Mixing Musically: Becoming Part of the Mix

Originally published in Worship Musician, September 2020.

Six minutes of pure musical bliss. A live performance video of the band Wilco, featuring guitarist Nels Cline and his epic solo on the song “Impossible Germany.” The song builds and progresses through a number of musical sections until Nels pushes us off the musical cliff of the guitar solo climax at around 5 minutes 30 seconds. As I was listening for the 127th time this month, I was reminded of an interesting tidbit from my college music history days — there are song forms built around the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci series. 

Nels' Wilco bandmates Jeff Tweedy and Pat Sansone provide a tasty background guitar riff

What is the Golden Ratio and what does an Italian mathematician from the Middle Ages have to do with modern mixing techniques? Well, the Golden Ratio is defined as such:

The Golden Ratio is obtained when two segment lengths have the same proportion as the proportion of their sum to the larger of the two lengths. The value of the Golden Ratio, which is the limit of the ratio of consecutive Fibonacci numbers, has a value of approximately 1.618.

Leonardo Bigollo Pisano (aka Fibonacci) popularized a sequence of numbers which appear throughout nature. Fibonacci numbers show up in rabbit population growth, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, birds of prey flight paths, pine cone bracts, etc. The sequence goes like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, … 

Fibonacci numbers tie back to the Golden Ratio mathematically and they are used today to describe patterns in atomic motion, movements of celestial bodies and even financial markets. According to many musicologists, works by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy and Bartók were structured in close alignment to Fibonacci sequences and the Golden Ratio. Whether you think of this sequence guiding the design or following as an observed ‘just about right’ measure after the fact, it is a cool phenomenon, right? 

From nautilus shells to Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”, the Golden Ratio is all around us. Where might it fit into your mix approach?

Ok, so why is this info in the Worship Musician audio article section? While I don’t think we need to calculate decibel levels or duration of a song to perfectly align the climax at a prime Golden Ratio position, performances like the Wilco track illustrate just how vital audio engineers are in shaping the ebb and flow and highlighting that ‘just about right’ moment within a musical experience. Let’s dig in a bit more and see just how these insights might apply to your next mix.

REFRAIN FROM REPEATING THE REFRAIN?

If you kept up your mixing chops with a Friday night blues band gig, you’d likely hear this basic song form in 90-95% of the tunes that night: 

VERSE 

VERSE

REFRAIN

Go check out Robert Johnson’s 1936 classic “Crossroad Blues" or get your groove on with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy”* for good examples of the AAB form. Jazz musicians steadily expanded and increased the chordal complexity under the AAB form over time, but kept the basic 12-bar frame in place, allowing even the untrained jazz fan’s ear to continue to hear these basic building blocks cycle around every 12 measures. The underlying simplicity and power of the form remains. 

Many contemporary worship hymns follow familiar musical forms as well. If you glanced at the notes on the worship leader’s music stand, you’d likely see something similar to the form below:

INTRO

VERSE 1

PRE-CHORUS

CHORUS

VERSE 2

PRE-CHORUS

CHORUS

BRIDGE

GUITAR SOLO

CHORUS

OUTRO

Certainly more complex than a 12-bar blues, but still largely centered around an ‘A’ (verse) and ‘B’ (chorus) with an added bridge and connecting transition elements to guide things along. Whether you realize it or not, this idea of guiding things along to best connect musically is where you also come in as an audio engineer.

CONCERTO FOR AUDIO ENGINEER, PIANIST AND PASTOR 

Given the example worship hymn song form, where would you expect the most intimate and quiet part of the song to be? How about the ‘let’s see if these digital preamps will distort nicely as I push into the red’ moment? We don’t know what the hypothetical song lyrics are or how the spirit will move that particular Sunday, but I’d bet good money that the INTRO is going to be gentler than the last CHORUS after the GUITAR SOLO. Going back to the Wilco “Impossible Germany” video, it is clear that the OUTRO has the bottom drop out and the overall energy dip way down after the final rush of guitar licks in the solo. 

An Allen & Heath Avantis console and its attentive audio engineer are a key part of the mix at Welcome Church in Woking, UK.

