The mixing engineer handbook

The book wraps up with 25 insightful interviews with the top engineers from all genres of music, including George Massenburg, Bruce Swedien, Eliot Scheiner, Dave Pensado, Ken Scott, Andrew Schep, Richard Chycki new and many more see the table of contents for a complete list.

Please send an email request along with your school and department to be sent the download link. Just got the book yesterday.. Got a lot of relavent thoughts and views for the now times.. And once again, thanks for including me in such an important work Jimmy Douglass Award-winning, multi-platinum engineer and mixer.

Charlotte Wrinch, Canadian Singer-Songwriter. I gotta send you an email praising your mixing engineer book. It is a great book. It has been working out great!! The kids love it, and it makes my job VERY easy! Bruce Tambling. Possibly the greatest book on mixing ever written.

Every time I pick it up I learn something. In fact, I just spent a couple hours with it this morning and am now trying out a bunch of the techniques mentioned. Level Setting Methods. Most great mixers think in three dimensions.

Usually that means that all of the sparkly, tinkly highs and fat, powerful lows are there. Sometimes some mids need to be cut or other frequencies need to be added, but regardless what you add or subtract, Clarity is what you aim for. Again, experience with elements that sound good really helps as a reference point. This is usually done with reverbs and delays and offshoots like flanging and chorusing but room mics, overheads and even leakage play an equally big part as well.

Does your mix have any of these characteristics? No Contrast — The same musical textures are used throughout the entire song. What makes a good one? They are:. This allows mixes to be more intricate than ever, and take more time than ever as a result, but the pinpoint accuracy of every parameter movement during every millisecond of a mix is assured.

For the most part, a mix where the faders remain more or less static can be boring and unexciting. Even before automation, mixers were constantly riding instrument and vocal faders during a mix in order to make sure they stood out in certain places or added an extra intensity to the mix.

The best part about automation is that those moves can be exactly replicated on every playback. TIP : The key to understanding how to use automation to add dynamics is by observing a performance by a great band. This will help you to be able to hear all the nuances that the dynamics of the mix needs in order for it to be exciting. Actually, I start with everything.

Most of the people that listen to and tweak one instrument at a time get crap. If you put it up by itself you might be tempted to put more bottom on it, but the more bottom you put on it, the more bottom it covers up on something else. The same with echo. You hope that your ears are working with your soul along with your objectivity, but truly you can never be sure.

How can you mix that? The way that I really learned about music is through mixing because if the bass part is wrong, how can you hold up the bottom end?

So you learn how to make the bass player play the right parts so you can actually mix. About the only thing that should move is the melody and the occasional other part here and there in support of the melody.

Yes, because I learned how to balance things properly to begin with. Because, when you were doing the 4 to 4 bouncing down from one four track machine to another , you mixed as you went. There was a mix on 2 tracks of the second 4 track machine and you filled up the open tracks and did the same thing again. You mixed as you went along, therefore, after you got the sounds that would fit with each other, all you had to do is adjust the melodies.

You choose the right instruments and the right amplifiers for the track. The sounds come from the instrument and not from the mixer. On rare occasion if you run into real trouble, maybe you can get away with using a bunch of EQ, but you can fiddle for days making something that was wrong in the first place just different.

Suppose the predominate frequencies are 1 to 3K. So for me, compressors can modify the sound more than anything else. If you turn it way down low, you can hear everything much better. If you turn it as far as it will go before the speakers freak out, then it pumps.

Obviously the idea is to make it work on all systems. So every system you listen on, the more information you get. You can even turn up the little speaker in the Studer to hear if your mix will work in mono. It was harder to do and you had to be a bloody expert to make it work. In the old days we did mono mixes first then did a quick one for stereo. I have some standard things that I do that more or less always work.

I always need a great plate like an EMT and a short 25 to 32 ms delay just in back of the vocal. Usually but not always. You know what that was? Another thing we used was the old Binson Echorec. Page would say that he made me do it but he was down at the pub, but he did bring me his Binson Echorec for the track.

I suppose the GML is the easiest but I still have to have somebody there with me to help. Very useful and informative. Probably gonna use this as a handbook for practice. Jan 25, Dacord rated it really liked it.

I great overview about mixing! Nov 05, Mr. Full of great mix strategies and ideas. The interviews at the end are a little tedious because Owsinski asks the same questions in each. Really great practical guide to the more complex parts of creating a radio ready final mix.

