However, if somebody comes in and just puts on a little frame on it, or adds a filter, it enhances it but it's still the same picture.Įverybody's good with that. You're looking at a painting that you got used to for seven months, and somebody comes in and just paints over, adds or detracts elements to it, and suddenly you're like, "What is that? What happened?” The other thing that's true is that everybody seems to have been listening to a rough version of what the end product should sound like for the last five, six, seven months, and honestly, they just look at it like it’s a big picture on the wall. Enhancing, without diminishing the original integrity of the song. I'm going in and making tightening up type changes, without really affecting the core essence of what was brought to me. Many times, when I'm mixing (based off of the clients requests), I kind of feel like I'm mastering the multi-track. Mastering was a whole different art back in the day. To me, the evolution of the modern-day mixer is more like the masterer of the multi-track. If you haven't, then you should get a new producer. To me, you put together your beat and your vocals and everything, and everybody feels comfortable as you go along, and by the time you're done, you've pretty much mixed the concept of the record.
He knew how to put together random sounds from different places and he knew how to blend them and make them sit together really well. That's one of the great Timbaland things. You got samples, you got all that kind of stuff, and then you're putting it together. You got every keyboard you want, every string, every horn, every guitar part. That's definitely now part of the process. Many modern engineers and producers don’t know how to mix. Then you fast forward to today with all the tools that everyone has available. Basically, when it came time to mix it, even though you did stuff, it was kind of already done. When you would record something back then, you'd hopefully get the tapes in a place where the faders kind of came up to zero on the playback position, right? You were always playing with the tapes to make the tape reflect the board. When the amount tools that we have to work with grew, our craft changed too. Jimmy: The tools that we have, the DAWs that are being made better and more user friendly-all that evolved from what we had back in the day.
I'm gonna walk in and change this and make it great." Someone who could expand on making a record better “without actually changing it’s core?” How does that translate to the tools you use and how much you use them?
In your interview with XXL mag you said, "What JAY-Z, producer No ID, and Young Guru, brought me in for was to have somebody who had the ability to let it be the record and let it breathe and make it better without actually changing it, because that's mixers’ first inclination.