Aidan Cunningham is a great mixer, in my opinion.
He’s taught me a lot over the 10 + years I’ve known him .
Learn some of his techniques and perhaps more importantly, how he thinks about mixing in this podcast.
If you'd like to buy me a coffee - Many Thanks ...
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/GeniusMove
Aidan Cunningham is a great mixer, in my opinion.
He’s taught me a lot over the 10 + years I’ve known him .
Learn some of his techniques and perhaps more importantly, how he thinks about mixing in this podcast.
If you'd like to buy me a coffee - Many Thanks ...
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/GeniusMove
Our guest this episode is mixer Aiden Cunningham. Aiden's background is a noisy metal music. Dealing with that sonic denseness in metal, I believe has helped him become one of the finest mixing engineers in Ireland, but now encompassing many genres. We recently sat down to chat in my studio in Tullamore. How's the studio going?
Aidan Cunningham:The studio is well, it's in the build of it. To me, yeah, it's. I send people 99.468% there.
Paul Brewer:All right.
Aidan Cunningham:So it's done. Apart from the moving in of the last bit of furniture and then rigorous acoustic testing Like the right, this is the final, the final testing. So initial tests were done And what I thought would be maybe a four or five months project is now on month 12 or 13.
Aidan Cunningham:And that's down to a lot of that's down to slow up in materials and get things delivered, And but then also just needing to look at it for two weeks and going is this actually, you know, consider it Yes Careful, And you go so far into implementing something, then going actually, I need to sit with this now for another week And then that caused the delay and a thing.
Paul Brewer:So yeah, i'm, i'm always changing things around. Yeah, i feel like you kind of need to.
Aidan Cunningham:You need to set yourself up to be able to do that. Right And not box yourself in Right, like you know. If I need to move this monitor four feet to the left, is that going to now block a light switch? Or just little ergonomic tactile things that are actually really important in the place. Yeah, working or not, so very nearly there. Very much looking forward to it.
Paul Brewer:Talk to me about the room and monitors. What is the combination You use? Amphion, is that right? I?
Aidan Cunningham:am Amphion. I am Amphion until I die unless something else comes out, but I can't hear anything else better at the moment. Right, amphion 2, 18s of the model I'm using at the moment Right, which aren't huge They're. They're tall, like, they're not. They're not huge in like mega stack Yeah, massive, but they're actually quite tall. Yeah, they're very slim and tall, but they're they're a nice big. They're still a near field monitor. Yeah, i just love mixing on that near field, punchy, close to my ears kind of feel. Anytime I've heard those. I've heard you on the flush mounted systems like the massive fixed in I've. They're flattering and they're like, wow, they're loud and the low end Oh, my God, it's rumbling my chest, but I never felt like I could mix on them. Right, i know they're probably more for checking on or what they call them, the A and R speakers, if someone's coming into.
Paul Brewer:What sort of rooms have you listened to them in?
Aidan Cunningham:I would have heard them. Flux Studios, new York, atomic Studio in New York. The Grouse Lodge has a pair there as well, so just they're known as kind of the A and R speakers.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, so someone comes in and you crank it You go.
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, that's good, but I'm definitely near field Kind of guy, near felt till you die, near field and I'm feeling till I die. But to the question of the relationship of the monitors and the room, well, i kind of have come to view them as one, yeah, and I feel maybe that's a downfall of not to say a downfall, but it's something a lot of people don't consider And it's something you learn by fire, by doing. I used to mix in a very small squareish two-bedroom.
Paul Brewer:That's true, and it was very, very concerned.
Aidan Cunningham:Why is there no low end in my mixes now, but there's loads in here. You just didn't realize that. He didn't think about it. Yeah, and again, then you go through it and you go through learning. You got advice and plenty of advice from you And remember, you suggested to me, i think, why don't you just hold the cloud up over while you're listening to me, while you're listening, like getting an acoustic cloud, and hold it up and just listen And you could hear it. You could hear it happening in real time. The difference It's like okay, okay, now I need to learn more about this, possibly. Well, i actually I'll say even more so than the monitors you're using. I think the room is the biggest impact on how your mixes will sound. Yeah, more so than the monitors you're using, and certainly more so than the compressor or the plug-in or the EQ or whatever you're using. Yeah, now, it's probably the hardest thing to change. Then as well, it's not the crux of it. Yeah, if you have your room and you can't really go, you know what?
