Mix Preparation

Those inexperienced with corrective editing also tend to stop short of what’s required because they’re unable to achieve enough correction without incurring excessively unmusical side effects,

Groove and Timing

My top tip for making the best of a production’s groove is to work out which single instrument embodies it best, solo it to smooth out any stumbles or areas of inconsistency in that instrumental part if necessary, and then use it as a reference point as you reintroduce the remaining instruments one at a time, tightening the timing of each as you go to taste. In a full mix, it can be all but impossible to work out which combination of instruments is causing some perceived timing unevenness, but if you strip back your arrangement and then progressively rebuild it like this, you can be pretty certain at any stage where to point the finger of blame whenever the groove falters.

Audio Editing

When you have to site an edit point in continuous audio, then the best thing is to try to put your crossfades immediately before percussive attack onsets. It might seem like time travel, but even though
the transient only happens after the edit, the later event still effectively conceals (or “masks”) the earlier one—a freaky psychological audio effect referred to as backward temporal masking or premasking.

Here short crossfades of around 5ms tend to work best. Instruments with a clear percussive attack (acoustic and electric piano, tuned percussion, harp, acoustic guitar) will respond best to these kinds of edits, but even the less well-defined attack characteristics of big-band and orchestral instruments can be used in this way with a reasonable degree of success.

However, you’ll not get 100 percent of the way unless you’re aware of two other lesser-known editing possibilities. The first is to place an edit point on one instrument such that a powerful transient or noise signal from another instrument masks it, and this hugely expands your options. Take a stereotypical pop/rock recording, for example. Almost anything could be edited underneath snare hits, lower-range instruments could be sliced under the cover of every bass drum, and longer crossfades on higher-range instruments could hide behind cymbals and open hi-hats. When it hits the chorus, the combined masking effect of drums, cymbals, and high-gain electric guitars is likely to be so powerful that you can sneak a 50ms crossfade edit into any background part wherever takes your fancy.

The second power-user edit really comes into its own for time correction of lead vocals and melodic instrument solos, because it gives you the facility to place well-nigh inaudible edits right in the middle of long held notes. The technique relies on the fact that the waveform of any sustained pitch by its very nature repeats regularly. By ensuring that this repeating waveform pattern continues smoothly across the edit point, you can usually get an edit that is some- where in the range from serviceable to remarkable just by crossfading over a couple of waveform cycles.

It has to be said, though, that there is something of an art in selecting the right location for this type of edit. Notes with vibrato can be tricky to deal with, for example, because the pitch variations alter the length of the waveform repetitions. An edit in the middle of a note that is changing tone over time can also stick out like a sore thumb, and this particularly applies to vowel transitions such as diphthongs in vocal parts—out of choice I prefer to put matched-waveform edits in “m” and “n” sounds because their dull closed-mouth tone doesn’t vary as widely.

It has to be said, however, that overall timing decisions like these do also depend to an extent on the balance between the tracks within the environment of the final mix, so while it’s worthwhile adjusting overall track alignments like this at the mix-prep stage, you should be prepared to refine these decisions further down the line if you feel the groove isn’t owing well enough. Mike Stavrou has an interesting take on this, from a psychological perspective: “If a player is rushing, you can slow them down by pushing the fader up. Conversely, if a player is slightly behind, you can speed them up by lowering the fader.”3 A similar phenomenon is that the perceived overall tempo of a track can be affected by the levels of the less important beat subdivisions within the groove: fade them up and things drag; fade them down and the tempo often appears to increase.

Tuning Adjustment

It is a depressing fact that the sour tuning that blights a lot of low-budget productions is often easily avoidable.

Now no one is saying that everything has to be absolutely robotic, but it’s nonetheless important to comprehend that lax tuning has important mix implications inasmuch as it affects how well your tracks blend. The more the pitching of your arrangement agrees with itself, the easier it is to make every- thing seem as if it belongs together. If any track’s tuning is out of kilter with others in the arrangement, it will stick out uncomfortably and be difficult to balance correctly, even if things aren’t far enough off beam to induce lemon-sucking facial expressions.

It’s for this reason that so many producers talk about tuning drum kits to the key of the track: if the strongest pitched overtones of the drums t with the track, you can fade the kit up further in the mix before it has trouble blending. Tuning is not just a musical issue; it’s an important mixing issue too.