19-09-2014, 05:29 AM
Hey everyone, This is the first multitrack i've had a go at downloading and mixing. I downloaded the files a while ago but only got to mixing a few days ago.
The song is great, I hadn't seen the FAQ the Blitz wrote with some mix notes/references mix's in there until after I had mixed the song and was looking to compare mine to some other finished ones. With that in mind, I may have done some things differently from how the band had imagined but overall i'm pretty happy with it. I thought for my own amusement and learning i'd write down a summary of what I did as a way of documenting my workflow and seeing how I can improve it and where I did any un-necessary "double Handling" so to speak. I'd love some helpful comments/suggestions.
Here goes:
As soon as I pushed up the faders and did a level & pan mix the singer instantly reminded me of Jonny Lindqvist who is one of my all time favourite vocalists from a band called Nocturnal rites. The song is similar to something they would have written 10 years ago but with a bit more of an aggressive american speed metal edge than they would normally have. So, I was going for somewhere between the vibe of their old school speed metal stuff ('Shadowland' & 'New World Messiah') and their more modern slick heavy rock sound. I also wanted to re-create some electronic/digital production elements that they use on their albums which I have not had a chance to try before. I also added some samples I feel help along the narrative of the song.
So, I created a vocal intro by pinching some vocals from the chorus and following them with a molotov cocktail sound effect to kick off the song with a bang. I also added a "fireball" sound effect going into the solo as well as some filter sweeps, automated phasers and a crowd chant under the post solo guitar harmony (I also added some crowd cheer samples where it breaks down to drum/bass vocal bridge (I've only ever done film/tv audio proffesionally so this is the dumb shit I think of doing when I mix a song
) Admittedly, the crowd cheer was too much but I left it in cause it made me laugh.
I don't always do anything but I almost always decorrelate my bass eg. create 2 one track for everything above 400hz - 800hz. one track for everyting below 800hz - 400hz) It means I can use Waves bass rider on the bottom end of the bass to keep it rock solid but without getting that weird sound you get from compression but I keep the dynamics of the top end. It also gives me the option to distort the top end a little bit to make it punch with the guitars in chuggy sections.
I usually start with a rough dynamics pass to even out any tracks in the mix that have larger variances in volume than i'd like. First though I will start with a stereo compressor on the mix bus super light ratio (a lot of people suggest 2 - 2.5 with 4db of noise reduction, i'll usually sit around 1.5 - 1.8 with 2 - 3 db of noise reduction. Next I go for a quick pass through the individual tracks and level out anything that needs basic levelling for dynamics. I'm not trying add any tone, sustain or compress so hard that I noticibly alter the balance of frequencies in the sound but just enough so that things are a bit more even so that small balance changes are easier in the mix stage. to I do this with Waves Rcompressor and am very careful with attack, release and ratio on this first pass so I don't really change the tone at all.
Next I do a rough pass of subtractive Eq anywhere I need it. Doing a rough Dynamics pass firt will mean that you will not be bringing up any of your EQ cuts like you would if the two were the other way around in the chain.
To begin this process I start with High and Low Pass Filters and put each instrument in it's rough frequency range. Next I put Waves C4 compressor on the master buss. I then bypass every channel so the plug in is not effecting the sound at all. I then go through and solo each fequency band. I do this so I can hear a bit more critically where problem frequencies. Although I am looking for frequencies that I will notch out if the individual tracks, I want to hear what frequncies are problematic within the mix but without the whole frequency spectrum of the mix distracting me. eg. If I hear some weird rumble in the bass, I will solo the low frequency band on c4 then place an eq on the bass guitar sweep around and find the problem frequency then notch it out. Sometimes this will be all that needs to happen, sometime making that cut to the bass guitar at that frequency reveals that the kick and tom have too much of this frequncy, depending on the elements in your mix this notch might actually be best made across the 2 bus because all the instruments have a build up of energy in this frequncy, sometimes that wont be the case and you'll want to cut the individual track it's self. The point is, if you solo'd the bass to make this cut you may cut too much in that area or cut another dominant frequncy that might turn out to be crucial within the mix. Since I started isolating the frequncy bands like this for subtrative EQing I have found myself doing much less processing and being much more effective with the cut's I do make. A few Eq rules of thumb I follow are:
- no more than 2 notches on any track.
