I’m in the mixing stage of Marc Gunn‘s record “Happy Songs of Death.”

At this stage, I find myself removing pieces more so than adding.

Let me explain.  Before mixing, when the tracks are raw and unprocessed, without any reverb or compression (two things that really move a track from “just recorded” to “finished” stage), it just feels like the song needs a lot of help.  So I’d add percussions here, lead instruments there, backing vocals there…. only to find that once you start dialing in the mixes, all the sudden they sound clattered.

Which is a good place to be, in my book.  It’s so easy to remove tracks in mix.  Yes, some of the tracks, we all labored to get — put the mics in the right place, do several takes, comp the performance — but in the end, if it’s not serving the song, I take them out.

In general, I believe it’s best to put in only the absolutely necessary pieces in the final mix, and not one part more. And here’s the reason why.

Our stereo listening field has a real estate.  And it’s definitely a finite field.

The less parts there are on the plain, the more space each part can take up.  It’s easier to make a bigger sounding recording this way.

The more layered the recording is, the less space each part takes — and we’d have to EQ and compress to that each part is only taking the very essential range we need it to occupy, and no more.  That’s how we cram so many parts into a recording.  And when this happens, it takes some exceptional mixing skills to still make a big-sounding record.

It probably is a reflection of my skills, but in the past I’ve struggled with these huge, layered songs ending up sounding tinier than sparse ballads that are meant to sound small and intimate than the first song.

So I have learned to be “lean and mean” with my arranging and put in as few tracks as I can get away with.  That’s not to say that I leave things naked, dry and uninteresting.  All I am saying is that I have a sense of balance with layered vs. sparseness, and I like getting there by throwing in a few more parts than necessary first and then taking some out at the mix.