AA2 - Week 9 - Mixing Techniques 2

For something different I decided to mix an entire song using only the Drama Queen files. I was quite surprised how useful some of the extraneous guitar riffs were, one of which I used as the main theme of my mix. I was even more surprised when converting my mixdown to an MP3, and I spotted one of the guitars going out of time in the second verse- you'd think that ProTools could handle real time mixdowns, but I guess not. If I was to clarify a genre for the piece, I suppose whatever genre Evanescence is would suit.

The double kick was simply double delay lines, the double-time hihat again used delay and the reverse crash cymbal at the start was just that. I spent a fair amount of time on spacial positioning and movement of sounds, so you might notice some 3-dimensional panning if you're sharp. I also experimented with the voice a bit, as you'll hear with some of the extended song lines ("Always..."). Something that helped a lot was taking the recording from Studio 1 into Studio 2, and listening to it on different speakers in a different room. This highlighted some of the inconsistencies that aren't easily clarified on the Tannoy's. I also had a couple baffles set up behind me in Studio 1, which stopped the awful sound of the room.

The file is a little larger than usual, as would be expected for a 3 minute long song. ~MP3 3.87MB~

I have just found a txt file of 'things to fix' that I made when I took the mix home and listnened to it on my Logitech speakers and through headphones.

~acoustic interjections are tool loud
~cool 'accident' guitar fade needs to be louder
~voice sounds like a bathroom- thanks NoTools
~start guitar could be less mono
~voice excerpt in outro would break up monotony
~fade out of final guitar in outro bathroomy
~lessen reverb on snare in verses
~main guitar very mono... fix
~try and stretch out the 'always' part of the screaming section- maybe use to fill in the following instrumental as well?
~more crash and ride in instrumental
~fadein guitar in instrumental gets too loud
~fade in the outro guitar slower, over whole chorus maybe, and have the chorus guitar fade out AFTER chorus.
~stereo reverb (or something) needed on fake hihat- too directionally specific at the moment
~more high end needed on guitar on "open up" breakdown
~tiny bit less bass on kick drum
~"cover" and "always" in chorus out of time
~doubletime bass notes in outro could do with copycat kick drum
~watch volume changes when bypassing delay lines in kick -volume of kick in 'open up' breakdown perfect


These were of course fixed for the final mix, except for the word "cover" in the chorus- moving it created an awkward gap in the sentence.