When it comes to production and mixing, I find that people love talking about two things:
The low end, and the top end.
Is it tight enough, is it punchy enough? Does it feel bright, dark, smooth, harsh?
What is often overlooked, however, is everything in between – the midrange. The quality of the midrange is actually the defining characteristic of a “good” and well-planned production.
Living in the Midrange
The low end might be the foundation of your mix and the top frequencies might be the ceiling that shelters everything, but the midrange is the house itself. The place where everything exists and lives.
Being intentional about what is happening in your midrange can really open up your production. So many instruments occupy that space and those frequencies, so it can be a challenge to de-clutter space when it comes time to mix. If the parts are not arranged and played in a way that allows the midrange to sit nicely, there’s only so much that mixers can do to preserve the musical information living in that area and still produce a mix that is clear, coherent, and punchy.
Let’s unpack that for real life.
When I refer to midrange, I mean everything from ~300hz up to ~4khz or so. Take any song and filter out everything above and below those frequencies. The song will likely stay intact, and most instruments (if not all) will still be audible. That test alone is enough to verify that area as one jam-packed with transient information, harmonic content, stereo width, and front to back depth. It’s all in the midrange.
Getting Practical
Let’s take a production that has a low piano, an electric guitar playing power chords, and a punchy synth line. What does each instrument have in common? A lot. They all have fundamental tones within just a few Hz of each other, depending on the exact notes being played. They likely all have a fair amount of transient information as well. While the sonic characteristics, voicings, and timbre of each may be very different, getting those three elements to live together is a challenge as they’re all trying to serve the same purpose. (Especially if they’re all hitting the downbeats at the same time.)
What would be a better solution? Imagine if the piano continued to play the low heavy notes on the downbeat, but the electric guitar moved up an octave and played chords that now have a higher fundamental frequency than the piano. This would spread things out a little more and immediately create space. You can even take it a step further and remove some transient information from the synth so that it doesn’t compete with the other two elements; rather, it supports both in the background.
The result would likely be something much fuller sounding, and the instruments themselves would sound a lot “bigger,” as they each now have the sonic space to breathe and live independently. Considering these issues in the production and arrangement stage is always going to be better than assuming that the mixer can carve out enough space later.
Try it for yourself. Think intentionally about the midrange. Maybe try working on a pair of speakers like NS-10s or an Avantone mix cube while producing, and make arrangement decisions based on the limited bandwidth they provide. See where your productions end up and go from there!
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-Josh