Pixelhum

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…

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.

This month on plugin of the week is Solid State Logic’s LMC-1 Listen Mic Compressor.

“The SSL Listen Mic Compressor was the secret weapon in many producers sonic arsenal of recording techniques. Originally designed to prevent overloading the return feed from a studio communications mic, its fixed attack and release curves were eminently suitable for use on ambient drums mics. Of course, we’d like to take all the credit for this great sound, but as usual, it was the creativity of SSL users that led to the idea.”

Awesome plugin for getting that really compressed 80’s drum sound. Or turn it right up to get huge crunched drums.

Next up on plugin of the week is RubyTube.

“RubyTube is a real time, digital tube amp simulator. RubyTube simulates the saturation effect that can be found in audio equipment with vacuum tubes. This effect is usually hardly noticable but it is responsible for the classic tube sound. Sometimes its just a sparkle on the voice and a slight compression of drums and bass that makes the difference between a neutral recording and a warm and full sounding song.”

RubyTube is a lovely subtle effect and is great for adding that analogue tube ‘grit’ to a track. I’ve found it especially effective on drum tracks, bass tracks and vocal tracks.

I’ve decided that since I seem to be spending rather a lot of time searching for good free VST’s, I’d share the fruits of my search with the world. All the plugins I’ll pick for this feature will be plugins that I actually use.

First up is Majken’s Chimera synth.

“Chimera is a noise driven synth focusing on pads and haunting leads. Three noisegenerators are connected through pitchcontrolled resonant bandpass filters. The result is an angelic and smooth synth.”

This synth is capable of some lovely organic, haunting sounds which are ideal for ambient atmospheric tracks. I’ve spent quite a bit of time just playing with sounds from my keyboard!