Mixing Pop Music with Brent Hendrich - Music Production Podcast #349

Brent Hendrich is an award-winning mix engineer with over 20 years of experience in the Nashville music industry. He has worked in just about every stage of the recording process and within a wide variety of musical genres. In recent years, Brent has become a specialist in mixing pop music. 

Brent and I spoke about his work as a pop music mixing engineer. He shared valuable mixing techniques and strategies for reaching the artistic vision of his clients. Brent discussed some challenges he's faced and skills he's learned during his 20+ year career. 

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:00.43)

Hi. How's it going everybody? And welcome to the Music Production Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Funk. On today's show, I have Brent Hendrich and he's an award-winning mix engineer, producer, and all around a pretty interesting musical guy working out in Nashville. He specializes in pop music mixing. And I'm very excited to talk to him, been listening to his stuff in some of his other interviews and he's got a lot to offer. And I think we've got a lot to learn from Brent. Brent, thanks.

being here.

Brent Hendrich (00:31.123)

Oh, Brian, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Brian Funk (00:33.726)

Yeah, my pleasure, man. You know, I mentioned just now that I've listened to some of your other interviews and we have a common thing from our past, which is parents basement studio. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (00:45.742)

Oh, that's a fun place to start. Yeah, that's where it does all start.

Brian Funk (00:50.03)

I am forever indebted to my parents, you know, for obviously for raising me, but as well as just being the family that was allowing band practice to happen in their basement and eventually came into like studio gear and stuff. And I thought that was a cool thing that you had the same as well. I was kind of curious. Just how did you start? What were you using in that situation in the basement?

Brent Hendrich (00:55.778)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:04.255)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:16.978)

Yeah, that was the late 90s, so it was a lot different back then than it is now. I mean, it's so much easier to get a Focusrite interface and logic. And for not a lot of money, you can kind of have your own studio. And so back then there was a lot fewer options. For me, I think I was probably 16. I was in high school. I was in a band. We did that first record together as a band at a studio that had an early system, a Pro Tools TDM system.

That's kind of when at first the bug bit me, when I was like, this is great. I want to learn to do this myself. And so it was that second album, maybe my junior, senior year in high school that I was like, okay, let me see if I can figure out a way to get some of that same gear that we had at that studio when we did our first album and maybe we can record our second album ourselves. I've always been kind of a DIY guy. And so I started just doing a little bit of shopping around and like I said, there wasn't a lot on the market.

I think, I don't even know if Pro Tools had the, I don't remember what, maybe it was the Digi001 that came first, I don't even know if that was quite out yet. But through a magazine ad or something, I saw that there was this company, Gadget Labs, that made like an 8-in and 8-out interface. And it was like $500, I'd been saving up money while working at Chick-fil-A all through high school. And bought that $500 interface, and it connected with one of those big like printer cables to this 550 megahertz.

Hewlett Packard, like the family computer. So I set that up in my bedroom and got the interface going and had Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, which was one of the DAWs back then that was available. And the Waves Native Power Pack is what it was called. It was like early, early waves where it was just like the basic C1 compressor and the Q1 through 10 EQ and maybe like Trueverb and...

Brian Funk (02:44.733)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (03:09.578)

There wasn't much there. It was super expensive too back then. And so with that, you know, and a Mackie mixer for preamps and some mics that I borrowed from the church and it just kind of threw something together. And we ended up, yeah, recording our second record in Cubase and we, you know, burned everything to CDs, sent it to someone to have it mastered. And so yeah, it was a really cool experience. That was a great like place to learn and just make a lot of mistakes and still.

Brian Funk (03:11.67)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (03:37.014)

probably developed some bad habits, but that's when I knew that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. And so I just started talking with my parents about it. They were always super supportive of, you know, they're supportive of me doing whatever I was really passionate about. And they knew that was audio. And so I started looking at my options. I grew up in East Tennessee. And so Nashville made a lot of sense. It was only about a five hour drive from where I grew up. And the options were basically MTSU,

which is Middle Tennessee State, Belmont, which is a school that's well known for their music program. And then SAE, School of Audio Engineering, had just opened up the year before they're on Music Row. And so, you know, I talked with some mentors at the time and kind of got the advice that it made more sense for me to not do the university path. And I was looking at Belmont and I'm really glad that I kind of made that decision and chose SAE.

I was in and out of there in, I think nine months maybe, and at 19 was already doing internships with a few people here in Nashville in the industry that were doing really, really great work. And so I got to learn from them. So I kind of had like the DIY thing in high school in my bedroom and then got to learn just more like signal flow and polar patterns and all those kinds of things that I knew nothing about when I was doing it myself. And then after that, I got to do several years with some professionals and kind of learn.

Brian Funk (04:39.49)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (05:03.326)

you know, some techniques, things that they don't teach you in school, how to make guitars big or how to get a great acoustic guitar sound or, you know, those kinds of things. So I think kind of between those three things, it was kind of a real nice all around, you know, path that I was on and was able to get through all of that and, you know, be freelance in my early 20s, which was what I wanted. I've always wanted to be kind of my own boss and, you know, make the final calls as to, you know, how the project kind of turns out.

Brian Funk (05:19.266)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (05:34.33)

Right. Yeah, that's awesome. Cause you got kind of the exploration on your own. Then you got a bit of education and then you've got the, the kind of real world. Here we go. You're going to intern and yeah.

Brent Hendrich (05:35.958)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brent Hendrich (05:44.99)

Yeah, here's how we deal with clients that are difficult or, you know, what do you do when they don't show up for the session on time? How do you? Yeah, so I got to, yeah, my mentors are really, you know, great in kind of getting me, giving me a nice head start, that's for sure.

Brian Funk (05:59.102)

You know, I think that so much of this is really about what you can do. And there's like a hard question, I guess, for a lot of young kids coming out of high school, you know, to go to college is a really serious decision. And I think it's really given almost like, it's just what you do. That's what they kind of teach you. And just what you do is, you know, taking in all kinds of student loan debt.

Brent Hendrich (06:06.132)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (06:19.33)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (06:27.054)

making really serious decisions about your life that it's going to affect you for a long time when you really have no idea what anything's about, you know, coming out of high school. But it seems like that path is a pretty nice way because you got, like you said, you got some of the technical stuff, but then you got right in there and started working. And I think those are just such great programs when you can get that.

Brent Hendrich (06:34.526)

Yeah. Yep.

Brent Hendrich (06:43.629)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (06:49.834)

Yeah, I think so. I mean, in 20 years of doing this professionally, not one client has asked where I went to school. No one cares. It's all about what your work sounds like and how well you take care of your clients. That's really all that matters in this industry. I think if you were forced or encouraged by your parents to do the university path, I think that maybe going to school for something other than audio engineering or whatever that looks like.

Brian Funk (06:57.57)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (07:20.194)

It might make more sense, you know, a business degree or marketing degree or something like that. I think, you know, something that's going to help you kind of grow your business and kind of on the side, you know, maybe you can be learning a lot of those, you know, those techniques. There's, there's so like, it's a lot different than when I first moved to Nashville, you know, 23 years ago. I mean, there's so much great content all over the web between YouTube and Mix with the Masters and podcasts like this. And I mean, you can just consume.

content for days and days and days and just learn so much from so many different people. I think between that, if you're disciplined enough and can consume those kinds of things while also doing some projects on your own and trying to find also a mentor that you can work for, I think that's kind of like the secret recipe that I tell people to do something more along those lines. You won't have any student debt and you'll just get to where you want to go a little bit quicker. You can start building out that portfolio because that's really all people like I said care about is.

Brian Funk (08:03.189)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (08:17.602)

What does your work sound like and do they connect with it? Do they want to hire you? You know?

Brian Funk (08:22.922)

Right. It's like the kind of thing like we get so focused with education, with test scores and things like that. And I always say to my students at the high school level, you know, if you were going to get a house built, what do you want to see? Do you want to see like how well somebody did on the carpentry exam? What do you want to see the house? Like that's kind of the approach I do with my students is like, I want to see what you can do. Show me what you can do. I'm going to give you a test on it. I think the same thing with music, especially.

Brent Hendrich (08:41.56)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (08:50.254)

I mean, who cares what you get on a multiple choice exam about music theory or even just all kinds of engineering stuff. It's so much more about what you can do. And a lot of that stuff anyway is pretty subjective, where it might work in one area and be totally different in another. But I like that you also said you can consume as much as you want online, but also do projects.

Brent Hendrich (09:08.427)

Yep. Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:17.078)

get the work in there because that's the trap too, is you can just, there's limitless education and that can almost be a form of procrastination and avoiding the work.

Brent Hendrich (09:17.078)

Yeah, absolutely.

Brent Hendrich (09:27.65)

For sure. Yeah, I mean, I think you can take that money that you put into going to, you know, a school and just invest that in a little bit of gear. It doesn't even take much. I think for, you know, just even a few thousand dollars, you can do so much with getting a, you just get a laptop and an interface and a DAW and that, you know, that's enough to really be able to at least start recording some friends or whoever will allow you to, you know, to get your hands dirty a little bit and make some mistakes.

