Mixing 40 Tracks in 24 Hours

Last week I was contacted by one of my clients who I have built a friendship with throughout the years of working together. He needed me to mix a song for an upcoming Hip-Hop artist who was featuring a more well known artist on this particular song. The backstory is that this whole project had already been mixed and mastered, however this one song fell into the hands of a not so good mix engineer, while the rest of the project sounded good...Like really good. This song was produced by my friend and his team of producers, so they thought of me to have it mixed which I of course said yes.

It normally takes me about a week to finish a mix, but the artist needed it within 48 hours. This is a good learning point for any engineer doing freelance work, or even if you work in a project studio...ALWAYS CHARGE MORE FOR RUSH JOBS! Which I did, we got everything squared away including all of the files being sent promptly in a Pro Tools session with everything lined up the way it's supposed to be. I love it when that happens. I've had to re-align audio files before and it's not fun, and should be an additional cost as well. Anyways, I was also sent the other songs on his project to get an idea of how my finished product should sound in order to make the project cohesive.

I began working around 7pm on Friday night, and worked until about 3:30am, taking short breaks for food, tv, and herbal inspiration lol. (I don't drink alcohol while mixing, your ears don't capture the frequencies, or volume differences the same) I had a meeting that morning for a freelance live sound gig for a musical, which I was surprisingly energetic for, and it only took about an hour. Before the meeting was even over, I was getting calls regarding when the mix would be finished. I assured them I would have something later that evening, which I did. There's not too many times that you submit a mix and there are no changes to be made. Like, everyone is happy with it. This was one of those times. I put my foot into that mix and it showed. They loved it. I made a bounce of it as a .wav file with plenty of headroom for the mastering engineer to do his work and it was done by about 6pm that same day.

This goes to show you that sometimes you have to trust your ears and your talents. Mix confidently. Make the sounds do what you want them to and use industry records as references too. If you can get your sound close to how major label releases sound, you're well ahead of the curve. If anyone has questions on my mix process or anything like that, feel free to hit me up.

Peace,

Stu Gretto
IG/Twitter: @stu_gretto