Hello. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the job of a film & television score mixer is? I've been unable to find out on the internet through Google.

With the technology available today, it is possible to record sections of the orchestra as separate passes of audio - a.k.a. 'stems'. Many modern composers do this, and even some veterans have adopted the practice (for instance, John Williams, after a hellish experience working on Prisoner of Azkaban, apparently was thinking about doing this to ease future burdens).

Basically a music mixer's job is to take those stems - or however many separate music tracks are available - and combine them together in a way that is pleasing to the ear and also reflects the composer's intentions. Sometimes it can be a stereo mixdown; sometimes it can be taken a step further, and the score will be mixed to surround sound.

This is a bit different from a re-recording mixer; that job entails creating the final mix with music, dialogue, and foley sounds all pooled together.

(I think mixers can also be called 'engineers').

Or, 'producers'?

Thanks.

Recording engineer is responsible to set up the proper microphones and ensure their placed at the ideal spot for the instrument to capture its money spot. For example, a French horn produces sound from the rear and the quality of the sound we are used to is from the frequencies bouncing around a reflective room. If the recording engineer places the mic in front of the horns bell, they do not know what they are doing. A great Mixer could not the issue of a poorly recorded horn. Similarly, a warm sound of a violin is about 6 to 8 feet in front of the f wholes on front. If you want a soloist violin and place the microphone about 3 feet away, you'll hear more of the rosin rough sound than the warm violin sound. It will have an aggressive unattractive quality. So this all falls in to the Recording Engineer duties who ensures the best possible audio production is capture. They also have to insure the appropriate microphones are selected for the various sound sources. Loud brass might be better served with a ribbon mic but violins are best served with a large membrane cardioid. Using the incorrect mic can ruin the mic if its very sensitive and placed infront of very large brass or reduce the quality of the recording if you used a mic for warmth on an instrument of power.

Mixing is usually after the recording when the various microphones are mixed to produce a high quality desired mix of the various sound elements. This can be done during the recording as a live mix, but generally is very processor intensive and takes a lot of fine tuning. There is generally a build up of certain frequencies the more mics you use so the mixer needs to address this. For example, most instruments overlap around 400 kHz frequency (mid level) so sometimes you need to reduce that area to make the sound less muddy in the middle. Also, some mics have different recording patterns meaning they are very sensitive to the focus directly in front of them. That will usually result in reduction of the quality of the sound of that instrument because the sounds we hear are full of overtones and refected frequencies that this "spot" microphone would ignore. As a result you need to mix some frequencies from different types of mics to get the best overall sound presentation using the various instruments and mics.

Mastering is where you take the mix and reduce it to a general level of compression so it works across a wide range of sound devices (such as iPhone ear phones, your car, your home stereo, etc.) The movie mix and the final master are not the same - they have different purposes.

For a big budget production, you will hire specialists in these areas. In very low budget setting one more might have to do all these various disciplines but they differ in technique, skills, tools, etc.

Music Editing generally happens before the mix. It is to fix any flubs or find the best available performance of a take and edit it together fixing general issues of transitions from one take to another and hopefully making this seamless. Virtually any recording you hear has been edited extensively, even if its a "live" performance.