged this song differently", "This part should be played another way", "This should have quite another feel"
How do you deal with that?
Do you retrack, or do you just mix as best you can?
I'm in a song now, where I'm creating some band-stops(mute parts),
and I see this is arranging when mixing,
and in hindsight I would have tracked things a little different based on how I see the mix now.
(btw: I play most instruments myself, so of course easier than getting some session-musican back. Acoustic audio mostly)
Arranging vs. mixing
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 102 posts since 31 Jul, 2011 from Norway
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- KVRAF
- 21196 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
I always try to get the arrangement the way I want it from the start. In fact, after the musical composition itself, arranging in the 2nd most important thing. Get that right in your head and the mixing becomes a lot easier. That isn't to say that some arrangements aren't going to be difficult to mix, especially if there is a lot going on. But I'm not going to compromise the integrity of the song just to make it easier to mix. To me, that's the easy cop out and I never do it.
Having said that, I've learned to not go crazy with my arrangements. Usually, outside of drums and percussion, I rarely have more than 4 or 5 things going on at the same time. Eventually it starts to turn to mud. Bass, pad, lead and maybe some keys are usually enough to get the musical idea across. The only exception is if I'm doing an orchestral piece. That's when I really have to concentrate on panning and levels.
If this was easy, everybody would be doing it and making a fortune doing it.
Having said that, I've learned to not go crazy with my arrangements. Usually, outside of drums and percussion, I rarely have more than 4 or 5 things going on at the same time. Eventually it starts to turn to mud. Bass, pad, lead and maybe some keys are usually enough to get the musical idea across. The only exception is if I'm doing an orchestral piece. That's when I really have to concentrate on panning and levels.
If this was easy, everybody would be doing it and making a fortune doing it.
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- KVRian
- 581 posts since 21 Feb, 2005 from Upper Left USA
I'm constantly fine-tuning both the mix and the arrangement as I go. There's been many times where I was doing the mix at the end, and it gave me a totally different direction for the song. I've been known to re-arrange the whole track at the very last stage. 
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- KVRAF
- 3080 posts since 17 Apr, 2005 from S.E. TN
In my experience, the biggest ways I painted myself in a corner, recording before proper arranging--
1. Didn't think up a good song introduction. It is possible to prepend an introduction after the song is recorded, but sometimes difficult to splice it in smoothly unless the intro was written before beginning with tracking.
2. Even worse, not devising a satisfactory song ending before tracking. I'm a slow learner because I painted myself in that corner way too many times, and it is HARD to write a good ending. And REAL HARD to tack on a convincing smooth ending after all the main tracking was done. An add-on ending is real likely to sound like a thumb fingered edit sloppy tacked on.
Back in band days, when studio time was real expensive, we would laboriously write pre-arrangement imagining what it would sound like, then rehearse the crap out of the song before going to a studio and trying to lay the song quick enough to avoid going into the poorhouse.
All that pre-planning and rehearsal wasn't such a bad way to do it. Except no matter how carefully planned and rehearsed, after a few months there would be things we wished had been done different, and no reasonable way to change the arrangement other than to spend the same money all over again, record the song from scratch again.
Recently don't record much, but a good way of working (but real labor intensive without being in a band and seeing the other guys daily)--
Compose either at piano writing on paper, or crude sketching using simplified sequencer features. Make simple sequencer arrangement with intro and exit. Work on framework and add prototype midi tracks of bass, drums, guitar, etc. Let the song sit awhile and listen to see if the arrangement or feel needs changing. Get advice from the drummer about beats, to avoid cheeze beats and stay in good taste. Confer with guitarists and maybe a bassist to avoid cheeze concepts on those parts.
Make a final prototype of the entire song with placeholder bass, drum, guitar midi tracks. Add scratch vocal if a vocal song. With all tempo changes, modulations, etc.
Make a chord chart listing every bar in the song. If the song is 105 bars long, the chart is 105 bars long. No repeats or dc al coda-- Straight thru from start to end. This is real valuable later for overdubs and punch-ins, to look at the paper and say, "ok we punch in at bar 65" or whatever, without having to search out the arrangement on computer screen.
Give the chart and scratch recording to guitarist, then he later comes over to replace my cheez midi guitar parts. Make a new scratch mix with the new guitar tracks, and give chart and scratch mix to horn man, bassist, whatever.
After each part added, make a new scratch mix before doing the next instrument, so the musician is reacting to the other musicians.
Usually record drms last, because good drums glue everything together. If the drummer can't hear the other musicians then it is mechanical and stiff, and you might as well just use a boring drum machine.
Short of getting everybody together in the same room for however many hours it might take, the order of overdubs affects the final feel. Do you record the final vocal before or after drums? Etc.
Sometimes an overdub might not fit in context of later tracks and have to be redone, regardless how well it was pre-planned.
So thats why I don't record much nowadays. A lot of work. But without the work, am not happy with the results. Been trying to get interested in it again. As if there is any pressing demand for yet another song. Like there are not enough songs already.