And I think that's where you're really going to do a lot of learning. And when you have that intern in place as well, then you can kind of take some of the things you've been learning from them and apply that to your world. I did a lot of that early on as well as just kind of stealing from them a bit.

Brian Funk (10:11.282)

And you mentioned maybe get a business or marketing degree. And even before we started recording, we were talking about cameras. And I don't know about you, I'm not into photography. It's nothing I've ever done for myself as an art or anything. Web design is something I've never done for fun, but music pulls you into all these unusual places that you never expected.

Brent Hendrich (10:18.423)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (10:28.632)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (10:38.43)

I was kind of wondering like what sort of things as a freelancer have you found yourself doing that probably, you know, 18 year old Brent would have never imagined was on his path to become an audio engineer and mixer.

Brent Hendrich (10:38.573)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (10:50.158)

Yeah, I like that question. Yeah, because that's something that I talk with, you know, beginners or interns all the time. It's like, you know, you need to have like chops when it comes to this, you know, whatever it is, mixing or mastering or producing or all the above, but also, you know, you're a business and you've got to operate that way, you know? I mean, I tell people I'm a janitor and I'm an accountant and I'm gonna do marketing and sales and web design and all of those things, content creation.

social media management, whatever you want to call it. It's all part of what you need to be doing as a business. And so that's a lot of things I probably wasn't thinking about at the time, but over the years I've learned how to use WordPress and how to talk with my CPA about things and cleaning, like I'm the janitor, I've got to keep my studio clean, that's me. That's a small thing, but hiring,

Brian Funk (11:47.79)

Well, no one wants to go to a dump, right? I mean, that matters.

Brent Hendrich (11:49.842)

No, right. Yeah. I mean, I don't have many guests anymore since I'm mixed, but even for me, I need to keep it that way, I guess. But even yeah, hiring photographers for promotional images for a website, all of those kinds of things. You know, it's part of just being a business. And so that's kind of why I say, you know, if going and getting like a sales or marketing or business degree might even make more sense and minoring and whatever it is you want to do in music.

And then if you decide later on you don't want to do music, then you've got a really solid degree that you could use in some other industry as well, I guess.

Brian Funk (12:26.03)

Hmm. Yeah. I think that's great advice because that's a lot of the stuff I've had to educate myself on. No idea was coming up. And next thing you know, you're like learning how to do a video editing software or like, what can I write off for taxes? Like all this stuff that's just, you know, not the glamorous side of what we picture.

Brent Hendrich (12:40.054)

Yep. Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (12:49.254)

No, but it's just as important. I mean, you've got to do that stuff to try and, you know, get other people's attention, especially on the marketing side of things, you know, doing, just keeping up with social media. I mean, being top of mind, I think is something that's really important. There's a lot of other people doing this as well. And I think, you know, it's good for other engineers, producers to be out there kind of showing off what, you know, they're working on and all those things. I mean, it's, any other business would be doing the same kind of thing. So it's just...

Brian Funk (12:58.466)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (13:18.166)

It's a little uncomfortable sometimes at first, but I think it's really important for everyone to be good at selling themselves.

Brian Funk (13:25.09)

Yeah, good point. Now you've done a lot of different types of work within production or mixing engineering, but you've kind of now decided to really hone in on pop music mixing. So not even just mixing, but specifically pop music. I'm curious, like what drew you to that? Was there something like that you enjoyed about that particular, and it's also very specific too.

Brent Hendrich (13:38.499)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (13:51.35)

Yeah, yeah. Being specific is very important to me right now. I just wanna keep kind of niching down more and more and more the longer that I do this. But you know, my love for pop music started really, I mean, kind of early on in my career, even in the early 2000s when, you know, the Kelly Clarksons or the Avril Lavignes or the Ashley Simpsons or...

trying to think of a lot of that female or like early Katy Perry stuff you know that I was really into a lot of those records any of the Max Martin Dr. Luke records John Shanks who was doing a lot of the Michelle Branch and so that was kind of like when I first really fell in love with pop music but then at the time I was just I was doing a little bit of everything I was tracking and I was producing and I was writing and I was mixing I was kind of like

one-stop shop other than I was outsourcing mastering for every record that I worked on. But just over the years, I've kinda gotten to a place where I just wanna become more and more of a specialist. And so I think the first shift was a few years ago when I decided I'm gonna no longer do production. I'm just gonna be focusing on mixing and that's all I am now is I'm a mixer. And so that was kind of like phase one was just.

kind of honing in on that because that's what I wanted to be doing. That's what I was best at. That's what people kept hiring me to do. And you can work remotely that way. My room is set up for it. There's a lot of reasons why mixing is kind of what I wanted to kind of hone in on. But then I just decided I want to get even more, become even more of a specialist. I mean, I think of like a lot of the mixers that I like, they're kind of like that as well. Serbin being one of my favorites, but then like Spike Stent and Manny Maraclean and some of those guys as well. They're kind of known as like...

Top 40 pop mixers, they do a lot of that kind of stuff. And so I just, you know, between my love for pop music and my love for mixing, I just kind of wanted to bring those together and just kind of start to, you know, paint this picture that that's who I am, that's what I do. So yeah, mixing is what I do best, and pop music is the music that I enjoy working on the most, so it's like this kind of perfect combination of the two. That's kind of, I guess, when I'm at my very best is when I am mixing.

Brian Funk (15:35.842)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (16:02.143)

pop song. So if that makes any sense.

Brian Funk (16:04.798)

Yeah, totally. Is it something about the style or is it the techniques that go behind it? Because there's definitely a much different approach, I suppose.

Brent Hendrich (16:10.167)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (16:16.838)

It's how concise it is, the minimalism, just getting to the point, the hooks, how high-fi the sounds are. That's kind of, I think, why I like it. And it's always evolving. I feel like something like jazz or country or rock, I feel like it doesn't evolve as quickly, maybe, as pop music. Pop music can kind of be all over the place. Not long ago, it was almost more EDM influenced, but then now you're hearing more

Brian Funk (16:43.299)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (16:45.254)

alternative, like guitars and things coming back around. So it's just, I feel like it kind of turns around a lot quicker than some of the other genres. So I enjoy that, just kind of having to always be on my toes and follow the trends and keep up with the trends. I think that's another reason that I really enjoyed as well. But yeah, that's probably why I love pop music.

Brian Funk (17:06.894)

Hmm. Yeah, it's definitely always kind of cutting edge sound. I guess that's by definition, you know what it is. It's the new thing and the exciting thing that's going on. Yeah. Which is a hard thing to do.

Brent Hendrich (17:16.298)

Yeah, it appeals to a wide audience too. You know, that's the thing I like about it is more people. Yeah, it really is, it really is.

Brian Funk (17:26.778)

How would you, do you find there's different approaches in the actual technical stuff? Say compared to like you're doing country rock, then you get to pop different considerations, because so much of this is subjective. And something I was thinking about recently was I play in a three-piece garage rock band, dirty, you know, rough around the edges stuff.

Brent Hendrich (17:40.351)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (17:51.614)

Okay. Yeah.

Brian Funk (17:55.738)

And we were listening to a bunch of different records to try to figure out what we wanted ours to sound like. And you know, the guys would bring me songs, check this out, check this out, we want it to sound like this. And everything is so different. You know, one track, the vocals totally buried. The next one, it's way up loud. Then the snare is real dark and it's real bright on this. I mean, there's no right answer.

Brent Hendrich (18:11.458)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (18:21.902)

How do you, I'm trying to form my question here for you, but I guess it's like, do you find it's more, is it kind of like more specific where there's like, like you mentioned like trends you follow and very true, like we had like basically pop was EDM and then there was a lot of country in it. Now you're starting to hear like the 90s alternative come back a little in there.

Brent Hendrich (18:36.278)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (18:41.826)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (18:48.838)

Is there any kind of commonality, I guess, with your mixes when you're doing pop?

Brent Hendrich (18:52.558)

commonality.

Brent Hendrich (18:56.766)

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this answers your question, but when I think about pop, I think about something that when it's given to me, it's something that's already closer to the finish line than maybe when I, if I were to receive files on a country record or a rock record. I think, you know, with those records, I have more freedom maybe in a mix like that. Whereas pop music, it seems like the producer and the artist have a...

have already established this very specific vision and they've done more mixing along the way as opposed to other genres where it's like maybe there's got an EQ on something or a compressor on something. It's like with pop music, there may be 10 different plugins on this vocal chop making this very specific sound, you know? And so I think the difference for me, working on pop music is it's more about taking what they've created and then finishing it as opposed to...

starting from scratch and mixing something. That's kind of the biggest difference that I see. And I don't know if that answers your question, but for me, I'm focused more on just getting in the heads of the producer and the artist early on before I even start and kind of figuring out, okay, like, do you like where you've left it? And then, you know, where now, like how far should I take it from here? And how much like flexibility or freedom do I have? Whereas I feel like with other genres, it's like, here's the files.

