RSR544 - Eric Sarafin - Mixerman's Ultimate Guide to Producing Records, Music & Songs.
Recording Studio Rockstars
Lij Shaw
4.8 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 134 minutes
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Summary
What actually makes a mix feel musical before you ever touch an EQ?
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My guest today is Eric Sarafin, better known as Mixerman - a gold- and platinum-selling producer, mixer, and engineer with credits ranging from The Pharcyde and Tone-Lōc to Ben Harper, Lifehouse, Barenaked Ladies, Foreigner, and Pete Murray. He's also the author of Zen and the Art of Mixing, Zen and the Art of Producing, Zen and the Art of Recording, and his newest book, Mixerman's Ultimate Guide to Producing Records, Music & Songs. In this episode, Eric and I get straight into what really makes mixes work - not plugins, presets, or loudness targets, but arrangement, balance, and the way instruments naturally interact. We talk about masking as something musical rather than something to eliminate, why most of the "music" lives in the midrange, and how perceived loudness comes from balance, not hype at the top or bottom. We also dig into how listening quietly can reveal problems faster, why speed and familiarity with your tools matter more than features, and how motion and distortion bring life to otherwise static tracks. Eric shares his perspective on working fast, stepping away to regain objectivity, and making decisions that serve the song instead of the tech. Along the way, we cover practical mic strategies for home studios, why placement matters more than price, and how knowing why you're choosing a tool is more important than following trends. This one is about thinking musically first - and letting the mix follow.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of RSR is brought to you by Isotope Native Instruments, S-A-E-Institute, Adam Audio, Spectra |
| 0:09.8 | 1964, Grace Design, and Picker. These are tools that I use every day in my studio from the Spectra |
| 0:18.0 | 1964 STX-600 and Native instruments complete 15 to isotope ozone and |
| 0:25.7 | RX, atom audio monitoring and headphones, and the central hub for my studio, the Grace Design |
| 0:33.4 | M701 audio interface. Check out my studio profile on the Picker app on iPhone or Android, |
| 0:40.8 | and follow the sponsor links in the show notes. |
| 0:43.7 | Grab my free mixing course at Mixmasterbundle.com, |
| 0:47.6 | and remember to like this video and subscribe on YouTube |
| 0:51.1 | because it's a great way to help support this show. |
| 0:54.0 | Now, get ready to rock. With everything, there's a great way to help support this show. Now, get ready to rock. |
| 0:56.4 | Well, with everything, there's a balance, you know. I've come across players that'll never |
| 1:00.4 | play the same thing twice. And it's like, have you not listened to music? We need to repeat |
| 1:06.0 | something. We need to find some themes in here. Let's go through what you've played and let's find |
| 1:09.9 | the themes and let's |
| 1:10.9 | let's make the bring those out more than once, right? And then there's just simplifying things to a point |
| 1:16.0 | where a part is just doing the same thing all the time and it's like there's no variation. There's |
| 1:20.9 | no nothing interesting about it and that's not particularly musical either. So we need to find a happy |
| 1:26.5 | middle ground, something that feels |
| 1:28.3 | like it's like got a flow to it, an arc to it, and something that has themes that we can |
| 1:35.0 | grasp hold. |
| 1:48.4 | Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars. |
| 1:56.1 | I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio. |
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