Learning from the mistakes we made last year when it came to mixing the EP, I wanted the entire band to be present for the process. I decided to do this to avoid the problems we had last year, such as our vocalist saying he wanted the wrong effect on the guitar and therefore completely changing the sound. We planned to all go to the studio so we would all be present for the mixing process and give our feedback in person. Below are the rough tracks of the recordings. Kurt had done a rough mix on each of the songs and wanted our feedback so we could make it sound better.
The aspects of the songs that we wanted to change on both songs were:
Less reverb on the vocals
More mids and low end on the guitar as it was too thin and wiry
A louder bass with more fuzz
A delay effect on the vocals at the end of Bad Habit
These were general points for both songs, other than that, we were happy with the mixes.
One specific thing I decided I wanted to change was that with my beat in Smackhead since I am playing the kick drum and snare at the same time whilst grooving on the hi-hat, the snare sounded too underwhelmed and a bit distant. To fix this, I wanted Kurt to take out the kick drum played with the snare during the verses so that the snare had more definition.
Overall, mixing the songs with Kurt was an easy and fun process. It was enjoyable to hear something that we had worked so hard to create finally sounding like a professional song. Kurt is a very talented recording engineer and did a great job mixing our tracks in very little time. If I was to go through this process again, I would listen to the mixes through a variety of different mediums, such as through a phone speaker, a car stereo system, good headphones, poor headphones etc. This is because when we got our final mixes back, they sound great through headphones and good speakers, but a. bit underwhelming coming through a phone speaker, which is a very common way of listening to music, especially for our target audience. I am very happy with the way the final mixes turned out and am looking forward to releasing the EP.