Have your song mixed by experts online

Jan 30, 2007 12:00 GMT  ·  By

Now, this isn?t news for anyone any longer: no matter what might somebody be playing, in order for it to really kick the windows out the proper way it needs mixing and mastering. No matter how good you are at playing the guitar with more speed and accuracy than the world's masters and it definitely doesn't matter how warm and perfect your vocals are; if they are recorded, lousy mixed and mastered then the whole thing goes down the drain.

I guess everybody who is into recording ? whether in the living room or in the amateur studio, in the basement or in the rehearsal room ? has faced at least once with the sheer despair of hearing the result of a day's work sounding bad. After working on the bass for a whole afternoon, it's time to make the song public so you're sending it to one of your friends and the guy asks ?where's the bass, dude?? - how will you feel? Or after having spent long and meticulous hours micing the drums and setting up the recording session you hit the Rec button and capture ?them drums? but even after you see the sunrise they still sound dull and woody on your mix... as you play death metal and the drum-line sounds bad and faded, with no thump, let alone the battering and sonic hurricane you had in mind... what will cross your mind?

Well, giving up is not an option for those who really want to make a stand. Maybe it's time to have some pros working on your session sources, don't you think? Maybe your band mates have just as little knack for the pro audio as you have ? you all can play a good thing but playing well does not imply that you can mix well. That's the reason for which themixingbox.com has appeared. It is an exceptionally well-thought idea based on artists or composers benefiting from outsourcing their work towards a professional environment.

Themixingbox.com is a web service provided by professional sound engineers, specialized in many fields so that you won't have a death metal engineer trying to correctly mix your sleazy r'n'b. Even further, they are specialized in different instruments as well: thus you'll have the vocal parts in your recorded session taken care of by a vocal expert while the drums-engineer will properly handle the drums. Every man working in the field where he's the best ensures a very high-quality result.

Your recorded sessions may be Nuendo/Cubase, Reason, Live, ProTools or Logic and many other session-formats exported by major DAW applications so I can really say that themixingbox.com is a truly open application, suitable for almost every music creator, regardless of the platform they might have used.

One of the best features of themixingbox.com is the fact that once you get your audio back, after being mixed by the professionals, you will also receive a Pro Tools HD session containing all the work the engineers have done, from plugin settings, all the moves they made and all the documentation. Nevertheless, if their work does not match your own creative ideas, things can be mended so the final mix you will obtain is in perfect sync with you. This is one fun and very cool way to learn working with sound as you actually see what's going on and will eventually be able to re-trace the steps of the professional engineers for yourself.

Themixingbox.com has more than one service available and the prices for all of them vary according to their complexity. For example, the MIX+ is the top service and it offers unlimited track-count, for which you'd have to pay $699. Other less expensive choices you can go for could be Session MIX for $349, which is a MIX+-like service but having some limitations on the track-count and song length, Vocal FIX ($249) whose aim is to improve the vocal tracks in your project, even with intonation correction, timing or harmony-related engineering or the DrumFIX for the same $249 and which will take good care of the drum tracks you have prepared, by means of timing and ?feel? corrections and overall improvement of your drums' sound.

For a better idea on how themixingbox.com can help you, please visit the site and listen to the ?before and after? sound samples posted there. I can't but salute this emerging type of sound engineering, because it will significantly add a lot of value to the fresh music young people are putting up and recording day by day.