Ian Gillan of the seventies metal band Deep Purple reportedly
once asked the sound engineer mixing the band’s live album, “Could we have everything louder than
everything else?”
I’ve always loved that line. It just sounds like a title for the perfect rock and roll anthem.
But when you think about it for half a second, the request is
absurd. If the bass is louder than the high hat, the high hat cannot simultaneously
be louder than the bass. If you mix the snare drum louder than a guitar cranked
up to eleven, you cannot make that guitar louder in the sound mix without reducing
the volume of the snare. It’s absurd.
“Everything” cannot be louder than “everything else”. It
doesn’t work.