February 25 Update: The college noticed that I hadn’t fully resolved the jazz gig and the mixing/mastering tasks. Before the holidays began, I took the initiative to complete the required work and gathered some evidence of my accomplishments.
Firstly, I worked with the channel EQ. I will outline what I needed to master and the program I used, which caused me some minor hassles. I had a 15-minute gig to master, consisting of four songs of varying lengths, along with instrumentals and crowd noise. I used Ableton Live 12 Suite for this process. While I would have preferred to use Logic for live sound mastering initially, the foundational skills Lewis and Evan taught me helped me navigate the work efficiently.
Below is a screenshot of the channel EQ I initially used. However, I later switched to a more advanced EQ that provided more than three sliders, allowing me to eliminate unwanted frequencies from the tracks I was working on.
I had to manage three drum tracks: the kick and two overheads. In addition, there were two guitars and two vocal tracks, along with a bass guitar track. This lineup was fairly manageable, though the trumpet featured in the third, entirely instrumental song posed a challenge. I struggled to boost its sound as I was unsure which microphone was capturing it.
I also added reverb to the drums. Initially, I didn’t think the drums needed much reverb, but after making minor adjustments, I found it helpful in creating a fuller, more satisfying effect. This addition complemented the funkier bass, uplifting the overall mood. A drier mastering of the drums would have felt lackluster, for lack of a better term. I kept the decay and delay to a minimum, as only slight amounts were needed to reach a satisfactory level.
Here are the final levels of the respective tracks in order: Kick, Overhead 1, Overhead 2, Bass, Guitar 1, Guitar 2, Vox 1, Vox 2. I made slight panning adjustments for the stereo mix to create a more spacious listening experience. Achieving a true ‘live gig’ feel through Dolby ATMOS is challenging, especially since it isn’t widely accessible to most producers yet. At college, we lack the necessary tools for this type of audio mastering, so I settled for left and right panning. This raises the question: does mixing/mastering for ATMOS automatically convert when played on stereo speakers? We would need multiple speakers to test ATMOS-mastered audio accurately.
Overall, I am satisfied with this mix and master, completed in a day, and I hope to take on similar projects in the future. Unfortunately, I cannot post the audio at this time, as the Digitalspace website cannot handle tracks over 200 MB. Even when compressed to 20 MB, it still struggles. I plan to address this issue when I return to college after the holidays.