MTF Week 11 (May 24th, 2007) "MTF Mix Presentations I"

In this week’s MTF, students including myself presented the RealWorld mixes. The striking part of the forum was that each mix was vastly different, naturally because of personal musical influences, but what as also interesting was how some shared similarities.

For example, many people used Afro Celts Sound System My Secret Bliss, including myself. To my ears the song was already very well recorded and produced – each track already had most of the effects you would ever want to use. This meant that those who used this song approached to mix from an arrangement point of view. This was confirmed to me when Stuart Johnston, who stated “(All the tracks) went quite layered, I found no need for extra effects” [1] His mix compared to others was longer and much more progressive, which reinforced his statement.

Coming back to musical influences, I think that this was very well demonstrated by Daniel Trembath. His personal musical taste extends into the genres of Dance and Techno. He stated that “a lot of my influences and tastes went into this song” [2] To my ears his mix was dry (in a good way), and very pulse driven, much like techno, with no use of vocals.

Scott Philp mixed Joy’s What You Are. I enjoyed his mix the most, I don’t really know why, it may have been simply because I liked the song itself and its samples. He appeared to approach the mix from an arrangement, position also. I guess when you think about it, arrangement was a key element in this exercise because the samples were more or less already properly recorded and all we had to do was simply mix them.

Scott Herriman and Ben Hawkins used If I Had My Way by Little Axe. As I know these two well, it wasn’t surprising that they chose to mix this song. Ben said that he wanted to do a mix, which represented a bluesy sound; If I Had My Way provided him with this. Scott also seemed to come from a similar area although he was attempting to go for a more country rock oriented.

In conclusion, I think that all those who managed to present this week did well, even if they weren’t fully prepared. They all showed how their influences gave them insight towards their mix. I think that personal taste is a powerful force when mixing, and it raises the question of whether it’s ok to let this factor to impact the artists visions as much as you own.

Refrences:
1. Documentation from Stuart Johnston on his mix, presented May 2007, Adelaide University
2. Documentation from Daniel Trembath on his mix, presented May 2007, Adelaide University