Paul Brewer:today I'll move the wall. Yeah, move the wall. I made her, yeah.
Aidan Cunningham:I seem to notice this almost headbutting with physics. So someone might ask for advice on hey, could you give me tips on how I could fix my 4 meter by 4 meter by 4 meter room? Yeah, and you kind of go well, you can't really. But they're like what do you mean? you can't really. Of course you can. Surely there's a thing.
Aidan Cunningham:Surely there's a gadget? Surely there's a. There are some gadgets that may help somewhat. You can't fight the physics. Yeah, that seems to be, and if someone's listening to this maybe wondering what am I talking about? Are you talking? you certainly know more about it than I do, but the physics is that the boundaries of the room and the dimensions and the relationship of those boundaries your floor to ceiling, your wall to wall all that will skew your perception of the mix if the both the frequency, content of the room and the reverb time in the room and the relationship of those is distorting what you hear. And I say to people, it's the closest thing like putting on the wrong prescription glasses and trying to paint or trying to read, Or taking the wrong prescription to the medicine.
Paul Brewer:yeah, Yes, you will be somewhat altered.
Aidan Cunningham:And at best it's guesswork then. So like if you've got the wrong glasses on and everything's fuzzy, you can kind of see okay, i'm using a green paint here and I'm painting a hill and I'm kind of painting a house. But if you can't actually see what you're doing, it's guesswork at best.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, because the other thing I was thinking about that now relatively recently was the idea that an experienced engineer can sort of semi-mix blind. Somebody in your own position could come in here and do a reasonable mix in this room. You could just do it because you would know it's roughly this And that's the thing that's missing from the early learner, because they haven't actually seen or heard what it can be. Yes, that's a very good point And that's the thing that we're always sort of. When you're talking to the lad with the 4x4 room looking for advice, you have to explain there's no way around it.
Aidan Cunningham:There is no way around it So almost the people who need the lovely rooms best are the people starting off like because then they can hear. This is how it should be.
Paul Brewer:Yes, and that was always my thinking, with colleges as well, because they should have the rooms to perform and to let everybody know that this sound is the 10 sound and you will always be certain for that.
Aidan Cunningham:Well, you hear of other engineers or I've been in some very nice rooms in studios around the world. people have been in million dollar rooms that sound terrible, the fanciness and the cost of it, or you could just be lucky in your room. If you buy a house or you rent in a unit in a building, your proportions happen to be good, or at least a good starting point. It's an easier fix.
Paul Brewer:Absolutely. And smallness is the killer, absolutely the killer. Even if you operate in just a bigger room, that will straight away make it better.
Aidan Cunningham:You're compounding the issue. the smaller you go, the more help it needs. And again for maybe people listening who aren't exactly sure what we're talking about, the room should almost sound like nothing. Exactly That's what you're looking for, And that's actually why I love the Amphion monitors as well. I almost feel like there's no monitors in front of me.
Aidan Cunningham:Whereas traditionally, if you have your monitors in front of you and you pan something left or right, it's like, oh, there's that sound in that monitor in front of me on the Yes, the Amphions feel like there's nothing there.
Aidan Cunningham:It's like I'm mixing in air. I think where it's very important to have a really good room is if you're kind of expected to be mixing a song a day or so and that just has to be right. You're not spending two weeks on it and one out of the car and listening to it and going back and checking it.
Aidan Cunningham:On this There's a certain amount of checking. I will do 100%, i'll do a mix. I get what I'd say a 95% me being happy with a mix in a day, like in a pass And either I will send that off for comments that evening or maybe, depending on the schedule, i'll come back the next day myself, spend another half an hour with fresh ears. That could be on different monitors, different headphones, different things, and it's that objectivity where the 5% of magic happens in. Yes, because I kind of feel in the first pass we've established the aesthetic of the song. This is the feel of it, this is the verse, this is the chorus, this is the drum sound, and I very rarely go back and be adjusting kick sounds or snare sounds. It's how do you make it move in the last 5%?
