mix exercise

[farview]

Unfortunately, I'm on the other side of the country right now, so I can't look at the session. But, from what I remember, the kick and snare are both samples. I chose samples that sounded like the drums that were recorded. The only reason I used samples was because of the amount of bleed and the amount of EQ and compression I was trying to use. The bleed got way out of control very quickly once I started processing, so I just sample replaced.

The samples were raw and unprocessed, so I EQ'd and compressed them (I can't remember off the top of my head how). Both the kick and snare have verb on them, the snare more than the kick.

I picked two of the overhead tracks and panned them wide and EQ'd them to make them sound balanced.

I sent all the drums and the drum reverb to a group buss and stuck an 1176 with all buttons in across it (UAD plugin)

To get some spread on the guitar melody, I copied the audio to another track and applied a different cabinet sim on each track and panned them. There might be reverb oon them as well.

[goose42]

Ahh, neat! I thought they sounded very much like the originals. Cool that you put the drum reverb in the group with the drums, I usually keep them separate.

I like using multiple cab sims, too; most recently liked it on an acoustic, that was weird. When you can look at it - what cab simulators do you like best?

This is turning into school for me! Sweet.

[farview]

I put the verb in with the drums so that the verb breathes with them. It's the same basic thing as sending a room mic to the buss and compressing it with the drums.

Nuendo 5 comes with an amp sim, I used that with the amp part bypassed. The cabinets are just numbered, so I have no idea what they are simulating.

I used the cab sims just to tame the piercing upper mids a bit. I was doing a lot of brightening, so I had to tame the guitars down before I brightened them up a bit.

[leigh]

Cale - your drum mix is sweet. How did you process them?

I was curious about that too - sounds like there's some heavy compression at work, that's ducking the ride cymbal when the snare hits. That adds an interesting motion to the drum part...

Leigh - interesting how you change the perspective by making the organ so wide and putting the guitar in the middle. I never would have thought of that. Your effects and subtle rearrangement also take the song to a new place, especially with the dub delay on the snare. I love how you brought in the Shimmer output in the same space that the harpsichord fills in later, too.

Since there wasn't a bass track, I decided to make the organ the sonic foundation for the song. While, at the same time, getting those high-organ stabs on the offbeats to animate the rhythm, by panning them off to one side. Since the low and high organ parts were all on one track, I used filtering to separate them. Each side was then saturated/compressed differently: one got the Decapitator, and the other the UBK-1.

To my ears, the drums were musically the least engaging part (since they are doing the same pattern without variation throughout the song). So I decided to keep them small and lower in the mix, and added some rhythmic variation via that delay.

What track or tracks did everyone have to mess with the most to get it to do what they liked in the mix?

The guitar, to thicken it up. Besides heavy EQ, there is some short delay with modulation on the guitar. I wish that delay was turned up louder, that's something I would tweak on a revision.

cheers,
Leigh

[farview]

What track or tracks did everyone have to mess with the most to get it to do what they liked in the mix?

The guitar took the most work. But I was more surprised at the lack of stereo micing.

There were 3 'overheads' but not a stereo pair, they were just different distances.

Some of the instruments had a main track and an ambient track, but the ambient tracks were just mics on other instruments that weren't being played at the time. It would have been nice to have a stereo mic'd organ, since that's the foundation of the song and the only instrument that plays the whole song.

That being said, I am much more used to songs with 50-60 tracks, with multiple mics on a lot of the instruments (sometimes for stereo, sometimes for tone), so it might just be that I'm not used to a minimalistic approach anymore.

[cale w]

Cale - your drum mix is sweet. How did you process them?

I was curious about that too - sounds like there's some heavy compression at work, that's ducking the ride cymbal when the snare hits. That adds an interesting motion to the drum part...

I used the soft overhead in the center, the far one panned hard left, and the bright one middle left to give it some spread. All the drums but the kick are bussed together, and there's an 1176 plugin knocking back on the snare hits, which is pulling the ride down a bit. Listening back it may be a little much, but it does add that motion leigh mentioned. Theres a touch of verb on the kick and snare also.

I would have liked to see more stereo tracked parts also. I used the two organ room mics to make a false stereo thing by hard panning them, and for the guitar, I duplicated the track, dulled the duplicate with eq and delayed it by 70ms or so, then panned those tracks apart. That's something I do a lot in mixes, it's a fun quasi stereoifcation trick.

It was a fun mix!

[Nick Sevilla]

Hi Wren,

I shot some screenshots of what I did to get that mix, they are here:

http://nicksevilla.com/music/VelcroStars/

These tell the sordid story of what plug ins, automation, etc that were used.

Anything I muted, can be seen on the Pro Tools Edit window, as a greyed out section, or in case of the single electric guitar, as two tracks which were duplicated so I could treat each section totally differently. There is one screen in there with the panning info, as I panned one instrument quite interestingly.
Also, I time aligned the drum overheads a little, they sound weird by themselves without it. And retuned the kick lower, to match the instruments.

As to how long it took me : about 2.5 hours total.

You stated :

"Nick - your rearrangement is really interesting! Takes the song to a completely different place from the "Let's Go Away for A While" idea that they started with. How did you get the distortion you added?"

Thanks. Look at the edit window screens for how it was done. I basically felt that the electric should start earlier, as the song was totally boring when only the drums and B3 played for a while before any melody played. Gave me something to latch my interest on, early in the song.

