As Mike Senior and others often say, if a song is well played and well recorded, mixing it is a whole load easier! What a difference from the far more challenging “Young Griffo - Blood to Bone” track that I struggled with for weeks. This was great fun to mix, and I set myself the target of doing whatever I could in 2 hours then signing off on it.
Still, every track benefitted from some polishing, which was hugely speeded up in this case by using Waves CLA Drums, Bass, Guitar, Unplugged and Vocals, plus a little plate reverb on the vocals and a dab of delay, doubling and reverb on the piano.
I found that very little automation was needed here apart from cleaning up the pause at 00:35, silencing the spill and the hum on the toms, and managing the plosive in the vocals at 02:51. On the mix buss I rolled off bass with a -18db/oct cut below 33hz and gave it a little pseudo-mastering touch with Vladislav Goncharov’s (brilliant and still free!) Limiter No.6 (https://vladgsound.wordpress.com/plugins/limiter6/ ). Comments welcome!
05-10-2016, 06:32 PM (This post was last modified: 05-10-2016, 06:43 PM by IRONWORK.)
Here's a second version. I wanted to make the snare drum stand out better in the mix, maybe bring up the piano a fraction, and dial back slightly on the reverb that I'd applied on the first mix.
The snare track was pretty messy so I didn't think it would react well to compression. Instead I added a noise gate to take out most of the spill from the kick and cymbals, then boosted the attack slightly with Transient Monster (http://www.stillwellaudio.com/plugins/tr...t-monster/). I eased off the reverb for the acoustic guitars, panned the piano right 10% and added a little automation to highlight it better at certain points in the song.
Overall I'm really pleased with this new mix, so a big thank you to Olli H for the snare comment.
Still, I'm hard-pressed to say if I like this as much as Olli or The Wizzard's mixes... They're both a bit more "leap out of the speakers into your face" - more dry and probably more modern-sounding, whereas I find mine has a kind of "cosy taverna" ambience (maybe there was a subconscious 1990s Gypsy Kings thing going on in my head...). In any case, it was fun!
(05-10-2016, 06:32 PM)IRONWORK Wrote: Here's a second version. I wanted to make the snare drum stand out better in the mix, maybe bring up the piano a fraction, and dial back slightly on the reverb that I'd applied on the first mix.
Listened to the second version. Seems well judged. Agree with your earlier comment about this track being one of the few that sort of "mixed itself", more than most!
Thanks Jeff! Just enjoying Lead Inc - Inner Circle and Leaf - Summerghost on your Soundcloud... Cool!
Yep, I think there was a lot of pre-prep done on these "I'm Alright" tracks. Shame 'Angels in Amplifiers' seem to have disappeared. I'd like to have heard some of their other tracks.
