Mixers

Remixing is a modern phenomenon that has turned into a viable way for hi-tech musicians to make money from their skills. But how do you get heard, how do you land a job, and how much should you charge to do it? We get you started with the insiders guide.

Last month we explained how to get a sense of front-to-back depth in your mix. Now we examine the left-right axis, as we suggest ways to get the best from stereo mixing.

Greg Ladanyi showed up at the right time in rock history to chair sessions for Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, Toto, Fleetwood Mac and the Jacksons — but while 50 percent of life may be simply showing up, the other half requires a lot of hard work.

You might not know his name, but you've definitely heard his work: Manny Marroquin is the mix engineer of choice for leading artists in both urban and rock music.

Over a 40-year career, Phil Ramone has built up perhaps the most impressive discography of any producer working today — and although he emphasises the importance of traditional engineering and people-management skills, his work is also at the limits of what cutting-edge technology makes possible.

The craze for mashing up wildly different records to create illicit bootleg mixes has moved into the mainstream, and underground producers such as Richard X and Mark Vidler now find their services in hot demand from artists and record labels.

In 1996, the Fugees came like a breath of fresh air into a world of hip-hop that was becoming stale around the edges. Now Wyclef Jean is a star in his own right, and has deployed his production talents for artists ranging from urban legends like Funkmaster Flex and Cypress Hill to Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and even Tom Jones.

Although many of the most famous music mixing engineers have been in the business for decades, we find out how a new generation of up-and-coming stars are combining traditional and cutting-edge recording techniques to make their mark on modern production.

Considering the best way to mix in a small modern studio leads Cutting Edge to speculate on a possible future for the interconnection of digital audio devices.

Last year's Love & Life album saw R&B superstar Mary J Blige reunited with Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, aka P Diddy) and his Bad Boy production stable. Mix specialist Tony Maserati spent two months at Miami's Circle House Studios working on the project, and recorded his experiences in this unique diary.

When Jimmy Page decided to mine a massive archive of decaying Led Zeppelin live footage for a DVD and double CD, the epic task of restoring, editing and mixing the audio went to rock specialist Kevin Shirley — who has gone on to help veteran metallers Iron Maiden return to the upper reaches of the charts.

Blur's latest album has taken the band 18 months to make, commuting between London, Devon and Morocco. Somehow, producer Ben Hillier also found the time to produce new records by Elbow and Tom McRae...

With the recent announcement of Yamaha's keenly priced 01X Music Production Studio, it looks as though mLAN, the Firewire-based protocol for multi-channel digital audio and MIDI, might be about to come of age. We take an early look at the new system.

If you don't think the sampler can be a musical instrument, then you haven't been listening to the music of Amon Tobin!

The SOS team visit the sleepy Herefordshire town of Bromyard to help violinist Mike Burnham with his folk recordings.

You can achieve a lot with just a computer and a soundcard, but when you want to accommodate external sound sources or record with high-quality microphones then you really need to add a hardware mixer to your setup. Here's how to hook it all together for maximum flexibility.

Queen's seminal 1975 album and the worldwide hit from it, 'Bohemian Rhapsody', might almost have been tailor-made for surround sound. Now guitarist Brian May and engineer/surround specialist Elliot Scheiner have remixed this masterpiece for what promises to be a genre-defining DVD-Audio release.

There are now lots of different ways to make a stereo master recording of your final mix, so how do you work out which one is best for you?

If you're tired of mixing on-screen using just your mouse and keyboard, then it's worth considering a hardware MIDI controller. But with so many different models available, how do you choose the one that's right for you?

We hear from more surround producers working at very different ends of the music business to see how they've created working surround systems, and how they make use of 5.1 at the mixing stage.

We consider some of the pros and cons of mixing in surround, and hear how experienced surround producers take advantage of the format, and tackle the problems.