We're excited to hear what you do with it kind of thing. So I think that's the biggest difference. As far as commonality, I don't know if there is. Yeah. No, I think I know what you're saying. But yeah, but I will say that the way that I approach a pop mix is going to be different than probably how I would approach a mix in a different genre where, like I said, I think it's just I would have more freedom in other genres where it's pop.

Brian Funk (20:27.83)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (20:36.294)

Yeah, it's a terrible question, but thank you.

Brent Hendrich (20:55.198)

I need to kind of be a little bit more careful that I keep that vision intact when I'm working.

Brian Funk (21:00.702)

Right. And you kind of got into what I was trying to put into words there before that idea that I guess like, you know, if you get like a band recording, it's, there's not all that crazy sound design kind of stuff. Like the drums weren't produced a certain way. There's, there's a lot of, it's more natural sounding. So you kind of have like your leeway with that. But when it's something that's kind of got all sort of futuristic production on it.

Brent Hendrich (21:09.846)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (21:14.661)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Brent Hendrich (21:21.067)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (21:30.242)

Um, then there's, you gotta really respect that, I guess.

Brent Hendrich (21:30.336)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (21:34.646)

Yeah, and that's where keeping up with trends, I think, is important because it's like, okay, well, what's cool now? How did they get there sonically? Oftentimes, it's techniques that I find myself using a lot, and this is something that I think probably applies a lot to the pop genres. Lots of saturation, big bottom end, big airy top end, tons of detailed automation, lots of effects throws and scene changes.

big dynamic changes from verses to choruses, a highly processed mix bus, some of those kinds of things, like feel a bit more pop specific as opposed to, I may not be that heavy handed in a genre that's more of what maybe someone would call organic, where it's just like a three piece, where you just got drums, bass, guitars, and a couple of vocals. With that, it's more of maybe just...

Brian Funk (22:12.159)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (22:32.13)

the typical kind of, you know, the OG stuff, the basic, you know, compression EQ, you know, it may not be pulling up a ton of like multi-band or, you know, soothe or like, it may not be as much of like, creating these really precise kind of sounds. And that's more of what I think of like pop music is, is like making space for everything and a little bit maybe more tidy than other genres.

Brian Funk (22:56.13)

Hmm. Yeah, I was kind of thinking about that a bit because you've got these more instrumental things that you want it to sound like it is, but pop has definitely got, and this might be like electronic music too, where there's so many options where you can go. For me, going back to the band record again, as we were recording, it really took us...

a minute to like decide where we're going with this. So do we want it to sound natural? Because I've been fooling around a lot with like all kinds of crazy production techniques and I have these synthesizers over here and we can really have some fun if you want. And we had to like say, now let's try to make it representative of what the band sounds like. That's one direction. It's just a choice. You have some pretty interesting ways of figuring that out though, I understand with.

Brent Hendrich (23:33.41)

Mm-hmm. Ha.

Brent Hendrich (23:42.243)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (23:52.722)

with your artists or the people you're working with when you receive a mix that you have a kind of a way of figuring out what they want. You have an intake form you said, and you like to do like consultations, just a.

Brent Hendrich (24:01.998)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's something that it took me a while to learn. And I think I had to really learn it once I started working primarily in the pop space, just because there is a bit more of this established vision. Or it's already almost halfway mixed, sometimes by the time I receive the files. And so, yeah, I have an intake form on my website. It's just kind of like a hidden link. And I can send that.

to the producer or the artist. And it just kind of walks them through a lot of different questions, you know, asking about references, how attached are they to the current rough mix, you know, adjectives to kind of check different boxes to describe kind of what you're looking for. Do you want the vocal up in the mix? Do you want it tucked? You know, if you do have a reference, what are the things you like about that reference song that you want me to kind of chase? Just all of these questions, it kind of helps me kind of get a better idea of what they're looking for.

And then a phone call is always great too. Those are the two things that really helped me a lot before I ever dive into a mix. And I found that just doing that before even starting makes it so much easier for me and it ensures that first mix that I send to them is as close as it can possibly be to what I think they're looking for. So, I encourage everyone who mixes to do something like that. It doesn't take much time. It will help you. And in...

They'll feel like they're a bit more involved with the mixing process as well, which I think is valuable because when they receive that first mix, there's a little bit of ownership there. They're like, yeah, this is good. I like steered him in this direction, you know? And so yeah, I think it's been a great addition to my world. And so I think, yeah, anyone needs to be doing something like that.

Brian Funk (25:31.35)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (25:36.546)

Hmm. Right.

Brian Funk (25:49.078)

Yeah, it gives you a good starting place, probably saves you a ton of time as well, just that you know you've got the right thing going and not just kind of your own idea where, who knows where you might decide the song should go. And

Brent Hendrich (26:04.286)

Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, if for some reason they check that they want it, you know, to feel really dry, and I don't know that, you know, I may be putting a bunch of verb on a bunch of things, thinking that it feels really cool, you know, super wet. And, you know, so just by them checking that one box before I start the mix, it lets me know, hey, I need to be careful not to get too crazy with verb. You know, that's a very simple example, but that changes everything, you know, with the way that the song comes across, so.

Brian Funk (26:14.158)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (26:23.702)

Right.

Brian Funk (26:32.258)

Hmm. Yeah. And again, like just as a freelancer, time is precious. And the more you can get done, the more you can work. And again, to speak to what you were sort of saying earlier, the kind of like cleaning the studio stuff, being a person that's easy to work with, that wants to know, I think that's a really important thing for people to...

Brent Hendrich (26:40.35)

It is.

Brian Funk (26:58.566)

feel that you want to get them to where they want to go.

Brent Hendrich (27:02.514)

I think so, yeah. And just another idea that I had that's maybe worth mentioning is those first few hours of a mix are the most precious, in my opinion. That's where you're making the biggest, boldest moves that are going to dictate where that mix is going to go. And if you don't really know where it needs to go and you're just trying different things, you're eating away at those precious few hours. But if you have a really good idea in your head, like, okay, they want...

vocal up, they want everything really dry, they want it to feel super saturated. This is their reference, their reference has massive bottom end. Knowing all those things, it's like, okay, I know that I'm gonna push the bass up here and I'm gonna treat the vocal this way, right in that initial 30 minutes. I already know all of those things. Because for me, it's like those big bold moves happen and then the back half of the mix is the fine tuning. That's like riding automation at a tenth of a dB here.

and doing this little thing here in those small moves. But if you know where they're wanting to go and you make those big moves early on, then I think you're making the most of those precious few hours, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Brian Funk (28:13.666)

Right, yeah, the big moose. So I'm wondering if it's pop. Obviously vocals are huge. I think that's kind of most genres, honestly, whether we, I mean, maybe us as like mixers, producers, we like to think we're paying attention to all these little details, but the even.

Brent Hendrich (28:22.506)

Vocals most important always, yeah.

Brent Hendrich (28:27.347)

Yeah, I think so.

Brian Funk (28:39.142)

mixers and producers, I think when we first hear a song, that's the thing we're drawn to. It's what everyone else is drawn to. We hear the voice, we connect with that first. It's the thing where, you know, most evolved to take in as a species. So with that in mind, are you starting there or do you bring in other elements first? Do you have a way of working or is it just really depend on the song?

Brent Hendrich (28:48.162)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (29:02.122)

Yeah, that's a good question. And it's my thought process has changed over the years as I've gotten wiser, I've kind of approached it a little bit different. I mean, what I like to do is I'll bring all the files into my template. That's just something I've been refining for many, many years now, and I know where everything's at. That, yeah, that is in Cubase. I've been in Cubase for, gosh, like 20 years. Started with New Window and then moved into Cubase. So it's just, yeah, they are. They're both made by Steinberg. Yep, yep.

Brian Funk (29:19.19)

That's Cubase.

Brian Funk (29:27.09)

And they're kind of related, aren't they? Is that the Steinberg? Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (29:32.05)

And so I just know it well. I'm mixing just dry or wet audio files or stems, so it's not really a big deal for anyone. I'm not typically mixing from project files. If I absolutely have to, I'll find a way to make it work or pull it up somewhere else and bring it into my world. But yeah, and so once I do that, I'm trying to think of where I was going before I brought up the template thing. Oh yeah, kind of what I approach first in a mix, yeah.