Paul Brewer:of automation, whatever the fresh listen gives.
Aidan Cunningham:But that's really only possible in a really good listening environment, because you're removing the guesswork.
Paul Brewer:So at what point do you think you should have learned that You understood the value of a room?
Aidan Cunningham:Oh, when I got my room to a state that I was stopping having to do guesswork. And then suddenly, if you look at it, yeah, living out of the car, which is never, i never found that a great anyway, that's another discussion in a minute. If you look at it purely as a business, scalable, economic thing, if I can mix a song in a day versus three days, there's the scalability. I can now do more albums per year or more songs per year, and that's I'd never. It's not about what we just say, an assembly line or doing something faster.
Paul Brewer:But if I'm getting there faster. Exactly The value of doing it faster makes you better as well, and that makes the song better.
Aidan Cunningham:The comment you made before was radiation, mixing radiation, so when you open a session to mix, pretend it's radioactive And the longer you are in there your ears are going to mess Your ears are going to decay.
Aidan Cunningham:So another bit of advice I give to people is let's say you have a song to mix. Maybe it's a home project or whatever. Instead of spending a week mixing that song, mix it seven times in the week, like, just go for it And like, just whatever happens, it doesn't matter, particularly if you're practicing yourself. Yes, don't spend seven weeks butchering it to death, because the listener doesn't spend seven days going. Well, they might listen to it if they love the song, but they're not listening to it. A thousand times a day for seven days going, is that tambourine a little bit too sparkly?
Aidan Cunningham:They got a feeling from the song and you need to mix as if you're enjoying the feeling of it A puncture Yeah. And that's. I would be of the opinion that I never mix foreign audience, but you should listen as a music listener. What? right, so I don't make decisions going.
Aidan Cunningham:I think the general public would like it if I made a snare sound like this But you make the song feel exciting or sad or happy or whatever the emotion supposed to be, as a listener of music would enjoy it. Not. did he use an 1176 compressor on that, under snare mic? Nobody cares, it doesn't matter.
Paul Brewer:I don't care anyway. Yes, in terms of EQ is the obvious one, because it's there in front of you. Compression might be the next one and saturation might be the three ways, excluding time related effects and stuff like that Might be the three ways of affecting a tone, a recorded tone. So would you go with saturation first?
Aidan Cunningham:Right, or is it totally variable? Do you know what it is? It's completely what I feel in the moment Right, and I maybe used to be a bit more process orientated, because you're maybe learning and you're like, okay, i'll EQ before I compress and then I'll, then I'll saturate, then I'll send it to a delay.
Paul Brewer:That's the EQ before the compression, compression before the EQ, etc. Whatever.
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, exactly Like, okay to answer that probably more often than not would EQ. I got EQ into compression, yeah, but I really don't think about that. Yes, i go, okay, i pull up a fader. What's this? It's the bass guitar, right, you know it's a bit flubby. I think I'll attack that with some compression because in that moment, right there, and then that feels like the appropriate response because, but if you, The appropriate response.
Paul Brewer:Does that come from experience, then?
Aidan Cunningham:The idea of mixing.
Paul Brewer:You know, mixing in a bad room, for example, how you can go get around that sort of thing.
Aidan Cunningham:I think so. I think you get to the decision of what needs to happen a lot faster from experience, right, whereas I think someone practicing could get there, but it just might take them a few days of thinking about it and listening. And you know, if there is a skill to mixing, which I would hope to believe there is, it's being able to just make quick decisions and like being confident in your ability to know ah right, that needs a bit of. That needs 12 decibels of treble, which might be a mad thing to do to a learner Like you. Can't turn up that.
Paul Brewer:Yes, indeed, you can only turn it up one db.
