For the Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum-selling mix engineer Jeff Braun (Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Jelly Roll), his role as a mixer is defined by simply ‘sweetening’ the intention and hard work of the artist and producer, rather than injecting his own sonic stamp onto the project.
In this episode of #TilYouMakeIt, Jeff Braun speaks on the various ways he approaches mixing and why adapting his creative process to suit each project is a crucial step in maximizing and doing justice to the sound and style of the song.
#TilYouMakeIt chronicles stand-out moments from the careers of the world’s most esteemed producers, mixers, and engineers.
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TRANSCRIPT
I don’t want to put my sonic stamp on everything because then everything sounds like me, not the artist. I want it to sound like what the producer and the artist worked so hard for. I just want to sweeten that.
I’d rather not have like a signature sound because my whole thing is I’m trying to improve upon what I was given. The production process and the producer should kind of have that on the tracks and then I want to come in and elevate that five percent, ten percent, just get it across the finish line.
If the session comes to me as stems, that’s kind of one process because then I can use everything how I want to use it. I can set the session up how I want to set it up. I can do the routing, I can do the subgroups, I can do anything kind of how I want it.
If it comes in as a session, I’m working out of the producer session and there are certain times where I can’t unbuild it and put it into something that I want to work in because it changes sonically too much, so I want to work where they left off and if that’s crazy routing, if that’s something that I don’t normally do, I just have to adapt and make that work.
I’ve got almost every plug-in there is and if it’s something that is new I’ll just get it, you kind of have to because you have to start where the producer left off.
