The nature of mixing

Just a little thought in between, while I'm writing a longer post...

The concept of mixing audio, applying filters, processors and whatnot to perfect and polish the sound is actually quite artificial, at least to the extend that it's being done these days.

If you think about how music was performed for most of humanities existence, all you had were the "raw" sounds of the performers. There were some limited ways to tweaks those, like "hey you, don't hit those drums so hard" or "you, come to the front, so we can hear you better", but that's about it.

And while people for sure noticed the difference that the environment had on the experience, if they didn't have a cathedral at hand that would give the chorus that impressive volume, they would still enjoy the performance in a normal room.

The ability to micromanage sounds, in the way we can do it now in the studio, feels like a qualitative step beyond what we used to be able to do in the past. Like going from some salt and the herbs that grow in your backyard for spicing your food, to glutamat and a whole catalog of E-something chemicals used for industrialized food production.

Yes, those tools that we have today are great, and it's even greater that they're now available to anyone with a computer. But be careful and conscious about how you apply them.

At least I, when I make a pizza myself at home, don't want it to taste like a frozen pizza out of some factory.