I would suggest to leave everything that interacts between channels (like sidechain) to the mixing engineer. You can choose whether you print the reverbs already, or just go through the vision of the track with him and let him do them too.

If you do the sidechains and verbs already yourself and you EQ, there is not much left for the engineer to play with.
I prefer as raw stems as possible, so NO EQ, no VERB and certainly no printed sidechain. But just communicate clearly on the desired end in mind and work towards that.

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Last edited by Raphie on Dec-06-2013 at 19:48

Im still pretty much a noob myself but I gotta ask you this question.
Why would you want someone to mix something for you? What I mean is...the one thing I am finding out that is totally different than a rock band mix is that electronic music is 80% production. You can have the nicest arrangement and a tight composition but the production is what makes tracks crappy or great.
Someone coming in to do your mix is like someone else cooking a dish you made. They wont know how the mix is supposed to set up. They are just going to EQ,compress and possibly limit your mix. It is up to you to know how it sits in the mix.Otherwise, it may possibly turn out A LOT different than you want it to

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Did you ask the mixing engineer what he wanted? I would start there. As for any sidechain/ducking, if you're going to hand it over unprocessed, I would at least give him a bounced down version with the sidechain and let him know what compressor and settings that you used so he can attempt to replicate the same amount of ducking, attack, etc.

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It really comes down to how much you trust your decisions, how much influence you want to have over the final song.

With side chain compression, the settings you choose a significant influence on the feel/groove of the song. It's a musical decision more than a functional decision - what guarantee do you have that the mix engineer you choose is going to have a "sense of groove" along the lines of what you're looking for? Perhaps they do- perhaps you've listened to their songs and you like their groove more than you trust your own. So it's your decision whether to print the sidechain pump directly on the track or not.

The same goes for all automation, such as filter sweeps or reverb swells - it's very subjective, and whether you print it or not depends on whether you trust your decisions.

And so on and on - if you trust your "broad brush" eq /filtering decisions (such as "I'm pulling 250hz down on this pad by 6dBs"), print them, since there's no guarantee that the mix engineer will take that pad sound to a similar space. Leave all the fine detail /corrective eq to the mix engineer.

For reverbs, discuss with the mix engineer - perhaps they'll offer to run sounds through their own reverb. Otherwise, if you're happy with how much of each sound is going into the reverb, print just the overall reverb and allow the mix engineer to do the fine eq on it. If you don't trust your reverb balance, print separate reverb tracks for each sound. But atthat point, it's probably easier to let the mix engineer use their own reverb.

A lot of decisions - each situation will differ, depending on what you want and what the mix engineer wants.

I will preface my answers by saying I'm a mix engineer by trade, and although my main area is score, music is the same, if anything slightly simpler.

quote:

Originally posted by bouncecouncil Im new to house and sending out stems for mixing engineers. For the life of me, I can't mix synths, so I'm going to be contracting outside mixing engineers to do the dirty. Now, before I print each track lane, I have a few questions for mixing engineers in hopes to optimize the time it takes one to mix down my songs: 1) Side chain compression synths: for the pumping synths activated by the kick, should I apply the SCC to each synth and print each on its own stem or should I leave their levels unaffected and let the engineer have at it?

As derail mentioned, sidechain can affect the grove and feel of the syncopation which is technically getting away from engineering, and in to the realm of producing. Many mix engineers still "produce" when working on other's tracks - it really comes down to if you want to keep that the same as you had intended or if you're happy/trust them enough to get that aspect right. Bear in mind, no mix engineer should ever be making major changes to the composition or arrangement so it really comes down to how much a control freak you are and whether you trust them to enhance it in the way you like.

There is however another more polarized school of thought on this process which i'll get to later.....

quote:

Originally posted by bouncecouncil 2) Daft punk band pass, hpf, and lpf effects: During intros and bridges, ill bandpass, lp, or, hp a synth (similar to daft punk's Ino Silver Club)). Will applying this technique to my stems affect a mixing engineer's ability to eq said tracks?

Short answer yes and if anything it will limit them. If you give an engineer with any FX printed, that not only means they are limited to work with that but it also sets the tone (excuse the pun) for what you're looking for. Producers that have a really definite sense of what they want on those specific pieces can leave them in there so it specifically does not get changed and all the mix engineer is then doing is a little bit of subtractive/additive EQ and balancing of levels and pan etc. Having said that, any decent engineer should be able to make the most out of whatever you give them, assuming it's decent (i.e. well recorded, can;r polish a turd etc) in the first place.


Again, i will get to what I find best practice at the end of these questions.

quote:

Originally posted by bouncecouncil 3) Reverb - Wet in, Dry out: Avicii and similar "good feeling house" producers use a technique where just before a phrase-change or at the end of a buildup, they'll lower the volume of a synth's dry while raising its reverb. It gives off the effect that a synth is moving deeper/ farther away into it's reverb. Is it better to send the wet stem and dry stem separately or combine them for an overall eq'ng to be done by mixing engineer.

Yes (which i'll get to later) but again, they should be able to work with what you've got.

quote:

Originally posted by bouncecouncil And finally 4) Shared reverbs, shared delays, shared doubler sends... and their stems: If I use one reverb plugin to create subtle ambience reverb for gelling together my percussions, is it better to A) print stems for each instrument, then a reverb stem for each instrument; or B) print stems for each instrument, then print one reverb stem containing all the percussions' rvb send. And if a synth pluck has a delay track, do I print both as one stem. Or do I print wet and dry separately (i ask this, thinking the engineer may later need to chop up the delay stem to maybe adjust their pan widths) Very creative with the language of music. Very noob with the science of mixing. Appreciate your wisdoms.

OK, so here's why I was waiting until the end:

The best possible way to deliver to a mix engineer is in as much detail as possible but along with that, your "temp" bounce of your mix.

That means every single track printed dry, then all the fx tracks printed separately etc.

Here's how we do it for score.

Composer delivers (well, actually his sunlight and sustenance deprived minion does) the master project file with all tracks individually bounced to audio.

This means dry (with exception to synth tracks where the synth itself has the FX on it) and the FX tracks (aux etc) are also sent.

The project is usally composed in logic or cubase but the tracks will be rebuilt in protools.

A bounce of the master output is also included from the composer.

Firstly everything is engineered in terms of clocking - by that I mean that all the files line up, all the zero cross points match and all the timings are on.

The temp is laid on a audio track that can be referenced at any point to hear what the composer intended.

Now many people will rely on the engineer to make all sound better and that includes the reverbs, delays etc. In this case it's useful to have the wet fx printed separately for a reference for them.

Many engineers will use their own reverb, own delays, own filters etc to mimic and improve on what was intended.

The bottom line is control. The more parts you give to the engineer, the more they are going to be able to do with it. The engineer should be able to completely reconstruct the tracks, their automation, their FX just from dry and wet source tracks and a temp.

Now there are some people that have what they want but just want a slightly better balance, and in those cases, you just give stems, with the FX broken down in to their relative stems.

Personally, when I'm working on EDM, I'll ask for the project file in the DAW it was made in. That way I have access to everything form the automation, to the EQ to audio source files. It's a little extreme for most and it gets a little complex when people are using rare plugins but it really gives the most control.

Someone should compile a list of temp scores. It paints a sad pictures especially from the ones competing with RC.

The stuff worked on was rather orchestral and the mock ups were a bullshit thing you had to do for the suits. They were trsshed as soon as the green light was given. They are such a waste of time and money. The German doesnt use temp scores. Pretty sure p diddly doesnt either.

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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Dec-07-2013 at 23:36

hmm interesting thread.