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The Enchanted Chinagraph Pencil

There is a box of twelve Royal Sovereign yellow Chinagraph pencils on my desk. You don’t see them much anymore, but Once Upon A Time they were an essential item for editing tape and marking up fader levels and cues.

They always remind me of the freedom of analogue mixing, no tweaking, no fixing later. Either you got it right or got it wrong – in which case you lived with the shortcomings or pulled down the faders and started again.

Real time performance mixing encourages decisiveness, boldness and a seat of your pants risk taking that just doesn’t happen with digital. When you take away the cosy safety net of total recall, a mix becomes  another animal, more immediate and instinctive – so the choices you make are very different.

Try it sometime – physically mark up your levels and all the cues on the faders. It’s liberating and creative. See how easy it is to cross reference the relationships. Set up your balance, rehearse your cues and go for it. Let your intuition take over and feel the  dynamics in the same way as you’d play an instrument.  The pencil marks are your fall back position – approximately. You’ll find yourself nudging the positions and cues as the mix comes into focus.

Take one will be the tidiest, but you’ve probably messed up a couple of cues.

Take two is more unruly, but those cue points felt better, so edit them in.

Take three threw caution to the wind and was fun when you did it, but is all over the map. Not useable but it gave you some great ideas about what to do next time…

All together now:  -

Everything that’s easy on digital is difficult on analogue
Everything that’s easy on analogue is impossible on digital

Fran Ashcroft