Embracing the old ways

Nothing musical about it

If you've ever followed a mixing tutorial, you've seen hints like 'cut the low end at 47 Hz', 'notch out 260 Hz', 'boost the highs at 7.2 kHz'. All of it over the spectrum of your track's frequency response as you tame the resonances, cut the mud and carve the low end. And that's fine. It's precisely what digital is good at: precision.

And yet there's nothing musical about it. Why?

Thankfully, we're not surgeons

You can tame every resonance and bend the frequency response as you please, with as many bands as you like. I'm sure there are people who enjoy this style of work (surgeons come to mind). I'm just not one of them. And I've been there - my first mixes took months on a single track, and I doubted myself for the most part of the process.

Presented with infinite choices, how do you pick the right one? And how do you know it was right? Will that snare sound better with the bell a couple of hertz up or down? Can you even hear that? Won't that vocal sound a little more airy if I move the shelf 20 Hz up? It's called choice paralysis, and it's why, when somebody tells me they've designed a tool with infinite possibilities, I feel something went wrong.

Mixing with your eyes

And because of how the task is presented, you're basing those choices on a non-musical sense: your eyes. Don't get me wrong, I love my eyes! But I'd rather judge sound with a different part of my body.

An experienced mixing engineer has learned to commit and move on. If you're starting out, you've just spent a couple of hours fine-tuning a snare drum, and that's the first track of the project!

The result is often a track that sounds overproduced, too polished, too cut, too 'done'.

Vintage EQs offer the opposite. No screen, and the frequency and dB markings are often not quite spot on. None of it matters, because the workflow isn't precise by design. You work faster, do less, and get better results.

It's the same with recording to tape versus using tape as a mix-time sweetener. What makes music recorded to tape sound like music recorded to tape is the workflow. It forces you to perform, and get things done while the tape rolls. No plugin gives you that. And a nice Studer in the corner of your room won't give you that either, unless you commit to its way of working and invite the machine into the process.

Three big knobs

When I was designing Kolor, I had that workflow in mind. Three big knobs. Tweak and move on. It has nothing to do with nostalgia, imitating a piece of hardware, or making things look 'nice' (whatever that means). It has everything to do with sound: it makes you choose fast, on instinct, and move on to the next task.

Precise tools, precise tasks

None of this means discarding all things digital and making notes on cave walls. Precise tools for precise tasks. Pro-Q, Trackspacer, SplitEQ or Soothe will tackle specific issues, and every one of them does far more than any vintage EQ. What they can't do is the thing I consider the equivalent of spice: mojo. And mojo, my dear, is what takes a cool mix to a whole new level.

I reach for them if something is still missing after the broad-stroke, alla prima adjustments with an old-school EQ. And the more I use the old stuff, the less I need the shiny new toys. Maybe that 0.5 dB resonance at 476 Hz won't kill my mix after all? Fewer choices force you to commit faster. For me, that's a huge benefit.

Paint and canvas

And yes, I know other EQs have three big knobs. It's not like I invented the wheel here! But this is where the tubes and transformers help. Thanks to how the devices I sampled were made, the sound is always smooth, larger than life, and just plain beautiful. Working with Kolor, Kolor Mikro or vintage hardware feels like painting with the best paint and canvas you can find. It's not only about moving fast. It's about getting to the point where you feel happy.

For me, that point is in two places. Musically, where I'm satisfied with what I hear. Physically, on a couch, with a warm cup of coffee. I tend to go from one to the other, enjoying all the benefits of moving faster.