- If you can cut it with a HPF of LPF without affecting the rest of the sound do that instead of notching.
- If the Q of your notch is wider than 8 you should prbably try cutting less level and widening the Q.
- You don't always have to boost next to a notch.
- It probably doesn't need that much top end.
if anyone wants to add some that'd be great!
Once this is all done I'll start grouping my instruments and assigning their outputs to a bus except the bass which I leave functioning as 2 mono tracks with just the faders grouped for easy level adjustment.
So my mix groups are:
Drums bus
Bass High end
Bass Low end
Rhythm Guitars
Lead/melody Guitars
Vocals
Samples/some BV's
At this stage I will usually activate C4 on my 2bus and try and find a rough setting for the song. mainly looking at where my crossover points sit and making sure i'm bringing out the chunk in the guitars at somewhere between 240hz - 300hz and making sure i'm not pushing the highs or sub lows to hard.
From here i'll do another rough level mix of the song, then I will start to boost certain riff's or elements in the guitars using clip gain. I bumped up a bunch of the little guitar licks in the verse's and keeping an ear our for any lines I wanted to take place of the melody briefly throughout the song, especially parts between vocal that could take the spotlight briefly. I'm not shooting for a prefect mix at this stage. The balance will change from here as I become aware of other elements of the song, I just want to highlight the interesting parts and make sure they stick out even with the fader static.
This is where rules of thumb start going out the window and you have to start looking extremely closely at how different elements of you mix effect one another. I couldn't even give a ballpark description of a process for this because individual elements/instrumentation/style/intent are all unique to any given song. What I can say is that this is where I will start experimenting with EQ Boosts to highlight particular areas of instruments and give them their own space within the mix. I also started experimenting more with spatializing/soundfield tools on some elements of the mix at this point.
This was my first time using stereo widening tools in a mix. I used some stereo wideneing on the rythm guitar bus and the octave lead guitars with slightly different spread on each. I also used Waves' Vitamin plug-in for the first time on this mix which was awesome because it allowed me to keep the bass frequencies more centered and punchy while still letting me get a good width on the highs. I saw a local Australian producer called Clayton Segelov ( http://thebrainstudios.com/staff/ ) use stereo widening tools recently when mxing an ep I did about a year ago. I know it's a common process and I new it existed but had not had a chance to see someone who knows what they're doing use these tools until then so it was a bit of a revelation. As i say this was my first time using it so while it helped the sound a lot and helped place things in the correct space there was some high Frequency artefacts it created that I was not sure how to deal with.
The vocals were really fun to mix in this song because there were a lot of options. I'm a huge power metal fan and love the epic vocal stuff - as you can hear on my band Darker Half's album https://soundcloud.com/darker-half-australia/nemesis - shameless plug
There was different lines to bring out in each verse and chorus which was cool. I pretty much left the backing vocals out for the first verse. The singer is talking about having burnt all his bridges so I didn't want him to have a bunch of friends singing with him now did I? Obviously this is fucking power metal so as soon as the chorus hit I brought that shit in with full force.
I bumped up the refrain before the scremo section a bit on the 2 bus rather than letting the dynamics drop at that point in the song. I think the band intended it to drop there but I felt it was cooler to have that part jump out rather than duck back.
The screamo part came out ok but I would have liked to have had the raw tracks un-distorted to blend in with the distorted tracks to give it a bit of definition (send the clean tracks to the the reverb/delay, keep the distorted tracks out of the reverb bus for definition).
I created a filter sweep into the chorus, it's the first time I have done that so it took a bit of tweaking but eventually I was happy with how it sounded.
I think I need to turn the bass up when the guitars drop out in the bridge but I only got about 1.5 hours to listen to this on my studio monitors, the rest was done on my shure 425 in ear-monitors that I use for playing live so the bass may have some issues i'm un aware of, pretty sure I trimmed a bit too much fat out of that area not really having monitors to push some air it's hard to really know whats going on down there.