Brian Funk (29:58.487)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (30:00.678)

So used to, I would wait way too long to bring the vocal in. I would focus a lot more on the instrumentation and then, oh, okay, now let's bring the vocal in and try to make it fit, you know. Well, if the vocal is the most important thing, it deserves the most space in the mix and everything else should be more supportive. So what I like to do, or try to do at least, and every mix is different, I kind of just.

mix instinctually and sometimes it goes one way and sometimes it goes a different way. But I like to kind of get my gain staging into my mix buss right with like the kick and the snare or the kick and the clap or whatever like that push and pull is in the drum side of things. So once I get the groove roughly hitting like the mix buss where I want it with the mix buss plugins engaged and disengaged, I'll kind of get pretty close within a, you know.

a DB or so for I want that to be. Then I'll start to bring in what I call like the star of the show or the most important instrument element of the song. Usually it's going to be like an acoustic guitar or a piano or a pad maybe sometimes, but usually it's a guitar or some type of keyed instrument. And I like to kind of work with that in the vocal as early on as I possibly can and get those feeling really good together.

maybe with the groove as well, and then I'll start maybe bringing in the bass and then the kind of the secondary kind of elements. Maybe that's, you know, additional guitars and background vocals, those kind of come in towards the end. So that's the way I typically like to work, is getting a little bit of like that snappy transient groove thing coming in and then bringing in the vocal and that kind of that one instrument that... The best way to describe it is if you're going to do this live, it's like...

with one instrumentalist, like what is that person playing, you know, and that's usually what it is. It's typically like a chordal thing that runs throughout the entire song. And so I'm just getting those two working well together. So yeah, that's typically how I like to work.

Brian Funk (31:59.074)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (32:10.314)

It makes a lot of sense and a mistake I make along the way a lot is building up the instruments one at a time a little too much. So I get the drums sounding great and it's filling up all my head room and now I got to bring in the next element and I got no space for it. So I have to start bringing them back and changing things. It took me way too long to realize that it's all a sum, right? It's not these individual parts.

Brent Hendrich (32:18.644)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (32:22.923)

Yep.

Brent Hendrich (32:26.422)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (32:36.586)

Yep, it is.

Brian Funk (32:39.478)

For me, the big realization was actually mixing bass and guitar. And drums, I guess too, where I wanted my guitars to be thick and heavy and bassy. I wanted my bass to be heavy. I wanted the kick drum to be heavy. I wanted everything to be heavy, but nothing is heavy in that world because they're now kind of all the same. I guess what I'm saying is it's all relative.

Brent Hendrich (32:54.999)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (33:02.254)

Sure.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:06.55)

You can't have something heavy if you don't have something to balance it out that's not heavy by comparison. Yeah, I guess I'm wondering if there are any kind of like really simple, basic insights you have that I think we tend to forget as we get into this where we're slapping effects and compressors and we don't even know what we're doing half the time. Sometimes we lose the sense of the big picture. And I do this.

Brent Hendrich (33:11.69)

Right. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (33:32.983)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (33:34.022)

I can't, it's like I can't resist sometimes. Like I want to hear these drums so big and huge to the point where there's nothing left in my, no space left for anything. You kept saying space a lot. I found a lot, there's a lot of sacrifice that needs to be made to make things work together. Are there some kind of like really basic principles you like to follow, things you like to keep in mind while you're mixing, while you're trying to make things work together?

Brent Hendrich (33:44.461)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (34:03.802)

Yeah, I mean, the big things for me are like not processing something just because you have the capability of doing that. I think lots of times people just pull up a bass and like, oh, I need a compressor, I need an EQ, I need this, I need our bass. Without even really spending the time thinking about does it actually need that, I think sometimes we over process things more than we need to. And

Brian Funk (34:13.898)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (34:32.566)

So I think that's one thing. I think another thing is these are all just things that I encourage like as beginners especially to think about. It's really easy to work visually now and it's so easy to just start removing frequencies because they look weird on a spectrum analyzer on your Pro-Q3. That frequency might need to be there. That might be like the fundamental goodness that you want. And just cause it looks weird doesn't mean that it needs to be removed. And so...

And this is kind of tied with the next one, which is like, I think it's really easy to work in solo a lot. And this is something I talk about all the time because I used to be really bad about this and it's just a habit that I've really, you know, over the years broken. But you know, it's so easy just to solo something and go, ooh, that like 550 hertz and that whatever vocal sounds really weird. And so you just start taking it out because it sounds weird in solo. But then if you weren't in solo...

it wouldn't have bothered you know, or maybe it would have actually been better that way. So I think if you can work less visually, not working solo as much, and then not just process because you can, those are like three things that come to mind that would make a really big difference in I think your work.

Brian Funk (35:45.59)

That's something I've found a lot. It's, I would try to get things perfect in solo. Figure five, everything sounds perfect there. It's all going to sound great. And then you put it all together and everything's fighting for your attention because everything is full.

Brent Hendrich (35:50.954)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (35:57.438)

Yeah, yeah, like you said, it's a mix. I mean, it's more about how everything works together. It's not about, I would say we're not mastering X number of multi tracks, we're mixing these down to a stereo file and they'll have to play well together. And sometimes leaving some junk in sounds better than taking it out. And so I think that's why if you can work less in solo, you'll preserve some of the things that...

Brian Funk (36:12.589)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (36:26.258)

actually need to be there that may not sound great when it's soloed.

Brian Funk (36:31.614)

Yeah, and sometimes things might actually sound kind of bad soloed. I've had this happen many times where especially the guitar thing, because as a guitar player, you get all caught up in your tone and stuff. And I found sometimes my guitars sit really nice when they're kind of thin. And it lets them work in cooperation with the bass. The bass does that job of supporting.

Brent Hendrich (36:38.761)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (36:47.252)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (36:59.668)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:02.37)

It's such a hard thing to resist though, because like you said, you've got all the tools, you've got the ability to just really listen to this one element really close all by itself. But that's not how we're going to be presenting this when it's all said and done.

Brent Hendrich (37:10.827)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (37:17.342)

Right, yeah, those are three things that I think if you can do those three things, and if you're not doing those three things, if you can do those now, I think your work will be better overnight for sure. Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:30.462)

Yeah, I've definitely overmixed things and ruined it many times in my life.

Brent Hendrich (37:34.991)

Yeah, it's easy to suck the life. I think, as everyone says, midrange is the most important, but midrange, at least to me, always sounds... That's usually the frequencies when I'm in solo that I'm like, I don't know about that or like I said, I hate that 320 or that 700 or whatnot. Start just sucking that stuff out and you cut out enough midrange and you're going to have what we call the smiley face EQ.

Brian Funk (37:49.702)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (37:58.678)

basically where all the mid-range is scooped, and there's just no impact. And you don't wanna do that, especially when your vocal, especially, is in that range. So, you know, that's why I'm a big fan of maybe not EQing as much as using like dynamic EQ or multi-band compression that leaves that information there most of the time, but then when it gets to be a little too much, you can kind of kick it down just a little bit just to keep that tonal balance nice and even, so.

Brian Funk (38:00.202)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (38:28.91)

Thank you.

Brian Funk (38:29.662)

Right, so you'd rather have that stuff happen only when it needs to happen. Duck out those frequencies when they get a little, yeah. Are there any particular plugins or tools you like to use for that stuff?

Brent Hendrich (38:34.198)

Yeah, when it exceeds a certain threshold. Exactly, exactly. Yep, that's kind of more how I think about it.

Brent Hendrich (38:45.866)

Yeah, I mean, you know, the FabFilter Pro-MB is like a multi-band that I use a lot. You know, Soothe, DS'ers, I've got a ton of different ones. They're all fine. You know, you can even, I'm trying to think of other things, yeah, just to tame harshness. That's probably, you know, sometimes just EQ is fine too. Some surgical stuff, maybe taking certain little narrow bands of things out and just keeping those things out the entire song is fine too. But...

Brian Funk (39:08.502)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (39:15.55)

Yeah, that's the, I guess, yeah, multi-band, any multi-band and soothe and de-essing, those are all for different bands. Obviously de-essing is for more like the high stuff and soothe is more for the upper mids. And then if I wanna control more lower mids, it's usually multi-band compression or dynamic EQ. So that's kinda how I think about it.

Brian Funk (39:36.106)

Hmm. Yeah. That way you can preserve the other stuff too, where you're not just turning everything down. It's nice. You mentioned saturation too. And I'm finding more and more, sometimes that's what I need more than even EQ. Sometimes. Um, I'm just kind of curious how you're using it these days, because we're not really talking about distortion, like guitars type metal, much, much more subtle. Right?

Brent Hendrich (39:41.774)

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (39:49.042)

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (39:55.946)

I'm using it a lot. No, no, we're talking about 20 instances of saturation all over the place, just small amounts that kind of add up to be something really exciting. And so I think of saturation as like the excitement, you know. I know it used to be compression. You know, when you think about like a CLA mix or something like that, I mean, obviously he's getting saturation from the way he's hitting.

1176, but it's different. Saturation is a little bit cleaner without the pumpiness. And so, yeah, I love saturation. I'm a big fan of it. I have many different saturators that I like. I still use Decapitator a bunch. One that's called, I think it's like S-DDR by Klanghelm. I like that one.

