Mixing Third Song For My Kind Of Jazz

I have finished recording and begun mixing the third song for my album My Kind Of Jazz. The song is titled Nice Evening. I originally titled the song December because I wrote it one December. But the name didn’t really fit the song so I renamed it. It seems to me more like a “relaxing” song that you might play at the end of a nice evening than a song about a cold winter month.

Mixing is a tricky thing, especially when you are in a small room not designed for music making or mixing. So I don’t obsess over sound quality. I try to match the overall sound of my mixes to an actual CD for reference, but I realize that my work space is not a professional studio with expensive gear so I do the best I can within my limitations. 

Mixing is a basically a combination of equalizing or EQ-ing (adjusting frequencies), setting levels (think the volume of each instrument relative to each other), panning in the stereo field (drums center, guitar right, keys left, etc.) and adding effects (reverb, compression, etc.) But the most important thing is to make sure the import part a song at any given moment is the prominent part. There is a lot of science involved in mixing (audio engineers know the math) but the best mixes are more art then science. 

I like to mix a song over a number of days. I find that if I listen to a mix again the next day, fresh ears often hear things that I missed the first day. But it is also easy to become obsessed with a mix and never finish it, so I try to get a good mix and move on. This is a strategy I have also adopted for recording. Perfection always seems to elude me so I try to get a good performance and not worry about it being perfect. 

I should be releasing the song soon.