29-12-2013, 12:08 AM
I feel really good about this mix, which worries me, because I'm usually overly critical given my inexperience :|
My process was as follows:
I reduced the volume and gain of every track, as some of the original recordings were clipping heavily, and leveled/balanced them to taste. It also feels good to me to mix with a tape saturation plugin on the submix->mix bus on from the get go... feels nice and tight.
Personally, I like natural drum dynamics, but epic scale rock like this typically can't support a very dynamic kit without the bass and snare getting lost in the wash, so I applied high pass filters where applicable, compressed the overheads and then compressed the entire bus with Ferric saturation.
Then my attention to the lead vocals, which were rather uneven and peaky, so I applied compression and saturation to even things out and keep the quieter parts from getting washed out.
I used high pass filtering on almost all instruments, including the DI bass track so that it wouldn't frequency mask the kick drum tracks. Amp 1 sounds poopy to me so it is muted, with amp 2 allowed to come through as more of a quiet rumble to increase heaviness in the chorus.
Additional EQ work was performed on the vocals to maintain clarity without getting too airy and too maintain fullness without getting too muddy.
I went with the DI guitar tracks in most cases and used the VGA guitar amp to dial in a heavier, less treble-y roar during the choruses, muting the mic'd amps. There's also some peak catching saturation going on, but it's very subtle.
To maintain balance and shift dynamics from section to section, I automated the volume on the main bus with envelopes, boosting the master fader during the choruses. I found that the guitars were too loud and competing with the vocal during the choruses, so I enveloped them to decrease during the choruses, and boosted the #2 vocal track with the fader and a hard knee compression. The backing vocal track has the highs rolled off to push it back and is sweetened with an autopanned delay effect.
Finally, I glued the track together a bit more with a very small amount of reverb on the master bus, and since I used very minimal panning to keep the guitars centered and heavy, I put UpStereo on the master bus to widen the very few stereo tracks and reverb/delay effects, and add a little air and space. Lastly, I put a limiter at the very end of the chain to catch any stray transients and "pre-master" the final track, bringing it up to a listenable volume.
When referencing Mike's mix at the very end of my process, I noticed he's using significantly more upper mid-range and low treble frequencies then I used. Those frequencies tend wear out my ears when mixing so I try to keep them low... is this a mistake or just a matter of personal taste?
Am I on the right track here? A little corrective criticism seems in order, because I only really feel confident that I'm missing a grevious error somewhere. Thanks for listening!
My process was as follows:
I reduced the volume and gain of every track, as some of the original recordings were clipping heavily, and leveled/balanced them to taste. It also feels good to me to mix with a tape saturation plugin on the submix->mix bus on from the get go... feels nice and tight.
Personally, I like natural drum dynamics, but epic scale rock like this typically can't support a very dynamic kit without the bass and snare getting lost in the wash, so I applied high pass filters where applicable, compressed the overheads and then compressed the entire bus with Ferric saturation.
Then my attention to the lead vocals, which were rather uneven and peaky, so I applied compression and saturation to even things out and keep the quieter parts from getting washed out.
I used high pass filtering on almost all instruments, including the DI bass track so that it wouldn't frequency mask the kick drum tracks. Amp 1 sounds poopy to me so it is muted, with amp 2 allowed to come through as more of a quiet rumble to increase heaviness in the chorus.
Additional EQ work was performed on the vocals to maintain clarity without getting too airy and too maintain fullness without getting too muddy.
I went with the DI guitar tracks in most cases and used the VGA guitar amp to dial in a heavier, less treble-y roar during the choruses, muting the mic'd amps. There's also some peak catching saturation going on, but it's very subtle.
To maintain balance and shift dynamics from section to section, I automated the volume on the main bus with envelopes, boosting the master fader during the choruses. I found that the guitars were too loud and competing with the vocal during the choruses, so I enveloped them to decrease during the choruses, and boosted the #2 vocal track with the fader and a hard knee compression. The backing vocal track has the highs rolled off to push it back and is sweetened with an autopanned delay effect.
Finally, I glued the track together a bit more with a very small amount of reverb on the master bus, and since I used very minimal panning to keep the guitars centered and heavy, I put UpStereo on the master bus to widen the very few stereo tracks and reverb/delay effects, and add a little air and space. Lastly, I put a limiter at the very end of the chain to catch any stray transients and "pre-master" the final track, bringing it up to a listenable volume.
When referencing Mike's mix at the very end of my process, I noticed he's using significantly more upper mid-range and low treble frequencies then I used. Those frequencies tend wear out my ears when mixing so I try to keep them low... is this a mistake or just a matter of personal taste?
Am I on the right track here? A little corrective criticism seems in order, because I only really feel confident that I'm missing a grevious error somewhere. Thanks for listening!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
