The Narcoleptic Mixer

it's that time again. mixing time. so as of now, i'm 9 songs into the 11 that have to be mixed for chris merritt.

chris listens in amazement at the sonic brilliance of my mix masterpiece

and now for a small tutorial.
first, if you need to know a little about what mixing is, click here.

second, these are faders:

faders are like volume knobs, push them up-things get louder, pull them down-quieter.
there are many faders, because each one controls one track. the track could be one instrument, or one microphone of many on a given instrument, such as in the world record setting chris merritt micropalooza.
now, the system that i'm currently working on has automated faders. this means, as i am mixing, i can move a fader to adjust for say, an extra loud guitar note, and the computer will remember that move, and "play" it back for me next time. the act of adjusting the fader is sometimes referred to as "riding" the fader. this way i can go through the song and make all those moves and when i'm done, they are all memorized by the computer.
on the computer screen, the computer draws a line that allows you to see where you moved the fader up, and where you moved the fader down.

that bump you see in the volume line is what happens when you fall asleep while riding a piano track on an extremely long song. the left side, or TREMENDOUS increase in volume is me falling asleep. The right side, or frantic volume reduction is me waking up in terror at the extremely loud noise.