Aidan Cunningham:Whatever it might need, just quick decisions And then maybe then come back from another past to refine that. But the idea of an order in which to do things, i'm not thinking about it. But I would say if you looked at one of my sessions and then looked at another song, it would probably be somewhat similar. But I'm really trying to avoid engaging the technical part of my brain as much as possible, right? So I've studied my AQ, i've studied my compression, i've studied all the really important sound engineering things, so as that they're in my brain to a point of muscle memory. Yeah, So when I need to then listen to music and decide, does the backing vocal need to feel a bit further away in dollar? I'm not starting to think about frequencies and hertz and Yeah, and maybe that's where I see people, like when you see learners kind of getting stuck at that point where the technical side of it overrides the creative side. Or maybe people get obsessed about gear and like, oh, i'm not just pre-amping this compressor And we all love it.
Aidan Cunningham:We all love mics and it's great fun. But if it doesn't make the music like, how does that relate musically? That's what I'm interested in. I don't really care if you've got a special tube in your compressor that makes it say like whatever, what does that make the vocal? what feel more forward back?
Aidan Cunningham:or bright, more excited, like that's unless it's relating to musical useful information. So when I'm mixing a song, another thing I'll do is I don't Like, if I'm sending songs to mix, i'm sending files. they'll come in in many different formats, maybe audio files, maybe a pro tool session, whatever, depending on the artist. But one of the first things I will do is remove any sense of too much information from it. So if it says in the audio file guitar Fender Twin amp SM57 microphone.
Aidan Cunningham:I'll rename that Jangle guitar or I'll rename it Sparkly synth or lead vocal, verse, vocal, backing vocal, not U87 into an EVE pre-op, Because that just I start thinking about it.
Paul Brewer:then I don't want to think about that, and I guess those terms might be terms that an uneducated might describe it It's a Jangle guitar, it's a Sparkly synth. So, we're taking the technology away from the music.
Aidan Cunningham:The struggle with mixing. One of the hardest parts of mixing is holding onto the objectivity, the objective listening, the musical fun listening while you're working on the song, and that's a hard place to get to. Yeah, it's kind of okay. Let's say you're growing up and you're a fan of music and then you decide I want to learn about sound engineering and mixing and producing and recording. When you open that world and you start playing with EQs and compressions, it almost it can ruin music for you for a while. Yes, suddenly it's all you can hear. You can just suddenly go oh, i can hear the reverb, i can hear the. It's like the you see behind the curtain or whatever. You see how the sausage is made, whatever it might be.
Aidan Cunningham:But the hard part then is getting back to where you were as a fan of music and being able to switch between the, the critical listening, as you'd call that, been able to identify okay, that's a Fender Telecaster plugged into a Marshall amp with a 57, versus that's an exciting guitar sound. Yeah, like getting back to the objective listening. As a music fan would listen to it And it's easy to go oh, look at my technically proficient mix, isn't it brilliant? I recorded everything, as the manual said I should, and that was great and I used the correct EQ on that, but it might be the most boring flat thing in the world.
Aidan Cunningham:If it's not musical, it's not enjoyable.
Paul Brewer:That idea. Does that mean that you've cut down on products you use As in? you know, like the FabFilter is a very intuitive set of tools.
Aidan Cunningham:Do I venture out more from that?
Paul Brewer:Yeah, Like is that a way of doing that? You know, just having the same EQ, the same compressor.
Aidan Cunningham:I was never one for going crazy with like thousands of plugins, having unlimited, just as the general way I work. I like kind of creative limits. I think humans are the most creative when you give us a kind of a creative boundary to work within, Like maybe even in recording here's eight tracks that you can only use eight tracks, like on a tape machine or something. Here's a not so great drum kit.
Paul Brewer:Make a song, yep.
Aidan Cunningham:You will make something a million times better than here's all the options Yes, unlimited tracks, any guitar sound you ever want in a digital guitar amp or whatever it might be. I feel like the chances of you just working with that would better. So I kind of like that mentality. When mixing, i certainly have a lot of plugins. You know I have a nice selection of plugins Ditto.
