Depth-Charge Your Mix - Part 2

In Depth-charge your Mix – Part 1, I discussed how adding depth to a mix can create a beautiful spaciousness and separation to a mix. In this blog, I’ll talk about the enormous value in planning the mix-space for every mixing project. I’ve included visual and audio examples. Let's get started.

Why plan your mix?

Planning your mix is hugely under-rated. I never hear audio geeks talking about this.  
Never. 
Either they do it in secret, or they consider it unglamorous and unworthy of discussion. But look around you. In almost every other industry and profession, planning a project is a non-negotiable stage in the process of a successful project. Without planning, you can screw things up, miss deadlines, under-quote your work, miss opportunities, and generally be unprepared for getting the job done well. Imagine an architect or events-coordinator doing their job without planning.  

I’d call that dull and unprofessional.

When you plan a project, by default, you do this very cool thing. It’s called ‘designing with the end in mind.’ In other words, you imagine the result, then put the planning in place to reach that target.

But I’m not going to blog about how to plan an entire recording. I'll talk about planning the mix-space. In my opinion, the success of every mixing project hinges on having a well-planned mix-space. Confused? Read on.

If you’ve read any of my books, like Song Arrangement for the Small Recording Studio, or Mix Automation for the Small Recording Studio (I’ve published six books on audio production – go check them out on Amazon) you’ll know that I’m big on planning stuff graphically.

So, let’s talk about planning your mix-space using what I call, 'mix-maps.'

What is a mix-map?

Mix-maps are something I created for myself to help me visualise the mix-space of a song's mix. They're a simple graphical representation of the musical elements in your mix and show their left-right positions, depth,  and frequency placement within the mix-space.

Consider the elements in your mix as if they sit inside a 3-dimensional box; this is your mix-space. Within this mix-space, you have three axes: width, depth, and height (frequency). While a 3D box makes it easier to visualise these three axes, it’s not very practical as a mix reference tool because it gets very cluttered once you draw all of the musical elements in your mix (yep, there's drawing involved). 

Figure 1: the 3d mix-space

To make the mix-maps easier to read, I draw them as a series of 2D sketches. I call them the Seagull, the Bumper, and the Sidecar:

The Seagull: a top view showing panning and depth
The Bumper: a front view showing frequency and panning
The Sidecar: a side view showing frequency and depth

The Seagull is the most useful type of mix-map and I’ll sketch a few for every mix. In the following example, see how I’ve organised my mix-map into three depth ranges (close/middle/far) and five pan positions. The panning approach is a bastardised version of LCR panning where I’ve added a 50% pan position to each side of centre – make sense?

Figure 2: The Seagull Mix-map (panning and depth view)

In this mix-map, the drums have the most depth (spatial ambience) in the mix (the room and overhead mics) while the kick and snare are more prominent (the close mics are raised in level). The lead vocals are very dry and up-front in this mix, which provides contrast to the bulk of the mid-range elements that sit in the mid-depth space. Each mid-depth element is panned to a position that offers maximum separation while helping me to avoid piling mix elements on top of each other.

Figure 3: The Bumper (panning and frequency)

The Bumper shows a front view of the mix, kind of like looking head-on at the fender of a car. It shows the panning positions of all mix elements, but more importantly, the frequency stacking. The Bumper is useful because it helps you organise the elements so that you avoid frequency overlaps by too many elements in one frequency range.  

How to use mix-maps in your workflow

I find mix-maps to be an indispensable visualisation tool. They’re quick and easy to draw, and they keep me mega-focused on what I’m doing. If I’m bouncing between several different mixing projects (and I often am) they give me instant focus every time I open the DAW session (without going through the whole, ‘now, where was I?’ thing).

You need to draw your mix-map before you start your mix. If I’m mixing somebody else’s project, I’ll sketch out a couple of mix-map ideas while I listen to the raw mix. If I’m the songwriter and engineer, then I’ll start sketching it out in the pre-production stage. Sketching out my mix-map is valuable for me because it’s the one time that I purposefully focus on the position of elements in the mix-space without getting distracted by gear.

