Month: December 2014

I started by listening through the track to get an idea of how I wanted everything to sound and where I wanted them to go. I then panned everything so that I would be able to get a clearer idea of what to do.

I started with the drums as I find having a good set of drums to layer on top of is easier. For the kick I used EQ to help mould the sound into more of what I was looking for and I then used a compressor to give the kick more punch within the mix. The snare was done in a similar manor as the kick however it was much more difficult. The source sound for the snare was not great and this made the mixing process tricky. I ended up using EQ and compression to get the overall sound for the snare as well as mixing top and bottom together until I was happy with the mix. I added reverb through an auxiliary send to help give the snare more body within the mix. I didn’t really do that much to the toms, as we didn’t really use them that much within the piece. I gated the toms and added a small amount of EQ as well as adding compression to the low tom. I gated them as they had a lot of bleed that didn’t sound great when sorting the drums out. The overheads were done mainly by EQ and panning. I cut out some bass plus a section of mid from the overheads and boosted treble a small amount to stop them being cloudy within the mix. I ran the whole drum kit through a multiband compressor to help pull everything together and I was very happy with the outcome.

The bass guitar was done through using EQ and compression to help give that punchy bass tone. I also cut and boosted the basses EQ in the low mid are to help it sit better in the mix with the kick. I then blended the D112 and the DI to help give a full tone.

The guitars I decided would be panned far left and right to give a big stereo image. I used light EQ on the guitars and a small amount of reverb to help them sit in the mix rather than on top. I found they sat very well within the piece. The lead guitar I treated quite heavily as I found it didn’t fit very well into the mix. I panned the 57 partially to one side and counteracted this on the other side with the room mic just at a lower volume. I used distortion, chorus and reverb to tidy up the guitar

The piano and string section I decided to use only in the last sections of the song to give the piece more body towards the end. I used a small amount of EQ but I felt they were fine for the level they would be used.

The harp I felt would be better panned so I panned the DI and the 414 in different directions to make the section more ambient.

The vocals I found were recorded very well as they needed very little added to them to help them fit. I added a small amount of EQ, reverb and compression to help them sit better in the mix and sound clearer.

After I had my bounced track I reimported it and added a multiband compressor to help pull the song together as well as using parallel compression to finish the piece off.

This week are main intention was to tidy up the mix so that everyone had a good base to start from for mixing. We decided this as its industry practice for if you were getting your track mixed by someone else.

We started off by setting all of the tracks outputs to 1 and 2 on the desk. We did this because anyone mixing in the box would only have 2 outputs left and right. Once we had done this we had to redo all of the panning for the tracks as resetting the output had removed it. We panned the overheads left and right as well as panning the guitars. We left most things in the middle so that we could interpret the piece, as we wanted. Next we looked at cutting some silence out of tracks such as the vocal track. This was part of removing everything in the project we didn’t need including guide tracks. After we had all of this sorted we then looked into crossfading all the audio we had recorded using the pre-roll feature. Crossfading these together just make’s for a clean transition. Once we were all happy with the tracks we listened through a few times and did a very rough level mix. This was just so that all the instruments started at around the same level. The final step was colour coding the tracks and placing them in a logical order within the project. Tidying up the project like this makes things easier when mixing, as everything is ready to be mixed.