Get more space by adding… nothing

WM: “We always like to leave some space in our productions, but that isn’t easy when you’re mixing layer after layer of sound. Like everyone these days, there might be three or four kicks, five or six basses… pads, effects, vocals. They’re all fighting for their right to exist!

“Sometimes that’s purely a question of levels and EQ, but what we eventually started doing was opening the mic and recording the sound of the studio; the sound of silence. And we ran that with the track.

“If you think back to the days of analogue and tape, there were all kinds of noises and hissing in the final mix. Even some of the classic keyboards – the Juno or the DX7 – had little clicks and bangs. You don’t have any of that with plugins, which can make a mix sound almost too clean. A little bit alien.

“For me, that’ss one of the problems with some of the EDM productions – trap especially. It’s very powerful, but it’s too clean and cut far too tight. Technology lets you edit and gate everything to such a degree that you can forget that there also has to be some life in the song. This is just a personal opinion – there’s no right or wrong in the studio – but I like to hear some noise.

“It might seem like you’re adding ‘nothing’ to the mix, but that ‘nothing’ can sometimes bring a mix back to life.”