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Automation was the key
#1
hi all,

here is my mix of this song. i haven't done anything radical with it. i've used mainly eq, compression, reverb and delay to achieve what you hear. there are also some uses of stereo wideners, saturation, transient shaping and parallel compression.

i have not used any drum samples in this mix. i decided that i wanted to keep the sound completely pure even though it was tricky to work with the kick in particular.

the main thing that i did to get the sound that i wanted was i automated a LOT of stuff in this mix. volumes, pans, aux sends, fx parameters, switching fx in and out as needed, etc. i think mike senior also pointed out that the bass is all over the place in terms of performance and that really needed automation through the track to keep it relevant without being dominant.

i structured the whole thing to lead to the climax and i think i achieved a decent pay off on the final chorus and a really good pay off on the outro section.

it is far from perfect but i'm pretty happy with the results especially considering that i did the entire mix on a laptop with headphones while keeping an eye on a sleeping 5 month old with a "white noise" toy constantly playing in the background :-)

EDIT:
the more i listened to my previous version, the more it sounded over-compressed and claustrophobic to me. i was also hating the kick drum sound and so i went back and tweaked even more. i ended up getting a more appropriate kick sound from duplicating the track and processing each one differently and then blending them together.

on the master channel i really eased up on the compression and allowed it all to be far more dynamic than before. the parts where more instruments kick in like in the choruses and the bridge, there's far more life and vibrancy now.

i've also taken Dave's feedback on board and i've cleaned up the guitars.

i've outright replaced the old version of the mp3 so only the latest is available here.


.mp3    Young Griffo - Blood To Bone (Mixed).mp3 --  (Download: 9.31 MB)


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#2
Pretty solid mix especially with the headphones. There are some fuzzy guitar overtones coming through that sound like they shouldn't be there, Almost a clipping sound, not sure?
Anyway, I enjoyed this one, nice balance and build. Good Job.Smile

I sometimes check my mixes by fading them through a"pink noise" source to check for any stand outs. Maybe your background "white noise" problem contributed something good to the mix. lol

Dave
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#3
Thanks for the feedback Dave. Really appreciate it.

The "clipping" sound on the guitars was actually intentional. I was using other songs as references and I didn't like how clean and clinical everything was sounding in my mix even though it was balanced. I purposely chose to run certain parts of the bass and guitars through a bit crusher (on the most minimum of settings) to dirty it up. It was done intentionally and I get how that could not be to everyone's liking. It might have been a better idea to run them through a more traditional saturation to not create that effect but I actually quite liked the dirtiness of it.

Regards the "white noise", its crazy because I feel that I understand the results of what I've done best when i listen on headphones on public transport! Maybe the "white noise" is bringing that step closer in my process? :-)
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#4
Sounds a little bit closed in to me still.

The bit crusher is an interesting idea and an option I had quite forgotten about. I did a number of things on this mix to try to make the arrangement more interesting including adding a brief harmony to that lead guitar at one point which was not easy considering that the overtones of an overdriven guitar confuse the hell out of Melodyne.
Old West Audio
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#5
hey azwayne. thanks for listening and for the feedback. yes, perhaps it is still a bit too compressed. i'll go back to it and check but i wouldn't want to loosen it up too much as i feel that it would lose too much energy and also not feel "glued together". the arrangement in this song truly was a pain as you said :-)

what i have noticed recently though is that there is a single kick hit which is so much lower than the others that it got cut off by my gate on the kick track. i will have to go back and remedy that too.

i feel that getting a good drum sound and getting the bass guitar to sound appropriate throughout the song was what brought it all together for me as a mix. there were so many issues with the recordings though and a lot of the work felt like repairing it before actually mixing it.
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