I found it hard to keep the power in the chugs under the solo without covering the solo or making it thin with EQ. I think I found space for it eventually.
I automated a phaser effect on the drum fill into the last chorus. It gets the idea across but it's not perfect. I tried recording that bar to a stereo track, adding the paser effect on the stereo track and mixing it in parralel to the mix drum sound but that didn't work. Eventually i just automated it on the drum track but i'm not 100% happy with it. It is a bit to thin/dry toward the end of the effect. Maybe I should add a filter sweep too to cut the harshness of the highs and add a bit more colour to that sound.
I also added a small LPF sweep on the vocal where it sit's on it's own going into the last chorus.
The outro has a shitload going on. I added a Rcompressor to the mix bus and sidechained it to the vocal I can't remeber what setting I had exactly but it had a fast attack, medium release and low ratio so it just pushed the rest of the mix out of the way for the vocal a little bit when it gets loud. because of the build of the song it doesn't really push anything back in the verses, it pushes a bit back in the first and second choruses but by chorus 3 there are so many vocal tracks that it gets passed the threshold and makes a bit more room for the vocals.
As far as effects, I have a delay bus going with Hdelay on a ping pong setting, The vocal double has a bunch of ping poing and reverb on it while the lead is fairly dry. The Bv's have a fair bit of verb on them, mainly the Whoah part which comes in under the guitar harmony and again after the 3rd chorus.
As far as not vocal reverbs go I have a drum verb bus which is a small room doing very little other than putting the drums in a space. eg it's reverb not echo. The drum group is also going to the global verb just a little bit. There is a very very light spring reverb on the rhythm guitars in the chorus's and at the end of the song. The leads are going through a delay to the same spring reverb but at a slightly higher level.
I did a few new things on this mix which was cool (automated phaser, fliter sweeps). I also used a few plug-ins I had not tried before (Vitamin, Stereo width thingy). I think Vitamin is great although I think I added too much high frequency there.
Comments, suggestions, criticism welcome. This is the first time I've mixed a song that wasn't a demo of my band so would love some pointers from anyone who read this whole thing.
The song is great, I hadn't seen the FAQ the Blitz wrote with some mix notes/references mix's in there until after I had mixed the song and was looking to compare mine to some other finished ones. With that in mind, I may have done some things differently from how the band had imagined but overall i'm pretty happy with it. I thought for my own amusement and learning i'd write down a summary of what I did as a way of documenting my workflow and seeing how I can improve it and where I did any un-necessary "double Handling" so to speak. I'd love some helpful comments/suggestions.
Here goes:
As soon as I pushed up the faders and did a level & pan mix the singer instantly reminded me of Jonny Lindqvist who is one of my all time favourite vocalists from a band called Nocturnal rites. The song is similar to something they would have written 10 years ago but with a bit more of an aggressive american speed metal edge than they would normally have. So, I was going for somewhere between the vibe of their old school speed metal stuff ('Shadowland' & 'New World Messiah') and their more modern slick heavy rock sound. I also wanted to re-create some electronic/digital production elements that they use on their albums which I have not had a chance to try before. I also added some samples I feel help along the narrative of the song.
So, I created a vocal intro by pinching some vocals from the chorus and following them with a molotov cocktail sound effect to kick off the song with a bang. I also added a "fireball" sound effect going into the solo as well as some filter sweeps, automated phasers and a crowd chant under the post solo guitar harmony (I also added some crowd cheer samples where it breaks down to drum/bass vocal bridge (I've only ever done film/tv audio proffesionally so this is the dumb shit I think of doing when I mix a song
) Admittedly, the crowd cheer was too much but I left it in cause it made me laugh.I don't always do anything but I almost always decorrelate my bass eg. create 2 one track for everything above 400hz - 800hz. one track for everyting below 800hz - 400hz) It means I can use Waves bass rider on the bottom end of the bass to keep it rock solid but without getting that weird sound you get from compression but I keep the dynamics of the top end. It also gives me the option to distort the top end a little bit to make it punch with the guitars in chuggy sections.
