Mixing is Critical

Ask Katy

Hi Nick, "All You Need is Now" is absolutely brilliant. Each Duran Duran album has had a differing feel to them. While I know that the feel and sound are largely driven by the band and the producer, how do other members of the team influence the sound? There was a really cool picture on your page of Mark "Spike" Stent mixing "All You Need is Now." As I know nothing about mixing, it really got me wondering who the people behind the scenes were that contributed to such an amazing sounding album and wondered if you may be able to just touch on how mixing, engineering and recording can influence the sound of the finished album? Thanks! Eugene from Phoenix, Arizona

“Hi Eugene, The mixing of a record is a critical process. This is where everything truly comes together OR really falls apart. As a band, we tend to record many different musical parts on each song. When we reach the mixing stage, all of this material has to be placed and balanced. Each individual sound is crafted and the real test comes when you pull every thing together , obviously trying to achieve the best possible overall sound, balance and performance for the song. We’ve long been admirers of Spike Stent’s work, he is, to my mind, as good as it gets.

Mixers needs to have a great understanding of musical arrangement, flawless taste and a great knowledge of the technological options involved in the process, Working with Spike was an absolute joy, his professionalism and patience is on a higher plane than most. I could not be more thrilled with the results of the mixes. I genuinely feel we have managed to capture the energy and depth in sound that was originally our vision for this project and there are certainly few other names out there that would have been able to help us meet this standard. Nick”