If you see the electric guitar, you notice that I duplicated it, and used parts to mimic the arrangement that happens later on, right from the get go of the song.

I tried to pretend the drums "cam in" after the guitarist started. That made more sense to me, rather than how it was. So I kept the drums the same. Except for a tiny little muting, where I went overboard with the B3 and guitar, at about 2:22 in the timeline.

The distortion is mostly HEAT, from Pro Tools. And overdriving that. It is a "channel" distortion which emulates console busses, but has two knobs for the amount. You can set it to pre or post fader. In this mix, it is all post-fader,so the hotter the fader goes, the more it distorts. Just like on an analogue console. The rest of the distortion on the second guitar track, is on the picture labelled Screen10.

Here are the SoundCloud links again:

http://soundcloud.com/nick-53-1/velcrostarsbeforeruff

http://soundcloud.com/nick-53-1/velcrostarsnsevillamix

Cheers

[T-rex]

Since I am super late to the party I will start with some excuses: In between signing up for this and now, I pretty much sold off most of my analog mixing room and just kept a few pieces of choice gear, bought a dangerous d-box, some plug ins and a faderport. So tonight, this was my first mix with my new set up, which in shambles while I wait for my new desk to be built. Whew, now that is out of the way, here is my mix:

http://soundcloud.com/velvetaudio/velcr ... -d-box-mp3

It took a couple of hours. I messed with it on my ghost when I first got the tracks, so I was familiar with them but I didn't actually mess with them until tonight. So basically here is what I did:

Drums: bass and snare I ran through my Chandler lil devil eq's and gated them. I rarely ever gate drums, but I did these. I used the soft OH as the main overhead with a UAD Fatso on it and panned the other two overheads hard left and right, much further down in the mix.

The organ I used the "in piano" track as the main track, duplicated it and put the Lowender (thanks Leigh!) on the dup, 100% wet. Since there was no bass I wanted to add weight to the organ and since I don't have my subs set up; I pretty much have no idea how it sounds. Maybe you all can tell me, but I liked it in my headphones. I used the kick drum organ track too, much lower and on parts where I freely muted things (which I did a few times) I left the lower organ going for some contrast.

Electric guitar I eq'd a bit and compressed a bit with the chandler abbey road plug ins. I am still not really satisfied with the tone. I also sent it to an efx track with a space echo followed by a boss CE-1 (both UAD) panned hard away from the guitar.

The harpsichord I eq'd and ran through the UAD Moog Filter, just for the hell of it really. I liked it.

I used the EMT 140 plate as a room verb by sending a little bit of everything to it.

Finally, I used a ton of little automation moves to test out my faderport. Man this thing rules, I should have had one years ago for automating while mixing with my ghost.

Finally Finally, I used the Studer A-800 plug in on the 4 busses to the D-box.

[leigh]

Finally, I used a ton of little automation moves to test out my faderport. Man this thing rules, I should have had one years ago for automating while mixing with my ghost.

I got a Faderport too, just a couple months back. I agree, it makes automation a lot quicker. I just wish that it wasn't constrained by that "banks of 8" Mackie HUI format (at least that's how it works in Pro Tools). I was psyched at first because I thought at first I could just click on any track, and then the Faderport would control it. But that only works if the track is within the "current" bank of 8. And it has some other bugs in PT as well...

Your mix sounds good! That big thuddy kick sound you got helps round out the low end too.

Leigh

[T-rex]

Thanks! Yeah those little devil eq's are amazing and I like the big round bass drum sound when its so sparse, although it doesn't translate very well on small speakers.

See I was afraid of that with the faderport, but I have Cubase and it works natively so no banks or HUI. I just click on it and it works. I just wish the pan knob could be used for sends. That would rule.

I finally got a chance to listen to the other mixes, they all sound great.

[goose42]

Hey, all, back again! Still haven't gotten to sit down with this one, but I'm really looking forward to it. The more I hear different mixes with a greater sense of movement, the more I'm convinced I need to add some when I do. It's a slower week at the day job this week, so I might get a couple extra hours to work on it.

At the beginning of this, the band played me a demo and asked me for some advice. I suggested mono drums, because I liked the kind of bigger room sound they had (one mic in the room for both organ and drums). I told them to just go out in the room, pick a place where they like the sound of the drums, and drop a mic there in addition to the close mics.

But, since there aren't a lot of instrumental layers here, and no bass, the drums take up more space than I initially thought, and some real stereo miking would improve the end result with a lot less work in the mix. My offhand planning was incomplete - even not knowing what else they would, or wouldn't, add to the mix, I still could have suggested a stereo technique that collapses well to mono, with a mono room mic for flavor.

Huge thanks to everyone for your continued notes and criticism! It's cool to hear so many different mixes that all sound great.

I'm enjoying seeing the variety of plugins everybody uses. It's especially helpful to me to hear what the UAD guys do; I'm sorely tempted by the UAD Apollo, since my last computer upgrade was a Thunderbolt-equipped MBP.

[cale w]

On the UAD tip, I should mention in my mix I used the UA RealVerb plug on for the drum verb and the Pultec EQ on the master bus. I almost always have that Pultec on the mix, it's a pretty useful plugin. The UAD stuff is great but a little cumbersome in PTLE (the latency compensation is a chore). I have the UA Space Echo as well, and I don't know what the hell I was ever doing without that before!