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A Place for Us Mixed by Dcp
#1
Here's my first mix and master of this track, this set of multis had a challenge similar to that of 64 Bristol in that alot of tracks seemed to be redundant and needed to be weeded through in order to end up with a cohesive arrangement and mix.

I ended up scrapping most of the drums for the samples that were included and used the Taiko track blended with the Drumkit 2 Sub kick and kick in tracks. The snare has a stereo reverb on it to spread it out some more and the whole drum buss is run through an Waves SSL Buss Compressor and T Racks Soft Clipper for some punch.

The bass is run through TSE B.O.D Version 1, highpassed at 80 Hz, and then run through CLA Bass to tie it together. I also used a Kjaerhus Audio Classic chorus and some fader automation to bring the bass out in certain sections.

The biggest battle was the backing vocals in my opinion. Almost every part was quad tracked and when summed together, seemed to muddy up the track. In the end I used the quad tracked choir style backing vocals and eliminated much of the quad tracked harmony lines as this seemed to be a best of both worlds kind of setup.

The lead vocals were recorded quite well and just needed a bit of EQ and minor compression to even them out and remove some boxiness. The vocals got some fader automation and a CLA Style plate reverb, slap back delay, and 1/4 note delay for some ambiance.

For the Staccato and ensemble strings, I used a bit crusher to dirty them up and as a bit of contrast between the clean soli strings.

Cheers,
Dcp


.mp3    A Plae for Us Master 1.mp3 --  (Download: 5.29 MB)


Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer

Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
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#2
Love your version DCP ,Sounds like you have had fun with great song love the drums especially the snare just the low frequencies of the snare sound a touch upfront might just be the low frequencies of the effects.

Well Done Big Grin


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#3
(13-10-2016, 07:55 AM)thedon Wrote: Love your version DCP ,Sounds like you have had fun with great song love the drums especially the snare just the low frequencies of the snare sound a touch upfront might just be the low frequencies of the effects.

Well Done Big Grin

Thanks Don! I used the sample snare which was pretty dark sounding and had tonnes of low mid energy in it, I'm working on a new revision with the acoustic snares blended in for abit more attack and a multiband compressor to smack down the 120-800 Hz range to combat the build up.

This mix was alot of fun and brings an interesting thing to light, how easy it is to make a clean and polished sounding mix when you're working with more sample and electronic instruments. Really this track sounded like a record instrumentation wise when I pulled the faders up, most of my processing was to just optimize the spacing of instruments in the mix, the rest of the time was spent on trying to get some dirt and character into the mix. When I was in my last year of audio school, my class put together an ep for the RPM Challenge and had a similar revelation.

Most of my class and I were writing rock tracks and recording them at our school's small studio with an acoustic drum kit, Vox AC15 guitar amp, and a bass direct into a Grace Designs M101 preamp. One of the other guys in the class was an electronic musician and did the majority of his tracking on his rig at home. He used sample drums, synth bass and sub bass, string pads, some guitar synths, and some percussion samples. The vocals, some solo guitar, and a bass were recorded at school but in the end it took us less time to mix that one track to a commercial level than it did to clean up and iron out some blemishes in the rock tracks with all acoustic instruments.

Most of the work on that electronic track was spend trying to dirty it up and make it more "human" sounding, however it was way more fun tracking the rock tracks and getting sounds for them, mainly because we were all working together and interacting with each other to get the best recording we could, something that gets lost being a producer in a purely digital workflow.

I'm starting to ramble now but a track like this is a great teaching tool for anyone who's used to mixing rock and more acoustic style music use different processing techniques like distortion, parallel compression, bit crushing, among others to make a more sample based track more live sounding along with adding acoustic elements to bring some human imperfections in to the mix.

Cheers,
Dcp
Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer

Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
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#4
Good work on this one DCP.. without reading any of your associated notes, it sounds solid to me.
M1 Pro MBP: is my Hattori Hanzo.
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#5
Overall balance is great. Nice stereo field. Comes a little left in a few spots. Try Nasty VCS--free plug. Play around with the stereo maker 1 and 2 settings. Just an idea but this thing is quick and helps place things just where you want them.

Also Kick is there but not defined in the low end. The choice is always which one--kick or bass, dominates below 80--on this tune maybe the bass. If so add a little more beater on the kick to make it cut a tad better. Snare is a little dark-200- without much smack or hit attack. I usually double the snare track eqing one for hit and one for smack and then balance the two. Also a touch of short plate reverb on the smack but not so much that it sets it back in the mix.

Remember I am in no way good enough to teach so think of these things as ideas only.

Best
Mike

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