Something that is a challenge for any audio student is 'making a good mix'. We can study heaps about what microphones to use, how to make the most of your recording space, using a console correctly to get a clear recording... and at the end of the day, it still has to be processed and edited - all the tracks mixed together so that your project is suitable for publishing.
One way that our facilitator suggested in order to get better at these was simply - 'practice makes perfect!' and proceeded to give us some stems and one hour to make what we were given sound 'the best' that we could, reflecting the reference tracks that we given to guide our sound. In today's blog post I will be breaking down the 1 Hr Mix Challenge that we undertook, pointing out the major edits that I focused on and why I made these choices.
The song in this challenge is a punk-influenced track that heavily focuses on guitar.
The reference track that we were given included The Black Keys' Gold on the Ceiling (2011).
To best emulate this reference I wanted to take inspiration from how prominent those electric and bass guitar bars are, as well as the effects on the vocals, which had a very distinct and stylised distortion to them.
So, at first glance, we can see there's a lot going on here. Lots of tracks, albeit made easier to look at through the use of a colouring system. All the drums are red, the guitars in orange, etc. I do this in all my sessions, for organisational purposes.
With not much time to mix, I wanted to focus on the most noticeable parts of editing. To me this is equalising and compression. For the sake of time I like to the Channel Strip plugin, since it has the an equaliser and compressor in one.
In the photo above you can see an example of why having a 2-in-1 plugin would be handy. This was placed on the Kick Out channel, where I had EQ'd a lot of the highs and mids out because there was a fair bit of spill from the high hats and snares. The compressor was used to further get rid of these unwanted sounds, only amplifying the frequencies I wanted.
This was done throughout most of the tracks, just as a cleaning-up procedure.
EQ was also used creatively, especially on the guitars as I mentioned this is where I wanted most of the focus to be. The project had many many guitar tracks, recorded in a multitude of ways including DI, Clean, with an array of different microphones used.
With the time I had, I tried to bring out the frequencies that matched the reference tracks as much as possible. Because each guitar track was recorded so differently, I thought it best to have entirely different EQs for each track. In hindsight, a large chunk of the guitars still had the same parametrics, so if I had any improvements for my future self it would be to have more variety there.
You can see the three different settings that I curated below;
Unfortunately, I think one downfall to my mix is that the guitars (and the mix as a whole) still sounded quite muddy at the end of the one hour. It seems I was unable to find a balance between the distorted sound that I was after and taking it too far. To remedy this, in the future I want to research how to get that desired effect without it sounding muddy.
If you would like to hear the product of the 1 Hr Challenge, click below;
Works Cited
The Black Keys. (2012, Feb 7). The Black Keys - Gold On The Ceiling [Official Music Video]. Retrieved Aug 19, 2018, from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yCIDkFI7ew
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