This is how my mix of the band song turned out. I’m not proud of it and I think I could have done a much better job.
I’ll start with the positive points and then move on to the negatives. Overall, I think my use of EQ has brightened the rhythm guitar tone and emphasised the bass in the kick. Because of this, the song sounds less muddy than it was when first recorded and a lot clearer between each instrument. My experimentation with panning made it sound much more natural and spread out, particularly in the introduction with the switch between the central rhythm guitar and panned. I feel like I cleaned up the song by removing mistakes and replacing them with audio from the same sections elsewhere, despite the recording not being to click, and highlighting different parts by muting them at other times and spacing out when they can be heard, like the lead guitar in the chorus.
As for the things I could have paid more attention to, I’ll start with levels. In the beginning of the first verse, levels gradually start to balance, which makes me think I focused too much on levels during that time and didn’t focus on them enough throughout the rest of the song. Next time, I can apply and ask about compression to level the whole song out and try to use automation to edit the levels to my liking for each individual track at any point throughout the song. Something else I could have paid more attention to is timing. Although it would be difficult to edit without click, I could have gone more in-depth with edits to timing with the drums in sections that I would have no chance of cutting symbols short. Additionally, I could have cut the last bar of the verse to have the outro closer to when the vocals to end in order to have that finalising feel, as Luke’s line dips to a lower pitch and has less emphasis on the last word.
I do feel like I could have done better in the time that I was given if I wasn’t deprived of my normal hearing for more than half of the mixing sessions. Even so, I can see what I can keep in mind for my next mix and what I should pay more attention to.