A Guide to Preparing Your Tracks for the Tapetown Mixing Desk
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
You have spent months living with these songs. You have heard the demos in your car, in your headphones, and probably in your sleep. Now comes the moment where you hand those files over to someone else to find that final "finished" sound.
At Tapetown, we see mixing as the bridge between a good recording and a classic record. Whether you are sending us tracks from a home setup or a professional tracking room, how you prepare your files dictates how much time we can spend being creative versus how much time we spend doing digital "housekeeping."
Here is how to get your session ready so we can focus on the soul of the music.
The Power of Making Decisions
One of the biggest traps of modern recording is keeping too many options open. We often hear the phrase "we can fix that later," but in our experience, the best indie records are built on brave choices made early on.
If you have used three microphones on a guitar cabinet and they sound great together, blend them. If you have a specific distorted delay that defines the vibe of the bridge, keep it on the track. When you "print" your creative effects, you are telling us exactly who you are as an artist. It allows our engineers to stop guessing what you want and start enhancing the vision you already have.
Technical Basics Without the Headache
To make sure our analogue hybrid setup can really breathe life into your music, we need a solid foundation. You don’t need to be a math expert, but a few simple rules go a long way.
First, keep your eyes on the levels. Make sure your tracks aren't "clipping" or hitting the red. Our analogue gear loves a bit of space (we call this headroom). If you give us a few decibels of breathing room, we can push the physical transformers in our desk harder to get that thick, harmonic saturation that makes a mix feel three-dimensional.
Second, please name your tracks clearly. While it seems small, spending an hour trying to figure out if "Audio_Region_05" is a lead vocal or a tambourine takes us out of the creative flow. A clean session is a creative session.
The Importance of the Rough Mix
We never want to "strip away" the identity you have worked so hard to build. That is why your "Rough Mix" is the most important file you can send us.
It doesn't have to sound perfect. In fact, it shouldn't. But it tells us about the balances you have grown to love. It tells us which instruments are the heroes of the song and how much "vibe" you are comfortable with. Along with that, send us two or three "Reference Tracks" from other artists. Whether you want the drum depth of a classic psych-rock record or the vocal presence of a modern alternative pop track, these references act as our compass.
Bridging the Distance
We have worked with artists from every corner of Europe. Many of them don't step foot in our Aarhus studio, yet their records still carry that signature "Tapetown Sound."
When your tracks arrive here, we move them out of the digital world and into the physical one. This hybrid approach is what adds that final layer of "glue" to a project. By following these preparation steps, you are ensuring that your music is ready for that transformation. You are giving your songs the best possible chance to sound like a living, breathing performance rather than just a collection of digital files.
A Quick Pre-Flight Checklist
Before you hit send on that file transfer, take ten minutes to check these things:
Consolidate your tracks so they all start at the exact same point in time.
Remove any "corrective" plugins that aren't part of the creative sound.
Make sure the tracks are named correctly before exporting
Include a simple text file with the BPM (tempo) and any specific notes you have for the song.
