30-01-2021, 09:30 AM
So my first attempt at (almost) a proper mix of a song.
After watching all of Mike Senior's videos on this site I tried to apply what I learned and started the mix by tidying up the tracks and removing things I didn't want there. I also fixed some parts that I felt were out of time between such as fills or the odd kick and snare - trying to keep a consistent groove without going overboard.
The next thing I did was take the advice of Musician on a Mission and set all my stems to a level that hit a VU meter at about 0 as I was planning to use plugins that emulate analog gear and this would get them to give me the best sound (allegedly).
Next I ran all the tracks through my neve 5024 just because I could (and to me it just gave everything a nice colour that is easier to mix) - doing this also seemed to tame a lot of the transients so I wouldn't have to go crazy with compression later.
Next on to mixing. I did a rough balance of everything and then went buss by buss.
I felt it was best to tackle the mix from drums first as it's an indie rock song with a lot of groove and that needed to be the solid base for the track. Slate Digital's plugins come with some nice tutorials so I used that advice as a starting point using a top down method to getting a good drum sound. Starting with the overheads and mixing everything else in. I made a point to check the phase polarity as I went (as per Mike's advice) and this made a massive difference. I created an extra over-compressed distorted dirty parallel version of the snare top to help it cut through the mix. The kicks have a little touch of eq and some parallel compression to help them cut through. I added gates to all the drums and automated panning on the toms to give them a sense of space and movement.
Next the bass - quite a lot of eq on this to help it drive through. I'm actually quite happy how this sound turned out.
Guitars were a bit trickier. The lead guitar had a sharpness to it that was not easy to tame and overall it was tricky to cut the mid to low end in such a way that they weren't muddying the kick and bass but still retaining they're character. But I watched a video with CLA and he really cranked the EQ to make the guitars distinct. I also added some transient shapers to give them a bit more definition (the jangly stabby guitars really benefitted from that I think)
Vocals weren't too hard to mix. I added a band passed distortion channel to feed some of the panned vocals through as the harmonies reminded me a lot of the Foo Fighters and I wanted to get that Dave Grohl megaphone sound.
Overall I don't think I did terrible for a first real proper attempt at a mix. I didn't really have time to do any automation so that will be my next project once I can start mixing a bit faster.
Would really love some harsh, no punches pulled critiques of my mix. Gonna go listen to everyone elses mix now and probably realize mine is actually awful. So feedback please!!
Things I know I did done wrong: Not enough use of automation / fader surfing. Not using reference tracks enough. Spending an evening getting a really bad guitar sound because I was too tired and shouldn't have been mixing. Getting a bit lazy when it came to mixing the vocals.
After watching all of Mike Senior's videos on this site I tried to apply what I learned and started the mix by tidying up the tracks and removing things I didn't want there. I also fixed some parts that I felt were out of time between such as fills or the odd kick and snare - trying to keep a consistent groove without going overboard.
The next thing I did was take the advice of Musician on a Mission and set all my stems to a level that hit a VU meter at about 0 as I was planning to use plugins that emulate analog gear and this would get them to give me the best sound (allegedly).
Next I ran all the tracks through my neve 5024 just because I could (and to me it just gave everything a nice colour that is easier to mix) - doing this also seemed to tame a lot of the transients so I wouldn't have to go crazy with compression later.
Next on to mixing. I did a rough balance of everything and then went buss by buss.
I felt it was best to tackle the mix from drums first as it's an indie rock song with a lot of groove and that needed to be the solid base for the track. Slate Digital's plugins come with some nice tutorials so I used that advice as a starting point using a top down method to getting a good drum sound. Starting with the overheads and mixing everything else in. I made a point to check the phase polarity as I went (as per Mike's advice) and this made a massive difference. I created an extra over-compressed distorted dirty parallel version of the snare top to help it cut through the mix. The kicks have a little touch of eq and some parallel compression to help them cut through. I added gates to all the drums and automated panning on the toms to give them a sense of space and movement.
Next the bass - quite a lot of eq on this to help it drive through. I'm actually quite happy how this sound turned out.
Guitars were a bit trickier. The lead guitar had a sharpness to it that was not easy to tame and overall it was tricky to cut the mid to low end in such a way that they weren't muddying the kick and bass but still retaining they're character. But I watched a video with CLA and he really cranked the EQ to make the guitars distinct. I also added some transient shapers to give them a bit more definition (the jangly stabby guitars really benefitted from that I think)
Vocals weren't too hard to mix. I added a band passed distortion channel to feed some of the panned vocals through as the harmonies reminded me a lot of the Foo Fighters and I wanted to get that Dave Grohl megaphone sound.
Overall I don't think I did terrible for a first real proper attempt at a mix. I didn't really have time to do any automation so that will be my next project once I can start mixing a bit faster.
Would really love some harsh, no punches pulled critiques of my mix. Gonna go listen to everyone elses mix now and probably realize mine is actually awful. So feedback please!!
Things I know I did done wrong: Not enough use of automation / fader surfing. Not using reference tracks enough. Spending an evening getting a really bad guitar sound because I was too tired and shouldn't have been mixing. Getting a bit lazy when it came to mixing the vocals.