ANALYSIS + VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF A MIX – week two
We relate to sounds in two different ways, one being where we feel and hear physical sound waves that come out of speakers or headphones, and second where we imagine the placement of the sounds between the speakers. ‘Imaging’ relates to the ‘apparent placement of sounds between the speakers’. This creates a visual representation of your mix, which includes visualising where each instrument is panned in addition to the volume and frequency. This is through seeing where the sounds fit within a cube (or x, y and z axis), where you see panning being left to right, volume as front to back and frequency as up or down.
The difference between physical sound waves and imaging is that imaging requires active imagination to exist, but sound waves still hit even when not paying attention. Therefore, having a visual representation of your mix can be helpful when choosing whether to add a compressor to make sounds more up front, since it restricts the sound from going up and down in volume so frequently, which can make a drum beat for example more punchy, an EQ to shift sounds up or down through controlling the volume of frequencies or reverb to fill in space.
When visualising frequency, rather than visualising each band, we can instead visualise the colours. This is to help differentiate from the different frequencies and types of sounds.
With imaging, you can ask questions to do with clarity, separation, the balance, and space. This includes thinking about whether each instrument is prominent and not muddy, if there is a good balance of frequencies, not being too top or low heavy as well as being balanced left and right.
Listening to you track in stereo and having a visual representation of a mix in this 3D sense gives you a good idea of where everything sits when you listen to it, but it is also good to listen to your mix in mono from time to time to avoid phase issues, where some frequencies may be cancelled out.
David Gibson (1997). The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production.
Keller, D. (n.d.). Mixing in Stereo: Adding Width and Depth to Your Recordings | Universal Audio. [online] Universal Audio. Available at: [https://www.uaudio.com/blog/studio-basics-mixing-stereo/.]