About This Multitrack

[Mike Senior]

You can find the multitrack files for this project in the 'Mixing Secrets' Free Multitrack Download Library.

Before posting a mix, please read The Three Commandments!
Please post your mix as a new thread, rather than as a reply to this sticky.

Here's some more project info you might find useful:

• About The Raw Multitracks: This project has a live drum take, with separate overdubs for bass, guitars, and vocals. The drum-recording setup comprised stereo overhead mics, a mono room mic, and close mics for kick, snare top/bottom, and two toms. The bass part was captured as a DI and via two separate cab mics, whereas the three guitar parts were all recorded via multi-miked cabs. The lead vocal has been double-tracked, and there's a single double-tracked backing-vocal line during the choruses. Note that the harmony line in the second verse of the multitrack library's preview mix isn't in the raw multitracks -- it was generated at mixdown using pitch-shifting.
  

• Challenges You're Likely To Face:
  • Phase issues loom large in this particular project, affecting everything bar the vocal parts, and you'll struggle to get a satisfactory result without at least flexing your polarity-inversion buttons.
    
  • Achieving the kind of stereo width typical of this style is also tricky, partly because of the lack of guitar double-tracks -- spreading the multi-mics across the image doesn't create the same kind of effect, and can lead to mono-compatibility problems depending on how you've managed your phase-relationships.
    
  • Getting the snare to carry through the texture during the choruses is another tough task, especially if you eschew sample-triggering.
    
  • The basic verse-chorus 'gear-shift' is a textbook long-term mix-dynamics problem which is pretty much insoluble without some careful multing and/or mix automation. In addition, the final chorus entry is unlikely to arrive with a proper 'bang' unless you apply some lateral thinking, because of the way the mid-section guitar overdubs drop out at that point in the arrangement.
    
  • The bass part is too varied to allow a single processing approach for the whole song. Again, multing/automation is likely to be necessary if you're going to create a stable balance.
    

• Some Mixing Tips:
  • There's masses of advice available about this mix because it was the subject of a big mix-off competition I judged a while back, during the process of which more than 100 different mix versions were submitted. I myself wrote detailed critiques of most of the mixes to help the entrants improve their work, and these are all available (along with all the mix audio files) on this archive page.
    
  • I also drew on the mixoff competition experience to write a 'Top Ten Mix Mistakes' article for the September 2011 issue of Sound On Sound magazine.
    
  • I remixed another very similar multitrack (the song 'Facade') for Sound On Sound's October 2011 'Mix Rescue' column, which not only shows how I approached this band's recordings myself in practice, but also includes a selection of audio files demonstrating the effects of some of my processing decisions.
    

If you have any other general questions about this multitrack, just reply to this post and I'll see what I can do.