Emma-Jean Thackray on her vocal mixing tricks and going “full method” in the studio

Award-winning artist, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Emma-Jean Thackray has never been one to follow a conventional playbook, not least when it comes to mixing.

Fresh off the release of her new self-produced album Weirdo, Thackray stopped by MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast (made in partnership with Audient) to share her mixing secrets and the delightfully “method” approach she takes to building the different parts of her songs.

“When I’m mixing, it’s about placement more than anything else,” Thackray explains.

“So I’ll usually have the lower harmonies slightly wider center, and then as things get higher, they’re going further and further away from the centre. Which is, I think, always a good way to kind of approach stuff first of all in terms of where your frequencies are sitting.”

“And then I like to double everything, minimum. So you’ve got left and right, and then sort of double them again and have one of them slightly closer to you, one of them slightly further away.

“So you can mess with how much is being sent to the reverb, and it just creates not just space this way, but space this way. You’ve got the depth and you’ve got the wideness of it.”

She also uses a go-to room reverb to help build a convincing sense of space: “The amount that I send to each person is very slightly different to help me sort of create a 3D image of the room.”

“And then that on top of me singing the stuff with slightly different texture of my voice or being in slightly different positions – away from the microphone or to the side or whatever – to make it seem like it’s one mic, like this AE ribbon capturing a bunch of people,” Thackray adds.

Technical tricks aside, the musician also reveals that she goes “full method” when laying down parts for her records – sometimes even dressing the part.

“When I made my Ley Lines EP years ago, I literally was doing all the performances and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m the drummer now and I’m, you know, a bit of an arsehole and I’m feeling angry,’” she laughs.

“And then I’m the bassist. I’m cool, I’m a chill person, it’s fine, I’ve got a cup of tea and it sort of helped me be a little bit further behind the beat.

Whereas the drummer, who’s angry, is a bit further ahead of the beat.”

These days, she doesn’t necessarily need the costume changes to get into character.

“I can just sort of try and embody, like, okay, where am I going to sit in terms of the groove? Am I ahead? Am I behind? Am I this or am I that? I do go a bit method,” Thackray concludes.