John Hanes
You’ve helped shape the sound of some of the biggest records of our generation—what makes a mix feel undeniable?
While I do think that a mix does not make the song, the mix can certainly hurt it. But to your question more directly, a song, during the mix, feels like a good record when it transfers emotion. That can be a sad song that makes you feel tears welling up, or a dance track that makes you really get up and move. This is where the arts of songwriting, production, and mixing all come together to make the listener feel something.
When I’m working on a mix I’m consciously and unconsciously thinking of these emotional moments and how to make sure that they convey to the listener. A big pause, think the break before the drum hit in Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” builds anticipation and tension. A tempo change or key change can bump up the intensity.
The best records have these kinds of moments built into the performance, so we just need to make sure that they are effective in the mix.
When you sit down with a song for the first time, what are you listening for beyond the obvious?
As I listen to a song, usually the rough mix when I’m starting a mix and comparing it to the tracks in the multitrack, I immediately begin to form in my mind the direction that I think the song and the mix should be going. I’m already beginning to preplan things that I want to do in the mix; these words should have delay throws, the bass needs to cut through here, this synth line needs to come forward and blaze through the mix.
I’m also listening for problems to fix. A lot of these are vocal noises, breaths too loud, mouth clicks and pops. There may also be timing issues, notes that don’t cut off cleanly on a drop, hums and hisses and buzzes. These things really distract me, so I’ll begin eliminating them early in the mixing process.
You’ve worked on everything from intimate vocals to massive pop records—what’s the secret to making a record feel both huge and emotionally connected?
To me the best records don’t sound overproduced. Keep it simpler, let the song breathe, don’t fill every hole with a sound. It is easier to sound huge when you start from small and build, but if the song is huge and filled with everything all the way through, it can’t convey that emotion easily. A song with intimate vocals should sound like the singer is singing just to you, looking you in the eye, so back off with the production and effects and nail that performance. At this point every whisper, breath, and noise matters.A massive pop record needs to be able to fill your mind’s stadium and feel huge there, but to make it feel huge it needs some space to fill, and to define that space, you need some room in the production for openings.
What separates songs that sound great from songs that feel timeless?
Songwriting, production and performance. If all three are on point together, you’ll have a timeless song. Any one missing and you can have a great sounding song, but it will not be timeless. Notice that as a mixer, I don’t list a great mix as part of this recipe. There are timeless songs with bad mixes; no I won’t name names.
After thousands of mixes, what still excites you about opening a new session?
To be honest, recently I am more horrified about opening a new session. The routing convolutions, templates that have useless complications, and productions with no choices made but leave it up to the mixer to decide how to handle their 12 kick drums, 10 snares, 9 high-hats, 7 drum loops, and half of the percussion instruments in their box.
Technically the great power of computers and DAW’s has pushed the decision making process later and later into the song production. All of this clogs up the artistic arteries and makes mixing a bypass procedure where we are spending a lot of time and energy doing no wrong instead of being able to find and make some magic.
I’m not exactly sure where these super complicated routing, extensive parallel processing, and multitude of plug-ins in the production are coming from. Whether it is from a template process where everything is on the table from the beginning of a production, and then every added sound adds another process, or whether it is a belief that adding more plugins to shape the sound, and to some degree intertwine sounds with processing from other sounds will fix things. In either case, the production really becomes the mix because any change to the intertwined production elements breaks the demo-itis barrier and often gets rejected.
You’ve worked across major shifts in technology - from analog workflows to immersive audio - what evolution in sound has been most exciting to you?
I have really enjoyed diving into Atmos mixing. I think that it blends my technical outlook with my artistic instincts really well. I wish that more people were able to hear these mixes as intended, on an immersive speaker system, because when they do I get the same reaction every time. Wow!!
When listeners hear a record you’ve worked on, what do you hope they feel - even if they never know your name?
I love it when people get excited about a record, it doesn’t just become background music that they’ve heard over and over again, I want that “hang on I Love this one!” pause in the conversation type of reaction. It isn’t just a familiar song, it takes their mind somewhere else for a moment. When a song can evoke an emotion, or a memory, or a feeling I think the job has been done well.
Of all the records you’ve touched, has there ever been a moment where you sat back and thought: “Wow… this is special”?
I’ve had those moments, but they don’t necessarily translate in to the greatest hits I’ve worked on. The first time I had that feeling was recording and mixing with Teddy Riley on Blackstreet’s “Love’s In Need”. That production gave me that exact reaction. I guess it is less common these days for me, but when the writing, production, and performance of a great song line up you do feel it. I think recently I had that feeling opening up Taylor Swift’s “Life Of A Showgirl” song files to prepare if for my Atmos mix. It tells the story in such a well written form and takes you from intimate storytelling to concert performance with Sabrina coming in and the crowd at the end; a perfect circle story within the song.