Factory is one of my favorites. That's more of a multi-band, which is really nice to just saturate the mid-range for certain elements. And Black Box, that's often on my mix bus. So yeah, I'm using just smaller amounts of saturation in a lot of different places, and that gives me the texture and the excitement. And pop music needs to have that typically. It needs to have that kind of blowing out of the speaker kind of sound. And I find that saturation is a really good way to get that excitement.

I'm using more saturation than I ever have before, that's for sure.

Brian Funk (41:21.866)

Right, yeah, and it's a good point. Yeah, pop is like, it's gotta have that kind of like in your face, cutting edge, exciting thing going on. And that's a good way to do it. And yeah, like the textures are really important there. Like I found I can get things to sit nice with some saturation and sort of just make it feel a little different. You know, where there's too many smooth elements. Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (41:36.238)

Yep.

Brent Hendrich (41:43.762)

Yeah, and it's gonna help it. Yeah, it makes it really cut through on like iPhone speakers and some of those like real mid-range, heavy listening devices that a lot of people consume music now on Bluetooth speakers. It just does that thing in the mid-range, especially with like lower frequency bass and things like that, being able to do those like upper harmonics really kind of helps those notes kind of cut through. So yeah, saturation is great.

Brian Funk (41:52.749)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (42:12.578)

I find myself using it on pretty much everything. I don't, with drums, I don't saturate the drums as a whole as much with saturation. I do sometimes, but it's usually different saturators on different sources. For certain things, I like certain saturators, and I've just found it. For a kick or snare bus, I love Decapitator, but for my mix bus, I love Black Box, and I love Spectre more for an acoustic guitar or maybe a vocal. So it's just...

a lot of experimentation and trying different things and going, okay, usually for this type of source material, I like this saturator. I've just got a list in my head now and that's usually my starting point, but it can always change too.

Brian Funk (42:58.282)

How much are you thinking about how your mixes sound on little iPhone speakers and little portable? I'm sometimes appalled about how much I see students, they listen to like right on the iPhone. That's like, that's it. And part of me is like, oh no. It's like probably the worst way to listen to anything. But since that's what people are doing,

Brent Hendrich (43:05.523)

Yeah, I'm thinking a lot about it.

Brent Hendrich (43:19.65)

Hahaha.

Brent Hendrich (43:26.707)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (43:27.966)

Are you, do you reference, do you check on those speakers when you're doing mixes? Do you bounce around to like different speakers in the car, all that kind of stuff?

Brent Hendrich (43:32.311)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (43:38.022)

I love this question because I love talking about translation because as a mixer, translation is everything. I want my mixes to sound amazing on every speaker in the entire world. The approach that I take is I work, I have a very super high fidelity listening environment, but then also a very dumb it down kind of environment as well here in my studio. I've got the...

Brian Funk (43:43.512)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (44:02.006)

the big like three-way Neumanns with two subs and all that's like super flat from 20 to 20. And that's like my very surgical detailed listening environment. So I'll work there most of the time, but also have the Aventone mix cubes. And that like helps me just focus in on the mid range like an NS-10 would. And then I have like some Bose consumer speakers that, you know, sound really cool in a different kind of way. I have a Bluetooth transmitter so I can pop in AirPods at any time and listen that way.

I have an application called Airfoil on my computer that allows me to stream my mix directly to my iPhone if I have this certain app pulled up on my iPhone. So yeah, I'm definitely doing a lot of consumer checks. That's very important for me, especially with the iPhone speaker. I check that a lot. I don't do any real car listening tests. That is always a bad thing for me. For me, it's like...

Listen in my room. I've been in this room 16 years. I know it well. I trust my monitoring. I listen to stuff in here every single day. If it sounds good in here, then I'm okay with that. The car just kind of makes me chase my tail usually. I don't listen to a ton of music in my car too, I think. It's that thing where I'm usually doing more like podcasts or audio books or something in the car just because as you know, like the repetition of just...

Brian Funk (44:58.22)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (45:23.146)

listening to the same song all day long. The last thing we want to do is at the end of the day, go to drive the garage door and listen to like a bunch more music, you know? And so, yeah, I just don't, you know, the car stereo is amazing. It sounds really great, but it's just, it's too, I don't know, it's just too confusing for me. It's not focused enough or something. I just don't know like the low end well enough. And so yeah, for me, it's in my room. And if I'm confused pulling up a reference and references are super helpful, you know, whenever I'm like,

Brian Funk (45:31.798)

it.

Brent Hendrich (45:53.074)

unsure of where I'm at.

Brian Funk (45:56.37)

Yeah, well the car, I listen to a lot of music in my car. I have like a 40 minute drive each way. But there's so many other sounds too. There's the sound of the road and that either masks things or somehow makes it pop out more. There's a lot of factors and I do it really to like just see like I'm not really off base on anything.

Brent Hendrich (46:02.464)

Okay.

Brent Hendrich (46:09.94)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (46:14.504)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (46:23.533)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:23.774)

So I can get that, but I think, yeah, that's so important. It's the thing that drives a lot of people nuts. It sounds great here, it sounds terrible here, it sounds. But I guess, you know, what you're saying too is you really know your room, so you really know what to expect. And I think that's so important. Even if it is your car on some level, if you know it, then you have some reference, some frame of reference. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (46:29.792)

It does.

Brent Hendrich (46:45.65)

Yeah, I think if you do listen to a lot of music on your car and you've had your car for a long time, I think that's important too. Same with in your room, the longer that you can leave your acoustic treatment untouched and leave your monitors where they're at and not swap them for a different brand. Anything that you can leave alone for a long period of time and get to know, I think that's when you're making your best decision. So if you're driving in a car that you've been in for eight years and you listen to music every day in it, then I think it's a great place to check your work. But for me, I think it's a great place to check your work.

You know, the car I have now, I've had it maybe three years and I don't listen to much music in it. So it doesn't make sense for me to check my work there because I don't know it as well. I would be better off checking in my world. So I think it's different for everyone, I guess is what I'm saying. I think listening, making those decisions in that environment, on that system that you're most familiar with is probably where you should make most of your decisions.

Brian Funk (47:36.862)

Yeah, that makes sense. How about taking breaks? How do you do that? I mean, you know, like that's one, our senses are accustomed to changes, right? So all of our senses work that way. Hearing, like you could have the air conditioner on all day and not notice it until it stops. So we get used to frequencies. We get used to the stimulus that's coming to us. And...

Brent Hendrich (47:41.806)

Oh, yeah.

Brent Hendrich (47:51.031)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (47:57.944)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (48:05.626)

Again, as somebody that's freelancing and time is precious, how do you balance that? Because there's, I guess, one train of thought that would say, well, if I take a break, I'm losing time. But then maybe there's the other train of thought, if I don't take a break, I'm going to eventually lose more time that way.

Brent Hendrich (48:21.035)

Yeah.

No, I think taking breaks is super, super important. And I didn't do that early on in my career just because I didn't want to stop, you know? It was too much fun, you know, and just kept going and kept going. But it's just another thing that I've learned over the years that actually, like, taking a few breaks here and there will actually get you to completion quicker than often working like nonstop, especially with mixing. I don't know, maybe it's not the case with production, but with mixing...

I always talk about how that first 10 or 20 minutes of opening up a mix and listening, that's when you have the most clarity and when it's easiest to hear what's still wrong with the mix. So I encourage people to work an hour, take a 20 minute break, work an hour, take a 20 minute break. Some type of frequency like that I think is a good approach because what those breaks do is they give you a complete reset.

then you have that fresh perspective, you know, 20 minutes later, when you pull it back up, you're like, Oh my gosh, the bass is like five dB too loud, or, Oh, the vocal sounds like way too dry or those things that like really move the needle kind of pop up because after those first 10 or 20 minutes, you start to get lost in the mix. And you're not thinking big picture, you're thinking like very detailed or an end like that vocal needs to, you know, come up just a 10th of a dB in the second chorus, you know.

That's important to me too, but if you're making that, but then your bass is, like I said, five dB too loud, then that's the kind of thing that'd be nice to know about. So yeah, I think if you can, I'm not the type that's like, I'm gonna work for 10 straight hours without any breaks. I mean, I usually, I do my best work probably in the morning, the front half of the day. I think a lot of people are probably like that. My ears just feel the freshest. So I'll do, you know.

Brian Funk (50:00.106)

Okay.

Brent Hendrich (50:18.39)

maybe from eight or nine in the morning until lunchtime, work for an hour, take a little break and catch up on some emails or do some outreach or run a quick errand or something like that and then come back to it again. And once I do that, it's just like, oh, okay. Now I can just make more progress in a shorter amount of time, I think, by doing that. So I like to work that way. My typical approach to the mix is to start at...

Brian Funk (50:37.306)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (50:45.258)

in the morning, work all day on it with taking those breaks. And then the following day, pulling it up, hoping that it's like at least 80 to 90% of the way done, making some final changes on fresh ears. Once again, that's after a night's sleep, so you kind of hear even more. And then sending it off to the client by lunchtime on that second day. That's what I found works best for me. Some people say they mix two or three songs in a day. I can't work that way. There's...

