Experimentation & Wall-E

Mixing
1

Hi Tchad!
I’ve been borrowing a lot of your tricks, with the help of MWTM. Copying example your drum template often works for me, but I have a hard time being as experimentative as you. How did you develop this freedom? It seems you don’t have a clear end goal in mind, but still arrive at a glorious deep and quite distorted mix. Whereas if I let go of direction, I end up in an unglorious, distorted mess…

Secondly, I was hoping you could speak to the creation and mix of Peter Gabriel’s Down To Earth off the Wall-E soundtrack. This has become my main reference, both for checking speakers as well as mixing. The arrangement is so full from top to bottom and has many layers of depth. Were you involved with production too, or just mix?

Thanks!

2

Hi Angelo,
That’s correct, I usually don’t have a preconceived goal or expectations for a mix. I try to improvise throughout the whole process and solely let the music guide me.
With Peter’s music there’s usually many tracks of different instruments. He’s very open to me changing things and/or muting tracks to simplify arrangements. Something I really love doing with him. that allows me to play with the sonics a lot more.