Aidan Cunningham:But, yeah, but not to the level some people do, definitely not. And I find myself, if I had my FabFilter EQ, some sort of multiband compression, maybe like a FabFilter saturation, and an access to like an 1176 style or an LA2 style plugin, i'd get an awful lot done with that. Right, i'm sorry. I should say maybe like an SSL style channel strip as well. I like that because you got your compression, your EQ. That's my musical EQ. I'd call that.
Paul Brewer:A reduced palette, as you say. Could you envisage a scenario where you would use stock plugins?
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, i think, for a kind of a uniformity and a uniformity for you to work with, in like almost a constraint, now some stock plugins just then, on the sonic quality of them, i'd be like, hmm, they might let me down a little bit, depending. But think about it this way Now the channel strip is amazing, but if you're just mixing on an SSL console, you've got 2448, 96 channels of the same tools And, yeah, ok, you'll have some outboard gear or whatever, but that'll all be limited enough. You can only send one base to the thing or whatever. Yeah, it's indeed So you don't need to have 12 different plugins on every channel. If you get Pro Tools or Logic or whatever, what you have built in is definitely enough to mix. Well, it's just when you some of certain advanced features like multi-bank compression and saturation that's where I like which will do some nice finishing work if you like. But to get a good balanced mix, there's certainly kind of most of what you need is there.
Paul Brewer:Would you ever mix with Essentially no plugins or less plugins, or, you know, would every track have a plugin on or anything like that? Not necessarily.
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, i still believe mixing is about balance. That's the key thing, right? Doesn't matter if you've got the best guitar sound in the world or whatever. It's balance and it's balanced down to maybe 0.5 of a dB. Like 0.5 of a dB, something being louder or quieter is significant, like it's. Maybe the average punter wouldn't notice that necessarily, but in terms of the feel of a song, that's the level of OK, very carefully balancing things. So not every track in a session would have a plugin on it at all. It's definitely about balancing and if needed, you'll address a track. If there's something OK that's not quite sitting right, or it's too bright or not bright enough or not exciting enough or not it's too dynamic, then that would be addressed with processing Right? Yeah, often guitars like your left and right guitar might just be straight up left and right and nothing. They're just hitting the mix bus, that's it.
Paul Brewer:It depends.
Aidan Cunningham:It really depends on the session.
Paul Brewer:Could you envisage a scenario where you might be doing much treatment?
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, well, like a well produced song has a production baked into it.
Paul Brewer:Right, i love that.
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, that's absolutely my favorite type of thing to work on. Not just because some of the work is done, it's not that, it's just that I can hear where they're trying to go with it Right And they just need some help with just getting it across.
Paul Brewer:Right.
Aidan Cunningham:They're getting it stuck, sometimes clashing, sometimes not working. There's something needs to be resolved. But a well produced song will have, if you put all the faders up to maybe zero we're, like you know, relatively up to zero you'll have a good sound and a good feeling song. It's just, the emotion of the song might not be exactly, you know, how it transitions into the verse in the chorus, might be right or how it's impacting the listener. But the idea of pulling up all the faders and everything is dull and flat and straight off the mics and that's still needs to be, that's not produced, then That's not recorded properly, i would think Right, and that's fine, like there's nothing wrong with that, there's no rules to any of this. But you'd see people saying, ah, but you're all these top mix engineers Should. The stuff they're saying to mix is already sounding fantastic. Like well, yeah, that's what production is Like, that's what it should be Absolutely.
Aidan Cunningham:That's. And then they need a mixing engineer, just to they're too closer at that stage. Right, The band, the producer, they've been in the studio working on it for however many thousand hours, Yeah, And they've. They hear that tambourine one more time. They're going to get sick like the cats. They've lost the objectivity. So they say, well, we'll ring up all the aid in there and Yeah, is that part of the reason why people would employ you?
Paul Brewer:The objectivity.
Aidan Cunningham:I would think so A lot of the producers I work with.
Paul Brewer:There's nothing technical that you're doing, that they couldn't do. It's just the clear view you'd have.