Usually a lot of content in the stuff that I mix and I'm a perfectionist. Like I can't like get into like do the super, super detailed stuff that I really want to be able to do and do a couple songs in a day. But you know, some people, their style is different. They're a little bit more hands off and it's cool that way too. But for me, I want it to be as perfect as I can make it before ever sending it out to the artist and the producer. So that's yeah, that's typically how I like to work.

Brian Funk (51:23.221)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (51:41.622)

Yeah, I think it's smart because you mentioned you're focusing on details, right? But you can't also lose the big picture. And getting that reset every once in a while is important because I've done the long days, the long sessions, forget to eat, feel all weird afterwards, and then you're done for the day. But sometimes you just really lose track of what you're doing.

Brent Hendrich (51:49.399)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (51:57.335)

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Brent Hendrich (52:05.674)

Yep, your ears get mushy.

Brian Funk (52:06.422)

Like you said, the bass is whoa, way out of the, and like, or there's just like these biting frequencies that you've just become accustomed to and totally numb to.

Brent Hendrich (52:14.986)

Yep, exactly.

Brian Funk (52:17.782)

Yeah, it seems counterintuitive, but it does sort of keep you moving a lot quicker.

Brent Hendrich (52:25.31)

Right, yeah, absolutely.

Brian Funk (52:27.618)

Do you have specific reference tracks you like to come back to or do you just kind of go more with like what the people give you?

Brent Hendrich (52:35.794)

Usually, I mean, I have like a library of WAV files I've purchased over the years, and I can load those into what's called Metric AB, I think, if I want to do like some level match AB type stuff. But what I typically do, usually, if they give me a reference, that's what I'm following and nothing else, because then I think it'd just be a little confusing to kind of go between three different things. And so,

Yeah, I mean, if they don't give me a reference, but I want one, then I'll start looking for one. I think something worth mentioning is making sure that your reference is in the ballpark of tempo and content and all those things. If it's something completely different, then it's not really helping, you know. But yeah, I typically only use references, I guess, when they provide one in that consultation.

that I have with them up front. And it's very important to, you know, not only know what that reference is, but what it is that they like about it, you know. You may be chasing this reference and you may be trying to get the drums just right and the bass just like that and the vocals and find out that the only thing they liked was the airiness of the drums or something, you know, something very small. And then you've kind of gone off and, you know, went in complete wrong direction and have to unwind a bunch of things. So...

So yeah, once you do get that reference, find out what it is. If they like the overall feel about it, then that's important too. You know, like one of the songs I mixed about a month ago, there was a reference and it was super helpful because it let me know, okay, I need to like do this with the low end, I need to like really saturate like a lot of things in a very specific way and, you know, do something with the guitars a very specific way. And so that reference was like very similar to the song that I was mixing. And it was

Yeah, super helpful. But, um, if you're doing a pop track and they give you a country thing, then, okay, you've got to figure out why did they send you a song like this? Oh, it's just cause they like, there's pop song has this banjo in it randomly. And they just want like their banjo to sound like the banjo in this country song, you know, so, um, yeah, that's a good question to always ask is what, what is it about the, is there's reference that you like, but, um, yeah, I usually don't use them if, if they don't provide them.

Brian Funk (54:36.498)

Right.

Brian Funk (54:47.992)

Mm-hmm. Nice.

Brent Hendrich (54:49.138)

Usually if they don't provide them, then they're rough mix, which isn't always very rough. That's what is a lot more important. Because like I said earlier on in the conversation, it's often that it's like, we love this, it's 80% there to us. Like we want you just to get like 20% out of it, you know? And so for me, that's looking for like, you know, where are things clashing or what could I do? You know, how could I add to this? Like kind of where they left off. And often it's...

Brian Funk (55:07.394)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (55:17.482)

no sweetening up the vocal or the low ends out of whack because they're in a poor monitoring environment or there's just too much frequency masking and I need to get in there and like pan some stuff around or carve some certain frequencies out to make everything like have its own space. So that's usually what I'm thinking about more than reference mixes, but they're both important.

Brian Funk (55:39.242)

When you're looking for masking frequencies, frequencies that are overlapping and competing with each other, are you using any particular tools? Is it just by ear? There's EQs, are there, I mean, like I know Isotope has some stuff that'll find that and help you. Any approach you like?

Brent Hendrich (55:41.815)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (55:52.895)

Yeah, it's-

Brent Hendrich (55:58.119)

Yeah, I think it's all just more ears and instinctual, like, you know, just going, okay, like something's clashing. Oh, it's the snare and the vocal. Okay, well, it's because the snare has got a ton of 400 hertz and it's like the vocal is in that region on the verses, so let's just cut that out of the snare. Just kind of figuring out who gets to keep certain frequencies and who I need to take some away from. And I even like using stuff like side...

Brian Funk (56:20.243)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (56:23.294)

you know, like side-chaining some like track spacer. I just did a mix last week where the vocal and the acoustic guitar were like the two primary things in the song, but they were kind of fighting a little bit in the mid-range. And so just, you know, getting, you know, putting track spacer on the acoustic guitar and letting like that vocal, you know, sending that vocal to the acoustic guitar that would kind of like cut some of those frequencies out of the acoustic at times when the vocal was singing and just adapting that, that made a huge difference. So I use a lot of techniques like that.

Brian Funk (56:49.742)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (56:52.786)

when it comes to frequency masking. And sometimes soloing, like the kick and the bass together and trying to figure out, okay, who's gonna have the lower end and who's gonna have the upper end of the low frequencies. And so I think that's a good way to work. I know I said don't solo, but I think if you're soloing multiple things, it's not as bad as soloing.

Just the vocal, making the vocal sound great. So, only just the bass, make the bass sound great. And then just trying to level all that into place. That's when I think you get into a lot more trouble. But yeah, typically it's EQ that I'm using for those issues. The fader in an EQ is probably the two things that I use the most that make the biggest difference. Everything else kind of comes after that. I think, yeah, level and EQ by far are what moves the needle the most in my world. So.

Brian Funk (57:35.774)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (57:45.478)

Hopefully that answered your question. Sometimes spectrum analyzers too. I always have a secondary, just a mini display that has FabFilter Pro-Q3. That's one of my favorite spectrum analyzers and that's just on the output of my mix bus and then I can just kind of see tonally like the big picture. If it's this certain kind of curve, then I know that the tonal balance is just where it needs to be. I know iZotope has a tonal balance application.

Brian Funk (57:47.136)

I think that's it. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (58:13.294)

And the version of Ozone that I use has something similar, but I just know the FabFilter curve well, and I listen to a lot of other records while looking at those curves. So it just lets me know, you know, if there's a huge spike at 2.2k, then maybe my vocal like has way too much of that. Or, you know, it tells me some of those kinds of things that maybe I might overlook. Or if the bottom end is too much, then on the far left, that, you know, that curve will be higher than it needs to be. And so that's like...

Brian Funk (58:34.198)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (58:42.942)

I said don't work visually, but that is one way that I work visually that it's more of like my just occasionally look and see what my big picture is looking like. Or if you have a reference mix, you can go back and forth and see if the tonal balance of your mix is comparable to your references. And if you see that your top end is curving way differently, then maybe you have way too much or way too little high end. And so those kinds of things can be beneficial, I think.

Brian Funk (59:11.082)

Yeah, I agree and you hear that a lot mixed with your ears not with your eyes, but Sometimes you can catch things. It's it's about not Not changing a mix that you think sounds good because it doesn't look good Like why isn't that going the way I want it to?

Brent Hendrich (59:15.915)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (59:25.522)

Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's really easy to, you know, I'm a big fan of what I call like the blind A-B test. And if you think that you need to EQ something because it looks weird, go ahead and do that EQ and have, you know, Pro-Q 3 set to like auto gain the output to where it doesn't add or subtract any gain. And then just close your eyes and hit like the bypass super, super fast. So you're like click it 20 times and then you don't know if it's on or off.

Brian Funk (59:51.99)

this track. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (59:54.154)

And then, you know, do that a few times and decide what you want and you like, and then that is what you need to go with. And very often you'll find that it's actually, the way you had it before is a lot better than, you know, that EQ that you thought you needed to do because it looked better, you know. So yeah, I think there's like certain times where working visually is a good thing and can be helpful, and then certain times where it can be really bad. So it's just knowing, you know, keeping yourself in check, I guess, is important.

Brian Funk (01:00:04.046)

Thanks for watching.

Brian Funk (01:00:19.794)

Yeah, good point. And how about things like headroom? Is there a certain point you're aiming for? You hear rules and things get thrown around a lot and there's a lot of contradictory information. Are you looking at that too much? Are you trying to get your master output to hit a certain spot?

