The Secret Behind a Hit Song? Investing in Mixing
How does Travis Scott sound so futuristic?
How does Kendrick pitch and layer his voice?
How does Dominic Fike change the tone of his vocals so often?
How do Metro Boomin’s 808s hit so hard?
The short answer: a mix engineer.
Artwork by Jake Standley
As a new artist, knowing where to allocate limited resources is a massive challenge. Just starting out, everyone’s goal is to get attention. Money goes into IG ads, branding, graphics, music videos, etc. But what a lot of new artists forget is that the immediate goal is to create a quality product that can be taken seriously in an oversaturated market: a high-quality song. Specifically, in hip-hop, it has become so numbingly easy to create something on a laptop with an iPhone mic and a Beats Pill that over 40,000 songs are being added to Spotify per day, and that’s only as of 2019. A huge way to set yourself apart is to invest in the sonic quality of your song by hiring a mix engineer.
Yes, the main way to differentiate yourself in this market is to make something intriguing, no matter how you record it, but in light of the recent Kendrick Lamar leaks, something becomes quite evident: mixing is hugely important to the presentation of your idea. The presentation of your art, meaning the condition that it’s delivered in, is what makes people take you seriously as an artist. Mixing a song is like dressing it up for an interview. People will buy into it if it is polished, professional, and sonically comparable to the rest of their library. If not, people may pass on it even if it’s “the one.” If we listen to an unmixed leak like “Somebody,” Kendrick sounds a little out of place. Even though the song has potential, it’s hard to fully comprehend and sounds amateur (as amateur as possible seeing that it’s Kendrick) because no effort has been put into its presentation yet. When that veil of high-fidelity production and recording is lifted, it becomes difficult to take a song seriously and listeners are turned away. Even on a Kendrick track, people still write something like this:
For those who don’t know, mixing is the process of taking a recorded group of sounds and combining them to fit together in the cleanest possible way. At its most basic form, it can be adjusting volume, but at its most complex (see Travis Scott), it can be crafting an entire sound and aesthetic through the use of effects. Most of these effects are generated through software plugins that a) tend to be expensive, and b) require attention and experience to use effectively. A mix engineer can only work with the ingredients you give them, so an artist’s first investment should be their recording equipment because a poor recording will usually generate a poor mix. In the same vein, a crowded or poorly mixed beat will always result in a crowded final product. But, if every aspect of your song has a clear purpose, then a mix engineer can take those elements and let each one shine in its own way. An 808 needs to hit hard, but it can’t overpower the vocal, and it can’t overwhelm the sample, so what do we do? We hire a mix engineer. In most cases, this is as simple as searching “online mixing engineer” and contacting someone who can handle everything via email.
In hip-hop and its many mainstream sub-genres (almost everything at this point), the audience’s belief in the artist’s legitimacy is essential to long-term success. Your goal is to make people believe in what you have to say. As cliché as it is, you have to believe in what you have to say first before anyone else will, and that means investing in an engineer (when money allows it) who can make sure your words are heard as they should be. If a vocal needs to sound brighter, they can do that. If an instrumental needs to sound clearer, they can do that.
When a song sounds clean and professional, it communicates that the artist cares enough about their art to invest in its quality; it communicates intention, and listeners gravitate toward purposeful music. Without putting effort into how you’re capturing your artistic output in the recording, and then how that recording is handled and refined, you can quickly become lost in a sea of amateurish, washed-out music. Bottom line: a new hip-hop or R&B influenced artist should try to prioritize recording quality and mixing quality before they invest in anything else. That might be recording in-studio, or (my recommendation), investing in some home equipment to save long-term money and maintain an organic creative process. From that point on, hiring a mix engineer to polish your recordings can make the difference between your song being skipped in a playlist or added to someone’s library.
Many new artists adopt an idea that doing everything yourself is a grind that’s necessary for success. Save every bit of money you can and put it towards your business. Usually, business means promotion. This idea really needs to be shaken up a bit, because the most important product of a musician’s output is the song, and a crucial aspect of a song is the way it’s recorded and how its elements are mixed together. In that way, this investment is your business, even if it feels behind-the-scenes and hard to post about.
The music game is a game of presentation – who can be taken the most seriously for their art? While it’s tempting to skip aspects of the recording process in favor of quick attempts to gain attention, it really is a kiss of death in most new artist’s trajectories. Most people never even reach the starting point because people never hear their music, or they hear it for a second and turn it off because it just doesn’t sound right. To set yourself up for success, try to invest in your recording equipment, invest in a mix engineer (even if they’re cheap, another set of ears on your music can make all the difference), and prioritize investment in the ground-level of what you want recognition for: your sound. Things will flow so much quicker once you get your break.
