I'm working on a project that straddles a few different genres. A single track can meander from a chainsmokers type electronic vibe to more of a lo-fi vibe with live instrumentation. I do a lot of "creative mixing" (filter sweeps on the master buss, reverbs and layering that I've constructed very carefully, etc.) and it's important that I retain the integrity of those elements. On the other hand, I'm not really an audio engineer and I'd like to employ one to take care of the "technical mixing" (finding and eliminating bad frequencies, phasing issues) plus the vocals, as the music is vocal heavy and I'm just not skilled at mixing vocals. The general wisdom seems to be that the mix engineer just wants the raw tracks with no effects, which makes sense. Obviously it will be easier for them to eliminate subtle inharmonic frequencies in my snare if it's not slathered in reverb. However, if I really just killed all my effects chains,
A: It probably wouldn't even bear meaningful resemblance to my finished track since I rely heavily on plugins to sculp my sound and,
B: Since many of the effects I use serve specific creative and aesthetic purposes, I feel uncomfortable just handing raw tracks to a person who doesn't necessarily share that vision. I don't want to end up with something that is technically superior to my mixes but just not ultimately what I want it to sound like.
How can this be reconciled? Should I leave the important effects? Should I mix it down both dry and wet so they have a choice? Also, I use a lot of layering and change the instrumentation quite a lot so each song has like 80-100 individual tracks and I'm not sure if that's just a mix engineer's nighmare, lol. Obviously I'd send them my rough mix so they know what I'm going for but I'm not sure that's enough.
Any input would be greatly appreciated! I posted this here since it seems like it would be something EDM producers have to deal with. Thanks!
Submitted January 10, 2017 at 08:42PM by freeflowbc https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/5n8kw8/repost_prepping_my_track_for_mixing/?utm_source=ifttt