When To Give Up On A Bad Mix

When To Throw In The Towel

Sometimes when your dealing with clients and they've sent you the stems of their new found creation there can be issues that arise beyond your control. When these things happen you have to decide whether to carry on trying to fix things, before you can progress, or to just call it a day and being ever so polite return to sender.

Remembering what your specific job role helps greatly in making a solid decision. Your job is to mix! That's what you've been contracted for and whilst having the ability to bend a little and be somewhat flexible, if someone has failed in their job before you then surely it's their problem and not yours, am I right?

In the example below the track comes pre-loaded with some serious issues. Most notably wrong mic selection, overloaded mic's and heavy distortions throughout. But being as you never want to admit defeat when facing any adversity you don your detective hat and spend an hour or two trying to work out what has went wrong at the tracking and/or pre-mixing stage. But sometimes you need to step back and with a clear head admit defeat and move on.

Watch the video below as I demonstrate some issues with this particular track.