When you look at painting sometimes, if there's a lot of white space in the picture then it really shows the other colors off a lot more and that helps you really see what's going on because of the focus that it gives you on the colors. This is exactly the same reason why I believe having a lot of space in a mix really does show the sounds off a lot more. This is something that sounds very simple, but in practice it's a lot harder because you always want to keep adding more and more because you feel like “that section isn't working so I need to make that work” and “I need more fills in there” and “that kick doesn’t sound right so I need other kick sounds on top of it to bring it all together with a compressor” etc. You keep adding adding more and more and it's very similar to cooking in that way, good ingredients, less of them equals more flavor, because you cannot taste so many things at the same time.
It's the same for your ears, it's having space around the sounds and making sure that those sounds are really good. And also the same for your eyes, having white space so that the image see works on all the senses. I think for me having that space really shows off the individual instruments in the music and it really makes you concentrate on what those individual instruments are and what they're doing. Some producers are really good at doing this, for example Pharrell has always done that with his mixes and Daft Punk also do it a lot where it's just very minimal stuff but the sounds that they get are really good.
The reason why I like it as a mastering engineer is because when you want to get something loud for example, you could do a whole album of a rock album that's crushed to death, really loud like loads of instrumentation in there, then you can have a piano piece in the middle of it and the piano piece of sound louder than the massively over compressed tracks because it's got one instrument and it's just firing out at you. So much easier on your ears when there's space around it, the dynamics are there so you don't have this kind of crush sound, it's like very loud and so you end up having to turn these tracks down quite a lot when you're really leveling an album. So that for me is great as a mastering engineer.
If you've got a tune that's very dynamic, that has got loads of space around it, it can be perceived sounding a lot louder but also I can push the instruments into each other with limiting and with a bit of compression. So as a mastering engineer pushing them in together the harmonics aren't going to clash together and distort, because there's space around them so you can get it sounding really loud and in the same time very clear. You can really emphasize the sound. I can really tune up the low-end or really tune up the tops or the mids or whatever I'm doing because there is not a lot happening there that's gonna clash. That's why I love it as a mastering engineer, but as a mix engineer that's the the joy of getting a very spacious mix that I think people should be aiming for. Because simplicity is the key, I think if it's doing the right things in the right places in the right frequency range then that's where it gives you the feeling and that's where you can really use your senses are alive.
Like what I said about your taste and your eyes, it's like getting those senses work, so they really feel the sound. Technically I can only give you some basic tips; I would think about panning and definitely think about just what the instruments are doing, be aware, are you doing too much, are you adding too much, are you changing this sound too much as a mixing engineer, if you're working on it after the production. If you're in the production; what are those sounds, how could I get that one sound right, what can I take out that's not working, and if I take all these out does it actually change the sound of the track. I know it is very tempting to just keep adding things in the production but how about “let's take something out”, and then “is that sound all right on its own?” if it's not let's change. “Is the vocal recorded properly?”, “do I really need to put all this compression and processing on?”. Ask these questions yourselves and try to simplfy your production to create space in the mix.
