07-09-2016, 04:38 AM
A challenging mix, since while everything was really well-recorded, it's always hard getting a big fat mix, but still have everything clear and audible.
One thing I did that made a big difference was panning the guitars. Originally, I had them hard left and right (as did everyone else, apparently
) which certainly made them sound wide, but there was also a big hole in the middle. So I took a copy of the guitars, pitch-shifted and delayed them ever so slightly, and put them in the centre, at a lower volume, to fill that hole. This gave me a solid "wall of sound" for the guitars, wide but spread more evenly across the stereo field. Even cooler, by automating the volumes of the 3 guitar tracks, and the panning of side channels, I could control the width of the guitars: big, fat and wide, or more focused and centred.
Other people have mentioned difficulties with the snare - it was a bit uneven, not only in volume but also tonally, and I ended up cutting and pasting hits from other parts of the song to make things more consistent. I had trouble getting it to stick out in the song, so I had the idea of side-chaining it into the guitars, ducking them a few dB on each hit, and this made a big difference. However, I ended up having so much stuff going into that side-chain (vox, snare, bass), I'm not sure if I was making the compressor constantly be working, which kinda defeats the purpose
I recently discovered the value of low-passing tracks on another mix I've been working on. Everyone talks about the importance of high-passing tracks, to clear out the mud in your non-bass/kick tracks, but hardly anyone seems to talk about the other end of the spectrum. Bass and kick tracks seem to have a lot of sonic information in the upper registers that mask out and dull the sound of the snare. I'd already closed off this mix, but a quick test showed that low-passing the bass and kick cleared out a huge amount of space for the snare, and it suddenly became much clearer, especially the "crack" and sparkle, instead of just a dull thud. I'll definitely be doing this in future mixes!
I tried a new technique with the vocals, copying it to another track, distorting it pretty hard, blending it back in, and bumping it up when the vocals needed to cut through a bit more. This helped quite a bit.
I also had a bit of fun with the vocals in the break - some lo-fi processing and swirly delay, to help it fit into the trippy sound of the guitars, with a fair bit of automation of those, and EQ to get each phrase to blend in nicely.
One thing I did that made a big difference was panning the guitars. Originally, I had them hard left and right (as did everyone else, apparently
) which certainly made them sound wide, but there was also a big hole in the middle. So I took a copy of the guitars, pitch-shifted and delayed them ever so slightly, and put them in the centre, at a lower volume, to fill that hole. This gave me a solid "wall of sound" for the guitars, wide but spread more evenly across the stereo field. Even cooler, by automating the volumes of the 3 guitar tracks, and the panning of side channels, I could control the width of the guitars: big, fat and wide, or more focused and centred.Other people have mentioned difficulties with the snare - it was a bit uneven, not only in volume but also tonally, and I ended up cutting and pasting hits from other parts of the song to make things more consistent. I had trouble getting it to stick out in the song, so I had the idea of side-chaining it into the guitars, ducking them a few dB on each hit, and this made a big difference. However, I ended up having so much stuff going into that side-chain (vox, snare, bass), I'm not sure if I was making the compressor constantly be working, which kinda defeats the purpose
I recently discovered the value of low-passing tracks on another mix I've been working on. Everyone talks about the importance of high-passing tracks, to clear out the mud in your non-bass/kick tracks, but hardly anyone seems to talk about the other end of the spectrum. Bass and kick tracks seem to have a lot of sonic information in the upper registers that mask out and dull the sound of the snare. I'd already closed off this mix, but a quick test showed that low-passing the bass and kick cleared out a huge amount of space for the snare, and it suddenly became much clearer, especially the "crack" and sparkle, instead of just a dull thud. I'll definitely be doing this in future mixes!
I tried a new technique with the vocals, copying it to another track, distorting it pretty hard, blending it back in, and bumping it up when the vocals needed to cut through a bit more. This helped quite a bit.
I also had a bit of fun with the vocals in the break - some lo-fi processing and swirly delay, to help it fit into the trippy sound of the guitars, with a fair bit of automation of those, and EQ to get each phrase to blend in nicely.