Something is happening here but you don't know what it is...

In the current issue of Tape Op, veteran producer Chris Shaw tells a little story about an exasperating mixing session with the Bob Dylan:

After an hour of waiting, [Dylan] walks to the console and asks, “Chris, what are you doing?” “Mixing, Bob.” “I know you’re mixing, but what are you doing?” “Trying to make it sound better, Bob!” “Better than what?” “Better than it sounded yesterday.” “I understand. You’re the genius here, but let me tell you what I know about mixing…” I’m thinking, “Oh boy, here it comes. Bob Dylan is going to tell me what he knows about mixing. This is really going to be interesting.” “…let me tell you what I know about mixing. I work with these engineers, they put the tape on, they push up the kick drum fader, spend 10 minutes doing whatever it is that they do and that kick drum sounds fantastic. Then they push up the snare drum and they do the same thing. So that kick and snare sound fantastic. They keep working down the line until they get to the end of the song and now everything sounds fantastic, but the song doesn’t sound good.”

 Ultimately Shaw discovers that Dylan is right, that the track sounded best before he started messing with anything.

This kind of thing has happened to me many times while working with audio—a track has an emergent property which can’t be reduced to the qualities of its individual parts. I think this is due, on the one hand, to the complex unpredictability of how different sounds combine with and cancel out one another, and on the other hand, to something even more mysterious having to do with vibes and organicism and stuff like that...