One trick that I picked up years ago while mixing musical theatre gigs was to set a dedicated level fader for the subwoofer output and ever-so-gently ride that fader up as the orchestra neared the end of their overture and the lights went to half as the show was about to get under way. I didn’t need to closely follow the musical score to know that we wanted to build excitement and get folks to settle into their seats for the show. Just a small bump in the low-end energy made a big difference as things built up naturally with more tuba and bass drum and double basses in the pit. I became somewhat of an extension to the orchestra, taking their big moments even bigger and focusing in on small and exposed moments of important dialogue by carving out any other competing audio sources.

This same subtle low-end energy massaging can work well on a piano or synth pad under a pastor’s rousing message. Rather than riding the master level for the keys channel, adjust and control its low-end via a dedicated send or a carefully-tuned dynamic EQ. As the pastor builds and rises to her high point, allow the more foundational piano frequencies to subtlely build as well. While not as structured as a blues form, you can usually pick up when the message is going big or shrinking to a whisper. Think of it like the “Concerto for Audio Engineer, Pianist and Pastor.” A musician who takes a ‘set it and forget it’ attitude during a performance wouldn’t be very effective, so why would we think a passive approach could work for audio engineers? You are an important part of the mix, too!

BECOMING PART OF THE MIX

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: You spend your early Sunday morning going through a thorough line check and tech rehearsal and get everything just about perfect. You are really happy with how your gain structure is set and the mix is really shaping up without too much effort at all. It’s going to be a great gig. Your mom will be so proud. Then the congregation starts showing up and the worship band heads out to their spots after a few tall double espressos. 

And … WHOA! Apparently either

A.) You have just witnessed a tear in the space-time continuum that has caused all of the guitar, bass and drum levels to spontaneously quadruple since soundcheck or

B.) You’ve witnessed a phenomenon called ‘sandbagging’, where the level the musicians told you was definitely certainly the loudest they’d ever play was in fact just a fun little trick and they really were only playing at about 60% volume during soundcheck or

C.) a combination of A and B.

I’m going with B, but it could be C given just how strange 2020 has been so far. 

When we are aiming to elevate our role as audio engineers and active participants in the musical outcome, there are two important points to consider. The first thing is whether the musicians are willing to trust you enough to have some amount of control of how they are heard in the space. A worship team that regularly sandbags on their stage volume levels isn’t going to work. A guitarist who insists on bringing their Marshall stack and seeing just how much gain they can get from their new boost pedal isn’t going to work. It is important to have the conversation with the musicians to explain why setting an accurate and manageable stage volume before the gig is a win for everyone. 

The second thing to consider is whether you can trust yourself with the awesome power at your fingertips. Just as the guitarist can sandbag and get completely out of control with her volume, you can also easily max out your workable headroom in the system by the end of the first song and end up with nowhere else to go as the set progresses and those natural musical peaks and valleys come around. I’ll admit this level of restraint and patience took me a while to build up, but it was worth it in the long run for sure. If we’re asking the musicians to trust us with their voice, we need to allow them to trust that we won’t ‘set it and forget it’ or jump up to 11 on the first tune right out of the gate. 

Next time you’re behind the desk, think about what the song is saying and where it is going. Is there a buildup in the works that you can help to support? Should you be prepping for the inevitable audio calm after the guitar solo storm? Is the bridge coming up and in need of some additional overall low-end energy? Being able to read music is certainly a helpful skill for audio engineers, but having even a basic sense of common song forms can get you 95% there as far as mixing musically and being a part of the mix beyond just mixing.

* For anyone who doubts the pervasive nature of the Golden Ratio, the blazin’ SRV guitar solo wraps up within a few seconds of where the math predicts it should.

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Originally published in Worship Musician, September 2020

By Jeff Hawley

Jeff Hawley currently heads up the marketing for Allen & Heath USA. Jeff has a diverse background as a musician, engineer and trendsetting industry executive. He has played trombone at Carnegie Hall, led worship in the Guatemalan jungles, birthed bass lines on the shores of Lake Geneva — and rocked them all. In addition to performing and producing everything from noise music to disco and Afro-Cuban jazz to avant-garde klezmer, Jeff has designed award-winning music industry products and accessories and directed the branding and marketing functions for a number of top musical instrument and pro audio brands. He enjoys reclaimed barn wood, Woody Allen films (especially the "early, funny ones") and Fig Newtons. 

Connect with him at www.dhirubhai.net/in/audiohawley