Brent Hendrich (01:00:31.975)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:00:43.366)

I don't think too much about it. I'm a little bit more just comfortable in my world now and knowing where things need to live and how I need to hit my mix bus. If I'm just starting to mix and I'm getting my kick and snare hitting just right, then maybe that's, I don't know, anywhere between negative 12 and negative six, somewhere around there. But I'm not even really thinking about it. I'm often turning on the mix, everything that's in my mix bus, like my starting point, and just like...

pushing the kick and snare into it in different ways, just to kind of see how it reacts really. And when I find that I really love how the Mixbus is responding to where the kick and the snare relationship is currently at, then that's usually where I'll start. I can bypass everything really quick just to make sure I'm not clipping the input of my plugin chain on my Mixbus. But once those are in a good spot, pretty much everything else that I do doesn't.

push that any further along, those big kick and snare, because I mix my drums pretty far forward. So everything else kind of stays behind that for the most part. And there's still some, quite a few DB of headroom even after that. So I'm not really thinking too much. I'm not like following any of these gain staging approaches or anything like that. I just kind of know from doing it for so many years, kind of where things need to be. But, and then my...

My mixes when I print them are really hot. I mean, they're anywhere from like, you know, negative 10 luffs to down to negative seven, you know, sometimes like where people would actually master to, you know, often the mastering engineer, there's not much room left for them. You know, it's just a couple of small EQ tweaks and maybe get another DB out of it or something like that. It's pretty small stuff. But that thing that just comes with like experience and confidence and like knowing where everyone wants to go with it. And for me, I just, I enjoy

Brian Funk (01:02:23.357)

Hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:02:35.39)

working on it when it's just loud and exciting on my end. If it's super dynamic and not really processed on the mixed bus side of things, then I'm not like for sure exactly where it's going to go once it gets to mastering. I like knowing that it's pretty much there by the time it leaves my world, just because I have so much more control over it than mastering would ever have. Yeah. Usually there's no complaints. Obviously, if I'm working with a new mastering engineer and they say, oh, this is too loud, then I'm fine. Like, I'm

Brian Funk (01:02:48.691)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:03:03.85)

giving them a bit more headroom. But usually my limiter's not even engaging. It's just maybe adding through a four or five dB of level, but there's not actually any gain reduction even happening. I think it's just everything is, before it gets there, is kind of nice and either limited or compressed on a bus level or an individual track level to where just dynamically it's pretty controlled by the time it goes through everything in my chain. So.

Brian Funk (01:03:32.398)

Hmm. All right. What do you have in your chain?

Brent Hendrich (01:03:36.214)

It kind of varies. You know, usually I'll start with a saturator, something like Black Box, and then I'm a big fan of the McDSP ML4000, which is, I'm just using that for multiband compression. It's a very subtle amount, but that kind of really does something special. It takes out a bunch of junk somehow and just cleans things up. So yeah, and then from there, often like just an SSL bus compressor, the UAD one.

Brian Funk (01:03:53.423)

Heh.

Brent Hendrich (01:04:01.438)

And then from there, I really like the Waves Abbey Road mastering console that has a really great EQ that I love, which you can also pop in mid side, which is nice. And then it's got good filters. The stereo imaging on that is really nice too. So that's kind of where I'll do more like, if I want musical EQ, either stereo or mid side and the stereo width, a lot of that happens there. And then from there it goes to Oxford Inflator, which is once again about excitement for me.

getting things a little bit louder without a limited sound. And then Ozone is the last thing. I was using the Pro-Q, or sorry, the Pro-L2, I guess, the FabFilter limiter, and I was using that for a while, but then I switched over maybe a year or two, go to the newest version of Ozone and really like the way that limiter sounds. And the nice thing about that is I can do some finishing touches with, it's almost like I'm kind of like pre-mastering really in a way with my mixes. So I'm often...

still doing some EQ there by the time it makes to there, or some dynamic EQ, maybe some more widening as well there. And then, like I said, with the limiter, it's normally just me pulling that down like three or four or five dB, and it's not actually knocking any peaks off of anything. It's just, it's making it a little bit louder, and it's kind of more of a safety, just to make sure I don't clip.

So that's like my current chain and quite a few of those things have been in it for a long time, especially the Mik DSP ML4000. That's something that I really, really like that almost I feel like helps give it that pop sound, you know, just a very, it's almost like it takes the mix apart and puts it back together in a different kind of way. I don't know if that's with the way the crossovers work or something, but what it does to the low-mids for me, it just...

It puts everything in its own place, reorganizes it in a better way, the mix. So I love that plugin. Everything in that chain is doing very subtle, just a small amount. Just a small amount of saturation, just a very small amount of compression, just a small amount or no limiting at all. It's all just there to kind of coloration as part of it, but it also adds to the excitement by taking some of the dynamics away in a good way. That's what I like at the moment.

Brian Funk (01:06:04.851)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (01:06:20.718)

Thank you.

Brian Funk (01:06:21.662)

Yeah, that's cool. And yeah, I think it's a lot about subtle things, lots of little subtle things that add up to a big thing as it goes along. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:06:25.846)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's what I'm doing, hundreds or thousands of moves for 10 or 12 hours sometimes, and just to make up something that's really interesting to listen to. That's really what mixing is.

Brian Funk (01:06:41.294)

It's amazing when you break it down to like how many individual small decisions you make along the way. Thousands easy. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:06:46.57)

Oh yeah, I'd love to like track how many times I click the mouse button on a mix. I mean, it's probably, yeah, it's probably just thousands of times between opening plugin editors and moving stuff around. And yeah, it's, uh, you know, when you really like dissect a mix, you, you start to see especially all the automation layers and, um, you know, that's when that's half of the work that I do really is just writing a lot of automation, especially on the vocal side of things, the lead vocal, um, between level and

Brian Funk (01:06:56.448)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (01:07:15.438)

effects and different amounts of effects in different sections and in throws and all that kind of stuff. So it just takes time. That's why I don't know how you could mix two songs in a day. I could if I was forced to. I just that's not like my preferred way to work. You know, I like to really just optimize the mix as much as I possibly can.

Brian Funk (01:07:36.598)

Well, I'm sure clients appreciate that. Right? Little personalized attention. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:07:38.502)

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. That's what I want to be known for. Yeah. Yep. Precise mixes. That's how I describe my work. And I think for precision, not everyone likes precision, but I do. That's why I like Servant. I think his mixes sound very precise. It's just everything has its own space. And you can hear pretty much everything all the time, certain things are a bit more upfront and certain things are back, but you still, it's not just like this.

wall of sound. It's more of like this, I don't know what you would call it. There's a word I'm trying to think of where it's everything kind of the sound scape. Is that the word I'm thinking? Is that a thing? I don't know. But basically, yeah, it's just this open image where you can just kind of hear what is happening with every single piece of content. I mean, if it's there, it's probably an important thing.

Brian Funk (01:08:16.493)

Thanks for watching.

Brian Funk (01:08:24.578)

Yes, yes.

Brent Hendrich (01:08:36.886)

important in some way. They're just trying to figure out what's most important and what's least important and kind of ordering things as you're mixing.

Brian Funk (01:08:43.118)

Hmm. When does panning come into your workflow? Do you start that right away? Do you ever do anything where you sit right away?

Brent Hendrich (01:08:49.246)

Right away, yeah. Yeah, right away. In the pop world, you know, it's usually like, you've either got a mono vocal or everything else, there's a lot of stereo content, so there's a lot less. Panning, I feel like, maybe in the pop space, whereas if I'm doing something that has like a lot of mono.

Brian Funk (01:09:07.358)

Oh, because your files are already kind of panned out.

Brent Hendrich (01:09:09.31)

Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you're a kick sample and lots of times I'll narrow certain things, like, you know, like a kick sample if it feels too wide, but yeah, lots of times if it's like just samples and scents and all that, it's all stereo content. Whereas if you're going to mix a, you know, something more, um, traditional, then you may have like whatever two mono acoustic guitars and, um, like a, um, whatever, a mono shaker and, uh, you know, some of those things where it's like, then you start to think about.

Brian Funk (01:09:23.232)

Right.

Brent Hendrich (01:09:38.934)

Is this hard left or is this like 50% left? I know a lot of people that are great mixers that are all about the left, center, right and nothing else. That's never worked for... I never liked that. There's certain elements that when I pan them to hard left or right, it just feels weird, especially if I have four different mono guitars going at once. Just to pan two left and two right, if they're doing different things, I don't know, I just like having more of a...

just a space for each of them. And so maybe, like I said, one is hard left, one is 50% left, one is 50% right, one's hard right. And you're thinking more of it, like everyone has its own place to play. I know that people will say that will make your mixes feel more narrow, but I'm okay with that. It doesn't bother me, especially if you're listening on an iPhone. That's already a narrow way to listen to a mix. So.

Brian Funk (01:10:29.802)

Yeah, not getting much stereo image out of that.