1. Didn't think up a good song introduction. It is possible to prepend an introduction after the song is recorded, but sometimes difficult to splice it in smoothly unless the intro was written before beginning with tracking.
2. Even worse, not devising a satisfactory song ending before tracking. I'm a slow learner because I painted myself in that corner way too many times, and it is HARD to write a good ending. And REAL HARD to tack on a convincing smooth ending after all the main tracking was done. An add-on ending is real likely to sound like a thumb fingered edit sloppy tacked on.
Back in band days, when studio time was real expensive, we would laboriously write pre-arrangement imagining what it would sound like, then rehearse the crap out of the song before going to a studio and trying to lay the song quick enough to avoid going into the poorhouse.
All that pre-planning and rehearsal wasn't such a bad way to do it. Except no matter how carefully planned and rehearsed, after a few months there would be things we wished had been done different, and no reasonable way to change the arrangement other than to spend the same money all over again, record the song from scratch again.
Recently don't record much, but a good way of working (but real labor intensive without being in a band and seeing the other guys daily)--
Compose either at piano writing on paper, or crude sketching using simplified sequencer features. Make simple sequencer arrangement with intro and exit. Work on framework and add prototype midi tracks of bass, drums, guitar, etc. Let the song sit awhile and listen to see if the arrangement or feel needs changing. Get advice from the drummer about beats, to avoid cheeze beats and stay in good taste. Confer with guitarists and maybe a bassist to avoid cheeze concepts on those parts.
Make a final prototype of the entire song with placeholder bass, drum, guitar midi tracks. Add scratch vocal if a vocal song. With all tempo changes, modulations, etc.
Make a chord chart listing every bar in the song. If the song is 105 bars long, the chart is 105 bars long. No repeats or dc al coda-- Straight thru from start to end. This is real valuable later for overdubs and punch-ins, to look at the paper and say, "ok we punch in at bar 65" or whatever, without having to search out the arrangement on computer screen.
Give the chart and scratch recording to guitarist, then he later comes over to replace my cheez midi guitar parts. Make a new scratch mix with the new guitar tracks, and give chart and scratch mix to horn man, bassist, whatever.
After each part added, make a new scratch mix before doing the next instrument, so the musician is reacting to the other musicians.
Usually record drms last, because good drums glue everything together. If the drummer can't hear the other musicians then it is mechanical and stiff, and you might as well just use a boring drum machine.
Short of getting everybody together in the same room for however many hours it might take, the order of overdubs affects the final feel. Do you record the final vocal before or after drums? Etc.
Sometimes an overdub might not fit in context of later tracks and have to be redone, regardless how well it was pre-planned.
So thats why I don't record much nowadays. A lot of work. But without the work, am not happy with the results. Been trying to get interested in it again. As if there is any pressing demand for yet another song. Like there are not enough songs already.
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- KVRian
- 626 posts since 30 Aug, 2012
I have a received a LOT of commercial mixes where I am actually doing the "arranging". I saw an interview where Chris Lord Alge said he typically receives 100+ tracks on commercial records these days in the same situation. Tracks that need to be comp'd, weeded out, etc., to create an arrangement.
In my opinion this is just sloppy/BAD recording. Since track count is basically unlimited, the common practice nowadays is to "put down everything" and then leave it up to the mix engineer to make a song out of it!
Go back to days many years ago when recording was basically capturing a live performance - then adding some overdubs for vocals and lead parts. The arrangement was already in place. Nowadays almost everything is tracked as separate pieces to create loops and "parts". I have even seen where they break drum kits down to individual instruments (one tom, one cymbal, etc.) played one at a time to reduce "bleed".
So these tracks are no longer a song - they are the raw material for creating a song and the mix engineer has become the "arranger".
In my opinion this is just sloppy/BAD recording. Since track count is basically unlimited, the common practice nowadays is to "put down everything" and then leave it up to the mix engineer to make a song out of it!
Go back to days many years ago when recording was basically capturing a live performance - then adding some overdubs for vocals and lead parts. The arrangement was already in place. Nowadays almost everything is tracked as separate pieces to create loops and "parts". I have even seen where they break drum kits down to individual instruments (one tom, one cymbal, etc.) played one at a time to reduce "bleed".
So these tracks are no longer a song - they are the raw material for creating a song and the mix engineer has become the "arranger".
Last edited by Fender19 on Fri May 29, 2015 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 102 posts since 31 Jul, 2011 from Norway
Thanks folks!
Really many good points.
I'm learning as I get experience.
From last project it seems I need to do the planning a little better.
I'm quite good at tempo-variations I believe (this goes first),
but when it comes to stops, and braking patterns I'm not enough ahead of the game,
things that make a mix breath.
Really many good points.
I'm learning as I get experience.
From last project it seems I need to do the planning a little better.
I'm quite good at tempo-variations I believe (this goes first),
but when it comes to stops, and braking patterns I'm not enough ahead of the game,
things that make a mix breath.