I usually start with a rough dynamics pass to even out any tracks in the mix that have larger variances in volume than i'd like. First though I will start with a stereo compressor on the mix bus super light ratio (a lot of people suggest 2 - 2.5 with 4db of noise reduction, i'll usually sit around 1.5 - 1.8 with 2 - 3 db of noise reduction. Next I go for a quick pass through the individual tracks and level out anything that needs basic levelling for dynamics. I'm not trying add any tone, sustain or compress so hard that I noticibly alter the balance of frequencies in the sound but just enough so that things are a bit more even so that small balance changes are easier in the mix stage. to I do this with Waves Rcompressor and am very careful with attack, release and ratio on this first pass so I don't really change the tone at all.
Next I do a rough pass of subtractive Eq anywhere I need it. Doing a rough Dynamics pass firt will mean that you will not be bringing up any of your EQ cuts like you would if the two were the other way around in the chain.
To begin this process I start with High and Low Pass Filters and put each instrument in it's rough frequency range. Next I put Waves C4 compressor on the master buss. I then bypass every channel so the plug in is not effecting the sound at all. I then go through and solo each fequency band. I do this so I can hear a bit more critically where problem frequencies. Although I am looking for frequencies that I will notch out if the individual tracks, I want to hear what frequncies are problematic within the mix but without the whole frequency spectrum of the mix distracting me. eg. If I hear some weird rumble in the bass, I will solo the low frequency band on c4 then place an eq on the bass guitar sweep around and find the problem frequency then notch it out. Sometimes this will be all that needs to happen, sometime making that cut to the bass guitar at that frequency reveals that the kick and tom have too much of this frequncy, depending on the elements in your mix this notch might actually be best made across the 2 bus because all the instruments have a build up of energy in this frequncy, sometimes that wont be the case and you'll want to cut the individual track it's self. The point is, if you solo'd the bass to make this cut you may cut too much in that area or cut another dominant frequncy that might turn out to be crucial within the mix. Since I started isolating the frequncy bands like this for subtrative EQing I have found myself doing much less processing and being much more effective with the cut's I do make. A few Eq rules of thumb I follow are:
- no more than 2 notches on any track.
- If you can cut it with a HPF of LPF without affecting the rest of the sound do that instead of notching.
- If the Q of your notch is wider than 8 you should prbably try cutting less level and widening the Q.
- You don't always have to boost next to a notch.
- It probably doesn't need that much top end.
if anyone wants to add some that'd be great!
Once this is all done I'll start grouping my instruments and assigning their outputs to a bus except the bass which I leave functioning as 2 mono tracks with just the faders grouped for easy level adjustment.
So my mix groups are:
Drums bus
Bass High end
Bass Low end
Rhythm Guitars
Lead/melody Guitars
Vocals
Samples/some BV's
At this stage I will usually activate C4 on my 2bus and try and find a rough setting for the song. mainly looking at where my crossover points sit and making sure i'm bringing out the chunk in the guitars at somewhere between 240hz - 300hz and making sure i'm not pushing the highs or sub lows to hard.
From here i'll do another rough level mix of the song, then I will start to boost certain riff's or elements in the guitars using clip gain. I bumped up a bunch of the little guitar licks in the verse's and keeping an ear our for any lines I wanted to take place of the melody briefly throughout the song, especially parts between vocal that could take the spotlight briefly. I'm not shooting for a prefect mix at this stage. The balance will change from here as I become aware of other elements of the song, I just want to highlight the interesting parts and make sure they stick out even with the fader static.
This is where rules of thumb start going out the window and you have to start looking extremely closely at how different elements of you mix effect one another. I couldn't even give a ballpark description of a process for this because individual elements/instrumentation/style/intent are all unique to any given song. What I can say is that this is where I will start experimenting with EQ Boosts to highlight particular areas of instruments and give them their own space within the mix. I also started experimenting more with spatializing/soundfield tools on some elements of the mix at this point.
