Pixelhum

This will be the last entry in the diary, as the mix is now done and submitted to the event.

The mix was pretty much done, but there were a few things I wasn’t really happy with. The snare drum sounded a little bit weedy, so I put Ferox on it and whacked the saturation all the way up to 80%. This gave it some grit and snap that it was lacking before and I was happy with the result. I also brought the wind sound up in the mix slightly, and also automated the second lot of wind up in the mix even more so you could just about hear it throughout the middle eight. I also added a stereo widener (Omnisone) to the drum buss and set it to about 150%.

I placed a delay plugin on the distorted vocal that went through the middle eight to take it back in the mix a little as I felt it was a bit prominent.

The automation was tweaked in places. I also added a very small amount of compression to the bass track to help it sit better with the automation.

There was absolutely no 2-buss compression. Only thing on there was Ferox, set to about 20% saturation, just to give the mix a little bit of grit.

Updated plugin list under the fold.

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This mix is now starting to sound like a record to my ears! Tonight I concentrated on tying everything together better and using automation to add some dynamics to the mix.

Somebody in the Mix thread pointed out that the top snare drum track was clipped. I hadn’t actually noticed, but I did think it sounded a bit rough, so my first task was to fix that using my favourite audio editor. This produced a much better sounding snare track and I used PSP Springverb (a Computer Music freebie) to give it some life. While I was on drums I also muted the toms where they weren’t being played. This cleaned up the drum track nicely.

I created a set of buss tracks so I could group together instuments for automation (drums, drum overheads, guitars, bass, vocals and backing vocals).

Then I listened to the track and added in the automation where I felt it was needed, using it to bring up the guitars during the choruses, and drop them out a little during the quieter parts of the track. I used it on the vocals to stop them getting lost with the guitars, and also to help parts of words from getting lost in the mix too. I brought the backing vocals up for the outro to really bring the track to a big close.

You might also notice that this mix is quieter. I was running it quite hot before with the W1 limiter on the main buss, but I’ve dropped the level back so it’s not hitting the ceiling anymore. I think it sounds better that way.

And finally… under the fold you’ll find a list of all the plugins I’ve used so far, not including any of Reapers built in ones.

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The mix is coming along nicely :). I’ve fixed the bass guitar level in the mix and also arranged the guitar parts in the stereo field and balanced them up somewhat. They’re now sitting in the mix much better and not crowding the vocal. I’ve not felt the need to EQ any of the guitar parts yet as I think they sound great as they are!

On the drum side, I’ve fiddled with the levels a little here and there, dropping the kick drum in the mix a little and dropping the level of the rim click too as I felt it was a bit overpowering. I also took a feed from the overhead bus and fed it into another track with the SSL Listen Mic compressor on it. Running the two tracks in parallel sounds pretty damn good to my amateur ears!

Now, it may sound like I’ve replaced that sound that starts before the intro guitar, but it’s actually just a phaser plugin and a massive reverb, all wet and no dry. It actually sounds much more like wind and to my mind suits the song better.

For part 2 of my diary I thought it would be a good idea to give a run down of my setup. It’s all under the fold though so if you’re not interested don’t click ;). Plugin list next time…

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So I entered the Womb forum MiLaR event and have started mixing Aces High’s track, ‘Simple Little Bird’.

I’m going to document my progress here. I’m using Reaper, along with the built in plugs, and I’m limiting myself to free plugins, mostly because that’s all I’ve got, but it also means anyone can download Reaper and the plugins and get the same mix I made (I’ll post a full list of the plugins used somewhere near the end of the mix).

I put a rough mix together last night, got everything organised, got the levels fairly balanced, EQ’d a couple of things (Kick drum, vocals), put some compression on the drum overheads, snare and kick, and also on some of the vocal tracks. I also set up some panning in places.

The bass guitar is a little high in the mix right now, and the guitars are a bit lost due to the fact that they’re centre panned.

Anyway, you can hear what I’ve done so far.