Dec 08, Mikael Lind rated it liked it Shelves: music , music-production. Some really good tips here, but often, I miss a more general approach. The book sometimes goes into extreme details to help the reader get the best sound out of the snare drum, but then when it comes to the piano, it tells you nothing more than that with this and this EQ, you can get a similar sound as Elton John.

I was hoping for a bit more than that! Still worth reading, of course. View all 3 comments. And it's the same questions for each of them, almost every time. Definition of "old" isn't the point; this book is stale. That's the point. Lazy, not worth the price of admission. Jun 09, Fabio rated it really liked it Shelves: music. As there's no real way to learn mixing other than experience and mentoring, this book puts in you hands tons of suggestions, opinions, best practices and tricks from those who do it to earn a living, including many "golden ears" from past and present days.

No magic spells, but a lot of rules of thumb to use as a starting point to get better results. Apr 13, Roy added it. This book is full of good advice from pro engineers about how to achieve certain results in a recording studio. Since I have owned and operated a recording studio, and worked in many others over the years, I find the advice and information in this book invaluable for my daily projects.

I only hope to one day understand or have half the skill of these renowned engineers interviewed in this book! I had higher expectations for this book. Some chunks of the interviews that take up most of the second half of the book appear in the first half as well.

Consistently useful reference guide. If it ever run out of new things to try I just flick through this! Jan 09, Franklin Taggart rated it it was amazing. Excellent resource. Will keep on hand for much future reference. Mar 30, Christopher rated it liked it. Jun 22, Joe rated it really liked it. Interviews were very cool. Tips were at least moderately useful. May become more useful as I gain experience. Jul 02, Craig?

Good place to start, not enough practical application for my money. Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki is sure to be the industry standard. Jan 01, Mark rated it it was amazing.

Great Book! It gives you a foundation in the mixing styles of some of the great production artists of this past century. The book has since become the go-to text on mixing for recording programs in colleges and universities around the world. Learn the art of mixing from start to finish, and pick up tips and techniques from the pros, with The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Fourth Edition.

From using microphones to deciding on EQ settings, choosing outboard gear to understanding how, when and why to process your signal, the seemingly never-ending choices can be very confusing. Professional Audio's bestselling author Bobby Owsinski The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, The Mastering Engineer's Handbook takes you into the tracking process for all manner of instruments and vocals-- providing you with the knowledge and skill to make sense of the many choices you have in any given project.

From acoustic to electronic instruments, mic placement to EQ settings, everything you need to know to capture professionally recorded audio tracks is in this guide.

With contributions from many of the top professionals in the field, including Glen Ballou on interpretation systems, intercoms, assistive listening, and fundamentals and units of measurement, David Miles Huber on MIDI, Bill Whitlock on audio transformers and preamplifiers, Steve Dove on consoles, DAWs, and computers, Pat Brown on fundamentals, gain structures, and test and measurement, Ray Rayburn on virtual systems, digital interfacing, and preamplifiers, Ken Pohlmann on compact discs, and Dr.

Wolfgang Ahnert on computer-aided sound system design and room-acoustical fundamentals for auditoriums and concert halls, the Handbook for Sound Engineers is a must for serious audio and acoustic engineers. The fifth edition has been updated to reflect changes in the industry, including added emphasis on increasingly prevalent technologies such as software-based recording systems, digital recording using MP3, WAV files, and mobile devices.

This edition has been honed to bring you the most up-to-date information in the many aspects of audio engineering. This fourth edition of Bobby Owsinski's classic The Mastering Engineer's Handbook is a thoroughly updated and comprehensive manual on the art and science of creating well-mastered recordings.

Today's musicians and engineers have many high quality and low cost software-based mastering tools available to them, but the challenge is to understand those tools and learn to use them wisely. Redesigned and updated to reflect both the latest in technology and recent changes in the marketplace, this new edition shows you both the fundamentals, and the advanced aspects of both self-mastering, and prepping your mix for mastering by a pro.

Topics covered include: Techniques for making a hot-level master A comprehensive look at mastering for vinyl including the format's latest technology improvements Mastering techniques for the best sounding online streams An overview of the tools required for successful self-mastering The book also features interviews with a number of legendary mastering engineers discussing their techniques and tips that will help you master your own music with style and technical know-how.

Written with special emphasis on today's technology and the evolving marketplace, The Recording Engineer's Handbook Fourth Edition includes a complete overview of recording as it's done by most musicians and producers today in their home studios.

In the book's first section, you'll learn everything from how microphones work to specific techniques for recording drums, individual instruments, vocals and much more.