I usually sketch 1-3 mix-maps for each mixing project. However, if I’m drawing only one mix-map, then the Seagull (plan view) is my go-to. I’ll sometimes do the Bumper to make sure I’m on target with my frequency-stacking vs panning arrangement.

A significant advantage of using mix-maps is that they make it very easy to experiment with different ideas - and you can get crazy! Over time, I found that as I used mix-maps more, my mixes became more interesting because it helped me break away from standard panning/depth arrangements that a lot of mix engineers tend to use. 

Lots of Seagulls

If you really want to integrate mix-maps effectively into the mixing process, you'll need one for each section of the song. This enables you to chart the different contrast between each song section (contrast is critical if you want to keep your song interesting and dynamic). So, you need a separate mix-map for a typical verse, chorus, and a third for your middle-8 or solo. The more mix-maps you make, the more consideration and planning is going into the overall mix. Remember; planning improves your chances of success.

Check out the following examples of mix-maps I’ve done for my own mixes.

Somethin's Gonna Break

   

Figure 4: Seagull mix-map (Somethin’s Gonna Break) Listen to this audio while you look at the mix-map. How accurate is the placement of elements on the mix-map compared to the audio track?

  

  

It Gets Me By

For this punk/pop style song, I’ve included a mix-map for the verse and chorus, below.  The placement of elements in the mix-space is very different for each section. 

 
 

 

Figure 5: Verse Seagull (It Gets Me By)
Notice the big depth separation between the front and back of the mix, and how the lead vocals are split hard left and right with the guitar/bass in the middle. This is in stark contrast to the chorus.

Figure 6: Chorus Seagull (It Gets Me By)
The chorus section flips the lead vocal directly into the middle while throwing two differently phrased guitar lines either side. The addition of backing vocals left and right add thickness, depth and width to the lead vocal.

     

Don't Come Around Here

This track is relatively sparse and spacious. You can easily hear the depth placement of the elements due to the minimal arrangement. Notice the big difference in depth between the four main elements (ambient guitars, drums, and lead vocals/bass).

   


   

Figure 7: Verse Seagull (Don't Come Around Here)
This mix-map shows a very simple stack with all elements panned to the centre. However, the mix sounds bigger due to the widely spread ambient guitars at the back of the mix, which is in obvious contrast to the dry lead vocals/bass at the front.  

Figure 8: Prechorus Seagull (Don't Come Around Here)
The mix tightens up in the pre-chorus due to the absence of the rear ambient guitars and the tight phrasing of the vocals and guitar/synths.

Figure 9: Chorus Seagull (Don't Come Around Here)
The chorus sounds fairly full and lush now that the ambient guitars are added back in. Backing vocals are more prominent and add width to the mix due to their wide panning. The lead synth adds pace to the chorus as it's highly melodic and occurs when the lead vocal stops. 

   

Taking it to the Next Level 

If you're interested in doing more with mix-maps, I suggest you sketch out some Seagulls for your favourite radio hits. At the very least, I recommend drawing a Seagull mix-map for the verse and chorus of every mix you work on. No doubt, this will open your eyes to another aspect of mixing.

Takeaways

Here’s an summary of the key elements discussed:

1. A mix-map is a great way to visualise the placement of musical elements in your mix-space.

2. There are three types of mix-maps (Seagull, Bumper, and Sidecar), but the Seagull is probably the most useful.

3. Create one Seagull for each section of the song. At the very least, that's two (verse and chorus)for a typical mix, but could be around seven if you chart every section of a typical modern mix.

4. Simplified arrangements (less musical elements) enable you to hear the depth and placement of elements more clearly in the mix-space.

5. Using mix-maps enables you to experiment with endless possibilities around different mix-space arrangements.

   

As usual, I hope you found this useful for your own music productions. Drop me a line and let me know what you think, or leave a comment below.

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Thanks for stopping by.

Amos