Simplicity / Competitivity / Referencing?

Videos Tony Hoffer Mixing Air
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Hi Tony,

Thank you very much in advance for taking the time.
I really like your mixes and I have been listening to some of your work (without knowing you actually did it) for a while.
I am a producer and a mixer in south of France and I spend some time looking at all the different methods and approaches from genre to genre and from engineers to engineers. I am surprised by the apparent simplicity of your approach - compared to complex routings like the ones by Brauer, Jaycen Joshua, or methods like Shawn Everett (whose work I really like) listening band per band (among other things) through his multi band comp etc. But your mixes still sound very good and hi-fi. And somehow “obvious” and “true”.
During your journey as a mixer, did you spend some time comparing your in-progress-mixes to references ? Do you have any way of checking your mixes (like on mono cubes for instance) ? I find myself spending a lot of time sculpting and eq-ing the mids and low mids (on vocals, bass, guitars, keys, …) so it doesn’t sound « blurry »; which then becomes a little fight between « too much » and « not enough » etc. For example, I’m sure I would have tamed the little harshness in the 3Khz in the chorus’ vocals of How Does It Make You Feel. But you did not and it’s fine in the end. It looks like you do not fight and still make your mixes competitive.
How do you make yourself feel comfortable: do you have any safeguard that lets you know it is « enough » ?

Thank you very much !

Best regards,
Thomas

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Hey Thomas. . YES! When I was starting out I would pull my hair out trying to get my mixes somewhere in the realm of other mixes I loved. At the beginning I was on very consumer monitors (Mackie HR824’s) and when I moved to my ProAc Studio 100’s that made a big difference for me. Also, being very familiar with the room I was working in was huge.

I often do get very fancy like the mixers you mention (Brauer, Jaycen Joshua, Shawn Everett) but I typically don’t start there straight away. I try to get what I need with big brush strokes…. big and exaggerated volume/automation, exaggerated EQ, exaggerated compression, etc.. . not fine details that no one will really notice. People will notice big bold moves. Same applies with my production approach… simple but big brush strokes.

Yes, in addition to my main monitors (ProAcs) I use Auratones. When I’m 80% into the mix I’ll check how things/mids sound on them and will check in mono as well out of habit.

-Tony

3 Likes
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Hello Tony, Thank you very much for taking the time to reply!
Ok! It’s great to know that you consciously do the “checking phase” at some point. Is it often said but rarely “shown” in MWTM’s videos - and I guess the big brush strokes can also happen at that time too.

Thank you Tony!
Thomas