Questions of mixer's everyday life

Mixing
1

Hi, Tom! Nice to see you here! Firstly I want to thank you for education activity and time for answers.

  1. What do you pay attention to when listening to demos before mixing?
  2. How much time do you spend on the mix on average? How to learn fast mixing?
  3. Your main rules or advices for customer interaction.
  4. How do you organize your time and lifestyle to stay in the flow and creative thinking?
    Regards, Vlad.
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  1. i listen to the demo/rough/ref mix once initially to say yes/no to a project.
    then i wont listen again until i’m getting into my mix. here’s my reasoning.
    we all get super conditioned by repetitive listening of anything…it’s just the way humans are programmed i guess. the problem with that is your brain will start telling you that’s how the track should sound and you will find yourself copying the mix you’ve been sent without realising it.
    that’s NOT why your being hired…so you have to be super careful not to become sonically attached to the ref to allow your taste and instincts to come through…once i am getting into the mix and have made progress i will absolutely check the ref for anything i might have missed.

  2. most mixes when i was on a console took about a day. now i am hybrid or in the box i find i can come back to mixes when i choose to and work incrementally if that makes sense. i might spend a couple of hours getting it going and then jump to another mix…so easy to get bogged down with a mix and lose perspective you know?

3.big question as they are all so radically different!!
i’m going to try and work out what they want really fast in terms of contact and when to send a mix.
what are they listening on? where are they physically/geographically when they receive the mix?
what time of day do they like to work or listen…
although they are ‘customers’ they are also artists /producers so are emotionally involved to a high level.
in business the customer is always right so i try never to say NO to anything unless there’s a takemine accoustic involved lol

4.my lifestyle is usually a hot mess tbh… i go with the flow. when mixing Lil Yachtys album last year i went onto his time schedule which was working through the night. not my preference but its what was required!
read a lot of books and immerse yourself in all art forms. have an understanding of international affairs…yet to meet many artists who want to discuss lo pass filtering over dinner

all the best
tom

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Hi, Tom! Thank you for your answers :slightly_smiling_face: