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Mixing – Drums (LO3)

My main goal when mixing the drums is to make sure the frequencies that need to be heard are the ones that are left in and heard in the mix. I don’t like to mess around with the sound of the drum kit as I like the original sound of the kit and so does the drummer of  Dead Rooster.

 

I tend to start off by EQing the overheads of the drums to cut out some of the low-end and brighten the cymbals, I also like to add some size to the drum kit and make sure it doesn’t sound like it is in the drum room so I add a slight reverb to the overheads. I will then just go through each of the drums individually and EQ them to get rid of some of the sounds that just don’t need to be in the recording, such as the bleed from other drums. The kick drum is the drum I tend to spend the most time working on as I want it to be able to cut through the sound of the bass, so I tend to cut in the EQ and raise certain areas so that it is present in the entire mix.

In terms of how loud the drums are in the mix, they tend to be quite high as both me and the band like to be able to hear the drums, especially as in a couple of the songs there are small drum solos that need to cut through the rest of the instruments.

As inspiration for the drums I look mainly to Royal Blood as their album has a very clean drum sound and it is very present in the mix and is very punchy. I specifically looked at a song called ‘Better Strangers’ as the song starts with drums and it just fits right into the song.

 

 

http://www.audio-issues.com/music-mixing/a-quick-n-dirty-guide-to-getting-your-drums-sounding-punchy-powerful/

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Mixing – Guitars – Bass (LO3)

The bass was probably the most annoying part of mixing as the performance was at times, subpar. However, I did my best to try and make it work within the context of the three songs I mixed. The process for mixing the bass was fairly simple for me, I just EQ’ed the frequencies that were just not needed, most of the high end was cut off with a low-pass filter so that the lead guitar would have more space to work in. I also cut out some of the lower frequencies that the kick drum was situated in so that they both came through in the mix.

The bass levels were often brought up when i gave rough mixes to the band and it it took a few mixes for me to get the level right within the mix, however after a few attempts I believe that it sits well within the song without being too obtrusive.

 

I just had a multitude of references for the bass guitar, I mainly focussed on bands that the band had said were inspirations for them and they included:

Arctic Monkeys – When The Sun Goes Down
Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Any song of theirs – very bass heavy.

I chose these songs as the bass is fairly prevalent in the song (especially in the RHCP songs), they don’t seem very processed which is a sound i like in the bass and it sits well in the song.

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-bass

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Mixing – Guitars – Lead/Rhythm (LO3)

One of my major goals when mixing the guitars was to make sure that the lead and rhythm guitars were easy to distinguish between, the two guitars were somewhat the same tonally. The way that the lead guitar was tracked made it easier for me to add effects to separate parts of the song, as the lead was recorded once with the verse parts and then recorded the solos and chorus parts as they have a different tone and required different settings on the amp and pedals.

I started with the rhythm guitar as that is playing through the majority of the songs from start to finish. I ran the track through the Eleven-lite amp plug-in to give it more of a bite and a cleaner sound as I found that it helped to cut through the rest of the music and made it stand out against the lead. I avoided adding any reverb to the rhythm guitar as I had added reverb to the other guitars and didn’t want it to become cluttered and messy.

For the lead parts that weren’t solos or choruses, I left them alone mostly apart from some basic EQ to cut out some of the low-end and also add more clarity and brightness to the guitar sound. For the solos, I ran it through the same amp plug-in as I did with the rhythm guitar but instead made the high-end frequencies stand out more and cut out some of the low-end to give it clarity. I added some reverb to both of the lead tracks as I believe it added some presence to the mix and also cut out some of the harsher sounding parts.

I aimed to make the guitars sound like classic rock guitars, some of which were included in the inspirations playlist i mentioned near the start of the blog posts. I used these as inspiration as they have guitars that vary in frequency ranges, the leads tend to be rather high and the rhythm, mid to low range. They included songs such as:

The Darkness – I Believe In A Thing Called Love
Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child Of Mine

http://atoragon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-mix-guitar-solo-guide-for-dummies.html

http://www.guitarplayer.com/miscellaneous/1139/7-eq-tips-for-mixing-guitar/23122

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Mixing – Vocals (LO3)

The vocals for the three songs that I mixed were definitely the most scrutinised parts of the mixes that I sent to the band for them to review and give feedback. They are also the part of the songs that have the most EQ’ing and editing done to them.

My process for editing the vocals was fairly similar across the three tracks; I would start off by just using subtractive EQ to get rid of frequencies that stood out too much and were harsh on the ears. I would then bring up certain frequencies to give the vocals more presence and cut through some of the other instruments on the song. I avoided doing too much EQ as I didn’t want to lose too much of the original sound of his voice.

The next step was then using a De-Esser plug-in to get rid of some of the harsh sibilances that were present on most of the tracks. Due to the vocalist’s vocal style, there were a lot of times that he would almost ‘sing through his teeth’, especially in louder parts of the music, so a De-Esser was incredibly necessary.

Lewis, the vocalist, did not like the sound of the vocals in the first mix that I sent him and he said that they sounded slightly weak, so he asked if I could add just a slight distortion and reverb to cover up the sound. It took me a while to get the distortion right on the vocals as it isn’t something I would normally apply to vocals, however, I found that just adding very light distortion did seem to fix the vocals slightly, as did the slight reverb that was added to just give the vocals some depth and cut some of the harsh sounds.

Whilst mixing the vocals I focussed on two main songs as inspiration:

Foo Fighters – Everlong
Royal Blood – Little Monster

I drew from these songs as I personally think they sound very good and interesting as well as being inspirations for the band. I really wanted to try and replicate the sound of Dave Grohl’s vocals in Everlong, it sounds like there are two of him and it just has a real presence in the song, however, I couldn’t quite figure out how it was done. However, the Royal Blood song has a distorted sound to the vocals and I think I replicated that sound to some degree.

Mixing Vocals : The ALMOST-Ultimate Guide to EQ’ing Vocals

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Mixing – Into/Track Setup (LO3)

Before I start to mix anything I have to set-up the session so that it is neatly sorted and organise things so that it just makes the workflow faster and more streamlined. I have tried to do this since year one as without it, I find that the project becomes messy and hard to work with.

The first thing I like to do is make sure all of the tracks are in order, starting with vocals, then guitars and then drums. I will then make sure they are all named correctly and colour coded to make them easily identifiable. The next step is to group the instruments into drums and guitars so that I can edit them all together. After that, I bus the guitars, drums and vocals so I can change their levels together without affecting any of the volume automation on the tracks later down the line.

The first thing I like to do to the tracks is strip silence things like the vocals and any tracks where they are not playing the whole time, this way any times where there is background noise, it will be cut out and not interfere with the mix. I will then listen to the tracks and see if I can spot any mistakes or easily fixable problems like a missed note or a cough in the vocals and make sure they are solved before anything else.