I am going to preface this log with; I am still waiting on the student I am working with to finish the guitar parts and do them in overdub, so the current version I have needs basic mixing, and I cannot call it finished until I get that guitar overdub. (This has happened as of 6/02/24)
This track already comes with the overhead mics on the drum kit panned left and right respectively so I don’t need to tamper with it anymore. I think I will start by mixing the drum kit as I know what I want to do with it; I want the kick to have a bit more punch and the snare to be brighter in certain parts, but not in others. For the other drums, finding a balance that helps them mix well with the snare is what I want, so I’ll keep this log updated.
I began by summing all tracks into their respective instrument group and began putting a noise gate on the kick drum, and both mics at either end of the snare. I started at 0 decibels and worked my way up, also increasing the hold and release of these tracks so they sounded like they had a nice decay to them.
As I don’t want spill from the cymbals in my tom tracks either, I took time to put a noise gate on them too, since I don’t want them sounding muddy or like they’re being clashed with.
Next I am going to go through each track and adjust them with EQ. The goal is to eliminate unwanted frequencies and sound on each track, individually. Which is going to take my sweet time.
I muted the hihat microphone and the kick-snare microphone because they produce an unwanted sound that won’t help with the rest of the song. The other tracks have been sufficiently EQ’d to help each drum sound as good as I want it, and here is each EQ. I had to take time on each one to understand what different levels did to the song. It took sliding each single point around until I had a sound I was pleased with before giving it a rest.
29/1/24, mixing hurts me on a visceral level that I cannot describe. Trying to sort all the instrument so they can sound good together is one thing, but trying to get everything at a reasonable volume is also just as difficult. It’s frustrating, and after having EQ’d the lead guitar, I’m already finding myself lose confidence in continuing this project. Not because it’s bad sounding, but because of how tedious I find this. Reverb was added beforehand then I EQ’d that effect on the guitar so it didn’t sound terrible.
30/1/24, The process for recording Footsteps was alot easier than I had expected. I found that I had the song done in five takes, with two being full playthroughs of the song. Due to me and the other student playing at the same time, one of the takes was me falling out of time, and vice versa for the other student. The list of microphones that I used for recording are;
Kick – Audix D6
Snare – Shure SM57
Undersnare – Shure SM57
Toms – Audix D2
Overheads Audio – Technica AT4041,
Room Mic – SE Titan
‘Snick’ Mic – Beyerdynamic MC 740
And in post-production I didn’t use the ‘Snick’ – which is my abbreviated way of saying Snare/Kick microphone. I found that it just didn’t offer anything more to the feel of the song. When playing the song, I found that I wasn’t as fluid on the kit because I was genuinely afraid of hitting a microphone at some point, causing me to hesitate a little.
(Back to mixing), I EQ’d the bass, compressed it, and put reverb on it after Evan so kindly recorded a bassline for us in about twenty minutes, saving the song and project from procrastination. I EQ’d and boosted the lowest/mid frequencies while tuning out the highest ones. As for the reverb, I usually always make it sound drier than wetter, so I kept this principle the same while adding reverb to the track – I don’t want this to be a reverb focused track.
For the compressor, I played around with settings until I got what I wanted. Turning off auto gain, and slowly working with the threshold let me achieve what I wanted.
Above is the final mix of Footsteps (as of 6/02/24). This includes bass, drums, and two guitars that have been mixed each – but I would have liked to delve deeper into mixing if I did have the time on this project.