Overall, this week has been great for both the track and my knowledge as a music student and producer. I have learnt a lot about mixing with Lewis in the control room at college, even where my ears should be relative to the monitor speakers to get the best sound possible. Now, the track sounds and visually looks a lot cleaner on my DAW. The volumes are now a lot more controlled and all the instruments now have the right effects on them. I plan to finish off the mix next week as we didn’t quite get to finish it, however, the control room will be in use a lot next week due to recordings so I might not be able to work on mixing and mastering as much as I would like to, but I will try get as much as I can done! In the meantime, I want a second pair of ears to listen to the song to see how it sounds to someone else and if there’s anything I can do to improve it.
Progressions And Strengths
During this week, I went through and put an EQ effect on everything that needed one (basically everything)! I learnt a lot more about how to use an EQ plugin properly and how all of the filter types affect the sound. For example, I used bell EQ’s to enhance or cut very specific frequencies when paired with a narrow bandwidth, and to cut or enhance a more general area, I used another bell EQ with a wide bandwidth. I also used a lot of high pass filters, eventually creating a send for one as a lot of the instruments needed the bottom end to be rolled off. I found that a lot of unwanted room ambience was within this area. Removing the lower end also makes the instruments brighter, letting the bass and other low-frequency sound pop out in the mix, without being covered up by the muddiness of other tracks. Here is a good example of the EQ I use on one of the vocal harmonies, showing my use of bell and high pass filters:
As well as learning more about EQ’s and how I can use them in more of a corrective manner, I also was taught about at sends after I did some independent research on them first. You can find my research on this here: https://digitalspace.bradfordcollege.ac.uk/10626680/mixing-and-mastering-techniques/. Sends are great for adding effects to multiple instruments at once, and you can also control how much of the instrument is going through that effect. Sends also decrease your CPU usage which was great for this song as it used to crackle and distort sometimes if it got past 50% (it still does crackle occasionally still but this is because of the outdated processor in my laptop). I added sends such as reverb, delay and an EQ which I mentioned above. The delay has mostly the main vocals and a brass section going through it, and the reverb’s have all the brass sections and the vocals (including harmonies). This image is an example of how I am using sends to my advantage during this mix:
One of the final things I do during mixing is compressing my tracks and doing some volume balancing. I like to do this close to last as I find that some effects can change the volume or your channels, therefore putting the compressor last on the chain will bring them back to a more normal sound. Some of the instruments seemed to be fighting for prominence, so I brought the brass down and the main keys melody line up, and then brought down the harmonies. I also came across a problem at the start where the track sounded quiet then all of a sudden went loud. I sorted this by making the velocities on the midi key chords less erratic so they sound similar volume throughout the whole song and had both octaves playing at the start instead of just the lower octave chords.
Improvements
Next week, I want someone (ideally another tutor who knows about mixing) to listen to the song and tell me whether it is well mixed and if could improve it. As well as this, I have seen on a lot of Instagram mixing tip posts that listening to your mixed song in different environments or with different audio devices can help a lot to determine how your mix might sound in different places. For example, I might want to listen to my mix in the car, with some average headphones, on my phone or through a small Bluetooth speaker in an open environment. This is because every audio device can manipulate the sound of your mix depending on its equalization within that instrument and what noise is being absorbed by its surroundings. I think this is important to see if the song is still high quality and what I want it to sound like if people were to listen to the song in the car, for example.
The mix is almost there now generally, but there are some things that still need changing and tweaking. For example, I could work more on the vocals; I need to add a de-esser to remove some of that sibilance. I could also make more use of automation, like automating certain effects to transition out of certain areas and to make the track sound more interesting to listen to overall as I can change more parameters throughout the song with this feature. The song doesn’t have too much panning going on, so perhaps this is something I could also look into more if I felt it was right. Alternatively, I could add some stereo wideners to certain instruments such as the keys and vocals so they sound more full and thick.
After I have completed the final mix of the track, I need to start thinking about mastering it. I will need some help from a tutor with this as I have never done this before and I should do some research into the purpose or mastering and why it is so important first. This is so I can understand what I am doing and why it is so vital for a song to be mastered before it is released. I understand that most producers wouldn’t master their own song and would send it to someone who specifies in mastering, but I want to get experience in all the different fields of music production; this is why I also did the mixing process. Once it has been mastered, I need to make sure I have many backups of the final song and it must be readily available before I schedule it for release.
Targets For Next Week
-Get someone to listen to the mix and tell me whether is done well and what I could do to improve it.
-Finish the final mix
-Listen to the mix in different environments.