This was my first time using stereo widening tools in a mix. I used some stereo wideneing on the rythm guitar bus and the octave lead guitars with slightly different spread on each. I also used Waves' Vitamin plug-in for the first time on this mix which was awesome because it allowed me to keep the bass frequencies more centered and punchy while still letting me get a good width on the highs. I saw a local Australian producer called Clayton Segelov ( http://thebrainstudios.com/staff/ ) use stereo widening tools recently when mxing an ep I did about a year ago. I know it's a common process and I new it existed but had not had a chance to see someone who knows what they're doing use these tools until then so it was a bit of a revelation. As i say this was my first time using it so while it helped the sound a lot and helped place things in the correct space there was some high Frequency artefacts it created that I was not sure how to deal with.
The vocals were really fun to mix in this song because there were a lot of options. I'm a huge power metal fan and love the epic vocal stuff - as you can hear on my band Darker Half's album https://soundcloud.com/darker-half-australia/nemesis - shameless plug
There was different lines to bring out in each verse and chorus which was cool. I pretty much left the backing vocals out for the first verse. The singer is talking about having burnt all his bridges so I didn't want him to have a bunch of friends singing with him now did I? Obviously this is fucking power metal so as soon as the chorus hit I brought that shit in with full force.
I bumped up the refrain before the scremo section a bit on the 2 bus rather than letting the dynamics drop at that point in the song. I think the band intended it to drop there but I felt it was cooler to have that part jump out rather than duck back.
The screamo part came out ok but I would have liked to have had the raw tracks un-distorted to blend in with the distorted tracks to give it a bit of definition (send the clean tracks to the the reverb/delay, keep the distorted tracks out of the reverb bus for definition).
I created a filter sweep into the chorus, it's the first time I have done that so it took a bit of tweaking but eventually I was happy with how it sounded.
I think I need to turn the bass up when the guitars drop out in the bridge but I only got about 1.5 hours to listen to this on my studio monitors, the rest was done on my shure 425 in ear-monitors that I use for playing live so the bass may have some issues i'm un aware of, pretty sure I trimmed a bit too much fat out of that area not really having monitors to push some air it's hard to really know whats going on down there.
I found it hard to keep the power in the chugs under the solo without covering the solo or making it thin with EQ. I think I found space for it eventually.
I automated a phaser effect on the drum fill into the last chorus. It gets the idea across but it's not perfect. I tried recording that bar to a stereo track, adding the paser effect on the stereo track and mixing it in parralel to the mix drum sound but that didn't work. Eventually i just automated it on the drum track but i'm not 100% happy with it. It is a bit to thin/dry toward the end of the effect. Maybe I should add a filter sweep too to cut the harshness of the highs and add a bit more colour to that sound.
I also added a small LPF sweep on the vocal where it sit's on it's own going into the last chorus.
The outro has a shitload going on. I added a Rcompressor to the mix bus and sidechained it to the vocal I can't remeber what setting I had exactly but it had a fast attack, medium release and low ratio so it just pushed the rest of the mix out of the way for the vocal a little bit when it gets loud. because of the build of the song it doesn't really push anything back in the verses, it pushes a bit back in the first and second choruses but by chorus 3 there are so many vocal tracks that it gets passed the threshold and makes a bit more room for the vocals.
As far as effects, I have a delay bus going with Hdelay on a ping pong setting, The vocal double has a bunch of ping poing and reverb on it while the lead is fairly dry. The Bv's have a fair bit of verb on them, mainly the Whoah part which comes in under the guitar harmony and again after the 3rd chorus.
As far as not vocal reverbs go I have a drum verb bus which is a small room doing very little other than putting the drums in a space. eg it's reverb not echo. The drum group is also going to the global verb just a little bit. There is a very very light spring reverb on the rhythm guitars in the chorus's and at the end of the song. The leads are going through a delay to the same spring reverb but at a slightly higher level.
I did a few new things on this mix which was cool (automated phaser, fliter sweeps). I also used a few plug-ins I had not tried before (Vitamin, Stereo width thingy). I think Vitamin is great although I think I added too much high frequency there.
Comments, suggestions, criticism welcome. This is the first time I've mixed a song that wasn't a demo of my band so would love some pointers from anyone who read this whole thing.
Not the choir, not the snare