Side Project Experiences: Teamwork & 'Mixing for a client'

In the midst of working on new original music, I mixed & mastered a track for a peer, currently working in a group producing an EP for a singer-songwriter, and am engaged in a couple different interdisciplinary projects involving my music with film-makers.

Below is a stream of the final track of Laika - Helter Skelter featuring singer-songwriter James Davies:

This was an interesting and valuable process for me as I have never really worked on solely mixing someone else's composition before, so I wanted to make the experience as realistic and close to the industry as possible. I aimed to experience what it would be like as an engineer to be supplied with stems by a client in order for me to mix and master their arrangement.

Initially there was some miscommunication where I was expected to take a very active role in my client's project eg. take part in a music video shooting, help with a project planning document and create ideas for the composition itself. I made it clear that it wasn't a collaboration, I am doing a service for a client and attempted to make it as transparent to the industry as possible in order to have a more realistic experience for both of us. Another related issue that arose was with the vocal takes in the song. Many peers noted that the vocalist was out of key in certain spots, however my client said she was happy with the vocals multiple times therefore I didn't want to change something the client was happy with. I made the assumption that I was given the final stems of a completed track, and that decisions made are for an artistic purpose. This is something I've experienced when sending my tracks off for mastering. It makes a lot of sense, you shouldn't be sending unfinished work for someone to finish it for you. Unless you are both sitting down in the studio together and have agreed to help produce the track, you are sending of a finished arrangement to be mixed, or a final mixdown you are confident with ready to be mastered.

Once the clarity in our roles was all sorted, there was great communication via email at the tweaking stage which led to her being pleased with the final product. I made as many revisions as was required and always uploaded a private MP3 to soundcloud for my client to be able to check progress or listen on different systems.

Following on from this first side-project, I'm now helping out my peers Tiana and Gabby; we've continued on from the single and are currently recording and producing a 4-track EP for James on his solo project.

The only real issue I've found during this group work, ties along with the previous side-project. There was clear lack of communication and a vague delegation of roles. The team leader never really indicated what my involvement would be, and this followed suit with time & file management issues. The studio times weren't being relayed to me or until the very last minute, which made it very difficult to organise myself whilst balancing other major projects. Unfortunately files were also lost during a session I wasn't aware of due to a lack of having a set location of where project files are stored (which I would recommend should be either files saved on every team members USB's and uploaded to a Group Google Drive at the end of each session).

So my contribution has mainly consisted of being a console/DAW operator during recording sessions, and then providing input and knowledge at the mixing stages. I introduced the benefits of Ozone 7 as individual equalizers and imagers since they have in-built spectrum analyzers behind the EQ band-strip and correlation meters for any phase issues. I've provided mastering tips from what I've learned as they aren't familiar with Ozone and it's capabilities. Things like rolling off information below 20-30Hz and anything above 20kHz with EQ. When compressed to a final MP3 file, a lot of this frequency content will be chopped off anyway so you would much prefer getting rid of it to avoid any conversion issues or artifacts that could appear in the compressed file.

Especially in the case of this acoustic-soul EP, most of that low information below 50Hz is inherent room noise anyway, which eats up a lot of clarity in the rest of the mix. I suggested that we begin by getting a rough gain stage, followed by high-passing everything that doesn't need super low information - and instantly we gain clarity in the mix.