Music mixing is the art of combining multiple, recorded audio tracks into one track. Mixers have the challenge of making every track sound as it's intended by the artist or artists involved in the recording. If the artists are a band, they might want to have the bass guitar sound louder than the drums, but not drown out the singer. This can be very difficult to do in a small recording booth if all instruments and members are playing at the same time. With music mixing, each instrument and singer can be recorded at individual times and later re-mixed into one sound.
Traditional music mixing equipment involved sound boards and looped analog recording tapes. Each track was recorded onto the tapes, which were exchanged out for different reels for each different instrument or vocal recording.
Modern music mixing equipment consists of a soundboard console and a computer. This allows artists to record various parts and have them digitally stored into a hard drive. Special software is then used to blend, adjust and mix sounds to their liking.
Multi-track recording techniques can define an artist's sound, depending on the intent of the producer. With sound mixing, a singer can record multiple takes of a line on several different tracks while listening to the instrumental in the headphones. He can then play each version back and pick the preferred track while scrapping the others. In VH1's "Making the Album" special featuring Steely Dan, the band members used this technique to select the guitar solo for the song "Peg." Many times over, key members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen used entire different lineups of bands before selecting which ones would be included in various track recordings.
One of the most popular sound-mixing software programs used by artists is Pro Tools. It's used in film scores, audio editing in movies, recording studios and television post-production. Pro Tools allows users to see graphical versions of sounds as they are recorded, allowing them to make instant adjustments versus relying on listening to the recordings over and over in an attempt to find flaws. Pro Tools can also allow users to adjust the recorded songs to mimic different output styles such as that from a vinyl record.
You can also practice the elements of music mixing at home for free. Audacity is a sound editing program created by Sourceforge. It's an open source program that allows software developers to add various tools. It functions like creating echos and exporting mixed tracks as MP3s. See Additional Resources below to download it.