Aidan Cunningham:Effectively. If someone hires me as a mixing engineer, they're hiring me from my opinion on how I think their song would be best sounded. How I feel, yeah, and I've sent you a message about it the other day. But there's the new Peter Gabriel song, a song mixed by Spike Stent the full album and then also mixed by Chad Blake, and both that we released to enjoy as a different version. It's very interesting.
Paul Brewer:Yeah, i had a quick listen to that and I sort of thought that they sounded like did Peter leave it? Well, look at, there's a load of tracks, there's all our ideas. You mix it, you make the decisions, you know.
Aidan Cunningham:I'd. Yeah, i would probably think a lot of them are in there and often a mixer's job and I always feel it myself is kind of a you're a little bit of a filter in that, an editor And like as in not necessarily editing arrangements, but as in that doesn't need to be in the chorus.
Paul Brewer:Right.
Aidan Cunningham:The seventh synth that you can't hear anyway because there's 14 guitars. This is taking up room. The song, i'm just going to mute it, i'm just going to. You know you're kind of the way I view a mixing engineer in the most pretentious way possible, but I know genuinely what I think it is is. You are being handed the song by the producer to give to the listener. So, like the band and the producer say, okay, and here's the song. We want you to present this to the music fan, using my taste as a music fan Right To decide what you know. What do I like about this? what's exciting, what's not? But the interesting thing about that Peter Gabriel stuff is each mixer was focusing in on very different things.
Aidan Cunningham:Absolutely Yeah, and so where and that happens to me the whole time where I might, there might be a guitar doing a lead line in the background. I think that is brilliant. That should be the hook. Oh, that should be upfront. And they're like oh, we didn't, we forgot, we sent you that. Yeah, that was just a little thing in the background Could you maybe look at the synths a bit more. It's like sure, fine, Whatever. Maybe I went too far on it on a person.
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, But then bands often love that They're like oh, we never thought that could be the forefront of the song.
Aidan Cunningham:Brilliant, we love it, it's great. So I very much react as a What would I think, what do I feel sounds good? Not what do I think the public would like, because then you're not serving anybody. You know, i'm just giving my flavor on what I think this should be And if I love music enough and I feel like I know enough about it or different styles and music, that I don't think it's going to sound bad, i don't think I'm ever going to send someone to make this like oh, that's awful. I would hope not. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but it might be the right mix for the person you know. And that's the idea that 10 different mixers will give you 10 very different songs. It's a very important stage of how a song feels given to the listener.
Paul Brewer:That was like it was planned at the beginning. They planned in the studio to hand this out, extend the creativity by the individuals involved.
Aidan Cunningham:Very much And that's Spike's scent and It's Spike's scent Chad Blake has. So the Spike's scent is on a bright side mix. Chad Blake has done the dark side mix which is supposed to do the moon, I think. Bright side, dark side of the moon Not necessarily. It's not like a brighter mix or a darker mix In the name, it's not that, It's just the approach. And then there's actually an atmosphere called the inside mix Someone else has done.
Paul Brewer:Oh, right, okay, which I haven't heard, that.
Aidan Cunningham:Yeah, but I think that whole album is based off perception and how humans perceive things in the lyrics. So that's a very clever idea to have two completely different mixes on it, yeah, but I definitely know which ones I prefer because they find them much more exciting. And all the verses smaller in the chorus are huge. And that's the Spike's scent mix. Yeah, and I think Chad Blake is an amazing mix and engineer. He's really good, but whatever he's focusing on tends to be more the little tambourines and the sub-percussions and all that kind of stuff. It's really interesting, it's bringing it out. But just, i'm a sucker for a scent mix. Where it's Yeah, it's a great point And it's a big chorus and then the verse comes down. You know it's a really Yeah, it feels really good What he does.
Aidan Cunningham:He's what he does And he does very well.
Paul Brewer:So that's Aidan's way to do it. Many thanks to him for taking the time to chat. Do visit GeniusMoveie to find out about recording choruses to suit you. Thanks for listening.