dEhiN's Blog

Soundscapes and voices March 26, 2009

I was thinking recently on the way tracks in the West (North America and Western Europe) are produced. Specifically I was thinking about how they are mixed. Through my cousin’s blog – Love, Devi – I was introduced to the artist Brooke Waggoner. I believe on her site you can download her album “Fresh Pair of Eyes”. (I would post the link, but I’m too lazy to Google it right now, so just search for Brooke Waggoner). Her style of music is classified as Alternative & Punk; I would classify it as a mix of jazz, classical, folk, and possibly alt. punk. You really need to listen to her music to understand why it’s hard to properly classify her style.

Anyway, back to the issue of mixing tracks: Brooke Waggoner is (I would say) a rare artist in that she seems to treat all voices the same. Before I explain what I mean by that, let me define my use of the word voice. For me, a voice in music is any unique, or individual, instrument or vocal (commonly referred to as human voice) in music. As an example, let’s take a song that is sung by a lead female singer, has a backup vocalist who sings harmony, and has a piano, two guitars, a bass guitar, and drums as instrumentation. This song has 7 voices, drums counting as one for simplicity. So, getting back to Brooke Waggoner, she treats all voices as the same. That is, her message in the song is expressed through all the voices; at times one voice will be more prominent in purporting that message, but all the voices and their parts are used and combined in expressing whatever she is epxressing through the song. If it helps to picture this, think of message as more than the meaning of the lyrics; it’s the overall mood the song is trying to create.

If you recall, I mentioned that Brooke Waggoner has a mix of folk in her songs. The folk aspect is very much heard in her lyrics – they are story-like in their flow. But even with her lyrics, while they are telling a story, they are not the most prominent part of the song. The story is really told by all the voices, and the combination of their parts. For example, in one song her lyrics mention about this guy listening to her as she plays a concerto on the piano. The piano is one of the voices in the song, and at this point, as the lead vocal voice sings the word concerto, the pianist plays a tiptoe-type walkdown through half a scale. Basically, the piano part is made to sound like you’re listening to a classical concerto. Bringing all of this back to mixing, at this point, when the pianist plays the walkdown, the piano voice is made a little more prominent in the mix compared to the point just before when the lead vocalist was singing and the piano was backing.

Thus, the idea of treating all voices the same does not mean they all have to be at the same volume level through the whole song. Rather, the message of the song can be realized and expressed through all the voices. What I commonly hear in Western music is the message of the song realized and expressed through the vocals, and supported by the instruments. It’s almost like the instruments are there to provide structural support and nothing more. The focus is only on the vocals. To use an a painting analogy, the instruments are treated as the frame on which the painting is hung, and the vocals as the actual painting. Treating all voices the same would be viewing all the voices as the actual painting – perhaps just different colours in the painting.

As I implied, mixing while treating all the voices the same will still give prominence at certain points to certain voices. This also includes the idea of having certain voices – namely instruments such as bass guitar and drums – as structurally supportive voices. And I recognize that certain songs will need the prominence or focus given exclusively to the vocal voices, and the instrument voices will all have to be treated as structurally supportive voices. An example of a song like that, to me, is “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis. But, the point is that the basis upon which voice(s) carry or express the message should depend upon the message itself. It shouldn’t depend upon some cultural bias toward differentiating importance of various voices.

If, after reading all of this, you’re confused and don’t get the point I’m describing, check out Brooke Waggoner’s songs. I finally googled her, and her media page is here. If you scroll down that page to the track listing of her album “Fresh Pair of Eyes”, you have the opportunity to listen to each track (I believe fully). The example I gave above was from the track “So So”, but “My Legionnaire” also demonstrates my point quite well.

DH