Brent Hendrich (01:10:32.362)

Yeah, so that's when I'm making those panning decisions. It's usually like really, really early on when I'm just kind of leveling things out. But then I may be fine tuning. You know, I may find out, oh, 10% more to the left or 10% more to the right, you know, feels a little bit better. Or oftentimes I'll automate panning, you know, to where it's like maybe this guitar, you know, there's not much content in the verses in the center of the image. And so I want this guitar here, but then, you know, in the chorus, like lots of stuff comes in. So I may want to, you know, I could maybe move it out to make

the image fill wider when the core sets. So I'm thinking a little bit about that too, especially with mono sources, automating things along the way.

Brian Funk (01:11:11.838)

Right. I've had some luck saving panning for later because I found that I'm a little more like I'm trying to get things to actually fit instead of just moving it over here. So I can hear it. And I think I've been a little better about volume and EQ that way. Now that's I'm also it's my own stuff. So I've got

Brent Hendrich (01:11:16.125)

Okay.

Brent Hendrich (01:11:23.842)

Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:11:33.076)

Hmm?

Brian Funk (01:11:37.91)

You know, my files, however I made them, I kind of know what is supposed to happen with a lot of the stereo stuff, but it does sort of open up a nice little treat at the end when it's, okay, I got it balanced nice, and now I can start positioning things and get some space out of it. And that's kind of a fun thing, but I'm with you. I was never able to be satisfied with just left, center, right. Like, it's just a little too harsh or something. But you can't.

Brent Hendrich (01:11:53.855)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:12:04.466)

Yeah, yeah. When I have some mono, a lot of mono elements, I like to spread them around a little bit more. But once again, that's just me. And I'm okay with, like I said, that feeling.

Brian Funk (01:12:12.066)

Yeah. I love that technique of in this chorus to widen things, it will automate things to the sides. Those are...

Brent Hendrich (01:12:17.878)

Oh, yeah. I do all kinds of, yeah, like just are bumping the entire mix up, you know, half a dB when the chorus hits or, or yeah, or maybe the bass is lighter in the verses or, you know, lots of times drier vocals, you know, in the in the verses and then more like doubling and more verbs or delays and the, you know, all that kind of stuff. You've got to create this really exciting journey and you don't have much time to do it in. And that's, I think what makes, you know, pop music, especially really interesting is

Brian Funk (01:12:24.022)

You just DB, yeah?

Brent Hendrich (01:12:47.242)

is there's a little bit more, I feel like oftentimes there's more happening behind the scenes that just kind of makes it more engaging.

Brian Funk (01:12:55.962)

Yeah, and that's actually what I really enjoy the most about a lot of pop is all the production and the techniques that go into it to make it have that energy and excitement. That's because that's that is one thing that you know I guess

what gets it into pop radio world where it's exciting, it's new, it's fresh. So slick. Yeah. So what are the things that are happening there? Those are fun. It's a cool technique to just sort of save it and then boom, it opens up.

Brent Hendrich (01:13:18.678)

Yep, slick, yep, yep.

Brent Hendrich (01:13:30.762)

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, don't give it all to them too soon. You gotta, if you really wanna make the chorus hit hard, you gotta save a few things and hold a few things back. And so, yeah, I love just creating that drama. It's one of my favorite things about mixing really is just trying to make it really engage the listener. I mean, that's what my job is. I'm kinda like this person that that's what it is. It's like, you give me the content and I gotta do something with this to like.

Brian Funk (01:13:35.447)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:13:58.754)

get you to like really, yeah. Yeah, to just make you like stop and listen, you know? And so I still think that the job of a mixer is important and hopefully it doesn't go away anytime soon and hopefully AI can't figure it out.

Brian Funk (01:13:59.31)

It's like a traffic director almost.

Brian Funk (01:14:15.339)

I don't know. I don't think so. I think it'll be tools that help out. Like there are some cool like, I guess there's some sort of artificial intelligence in some of the plugins now that are nice and helpful, but you still have to make those creative human decisions and the element of surprise is a big thing. But also is familiarity and...

Brent Hendrich (01:14:21.62)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:14:27.711)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:14:33.985)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:14:41.51)

I think there's a lot of art, I think especially for like pop, like you said, like if it's more of a band, it's kind of the band does the thing, they make the stuff happen. But a lot of the excitement in pop music is a little more production based, like you said, kind of the behind the scenes stuff. And I think a lot of times those are the stars of the show, you know, the choices that are made in the mixes and the production.

Brent Hendrich (01:14:49.581)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:15:03.82)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:15:07.35)

Yep, for sure.

Brian Funk (01:15:10.262)

That's really cool. I appreciate you sharing all this with us and answering some of my questions here. The ones that I was able to put together and articulate.

Brent Hendrich (01:15:18.462)

Of course. Yeah, I love talking about this stuff. I mean, this is, I tell people I love doing it just as much, maybe even more now than I did, you know, when I was a kid. So it's, it's just, yeah, it's, it's my favorite thing to talk about. So yeah, no problem at all.

Brian Funk (01:15:27.01)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:15:32.87)

It's the beauty of this kind of stuff, any kind of art I suppose, is that it just, it's like this world that keeps expanding and the further you go into it the more it grows out, the more you realize there is to learn and the more there is to explore. So it's just...

Brent Hendrich (01:15:36.258)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:15:41.64)

Yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:15:48.638)

Yeah, it's less stressful doing it now because I've learned a lot of things along the way. I'm not pulling my hair out and doing 30 mix revisions on a song. And so I think that's the beauty behind it is the longer you do it, the better you get at it and the more enjoyable really it is because you actually kind of know what you're doing. You're not figuring it out along the way as much. So yeah, maybe that's why I think the content gets better too as you get experienced, you get.

Brian Funk (01:15:56.674)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:16:10.422)

You get to have the fun with it, yeah.

Brent Hendrich (01:16:16.418)

people giving you better content and better content, like it's more stimulating, I think, just more fun to work on. And so all those things kind of come into play, I guess.

Brian Funk (01:16:26.03)

Hmm. So cool. You've got some nice stuff. You've got your website, brenthendrich.com. That's B-R-E-N-T-H-E-N-D-R-I-C-H.com. Also, your Instagram is pretty cool and active. You've got basically interviews going on there from time to time, which I think are really nice. Talking to fellow mixers and other people in the industry about what they do.

Brent Hendrich (01:16:35.063)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Hendrich (01:16:39.63)

That's right.

Brent Hendrich (01:16:48.158)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:16:54.718)

I think if you're listening to this, you're probably going to be into that. It's very similar conversation stuff that you have. I think that's really cool and helpful. Any other place you like to send people?

Brent Hendrich (01:16:58.783)

Yeah. Yup.

Brent Hendrich (01:17:07.71)

Yeah, I mean, I think the website is great because, you know, a lot of podcasts I've been on, those are there in articles and all my reels, if you want to hear my work and even the Instagram feed comes in there as well. So that's a great place. And also, if you want to get ahold of me, there's a contact form. So that's a good place to maybe start as a landing page. But like I said, my Instagram is where I'm most active. It's usually three or four posts a week and stories. And so I'm sharing.

Mix tips and like you mentioned, every two weeks I'm doing that series I call The Process where I talk with pop producers that I'm friends with and kind of just learn about their specific unique way that they make records. So I think a lot of people have gotten a lot of value out of those. The next one, yeah, well, I guess depending on when this comes out, it's usually every two weeks. Every other Friday is kind of my goal. So you can catch those there. I'm a big fan of like community as well for a couple of years now. I've been doing something called sounding mixer where it's just...

Nashville producers, engineers, session musicians, songwriters, we hang out. I buy coffee at a coffee shop and tomorrow is actually our next one. And so that's the last Tuesday of every month. So if you're ever in Nashville on the last Tuesday of a month, come hang out with us for that. I guess that's about it. That's kind of like some other things that I'm interested in right now, like I said, learning from other people and building community and just obviously trying to get better every single day as a mixer as well.

Brian Funk (01:18:10.614)

Nice.

Brian Funk (01:18:17.782)

That's cool.

Brian Funk (01:18:30.37)

Hmm. Well, it sounds great. I wish you continued success and thank you very much for taking the time to talk and anytime you want to come back and talk some more, I'm always game. I learned a ton talking to you. Got a lot of fun ideas and inspiration and some plugins even to check out too, which uh oh, but it is, you know, the holiday season with all the sales and stuff.

Brent Hendrich (01:18:36.078)

Appreciate that.

Brent Hendrich (01:18:50.466)

Great, that's good to hear.

Brent Hendrich (01:18:57.086)

Yeah, they're going to be pushing it. You're going to be, yeah, you'll probably get an email right after this and for an offer.

Brian Funk (01:19:01.822)

Yeah, they heard me say it. Yeah, well, cool. But thanks, friend. It was really nice talking to you.

Brent Hendrich (01:19:08.202)

You're very welcome. It was nice talking with you too.

podcastBrian Funkpodcast, music production podcast, Brent hendrich