What’s your workflow for a new mix? For example, when you got the files for Wasteland, how did you deal with it?
Personally, I pulled all the files into my DAW and just started listening and got rough volume levels while I was listening. I also panned the extra guitars and backing vocals to my taste. Then after a couple listens I started compressing and reverting, etc…
I’m just wondering how you all handle this, such as maybe applying certain presets to each channel based on the instrument before listening. I know there’s no right or wrong way to get started. Am I making any sense?
After pulling in all the tracks I’ll spend 2 mins to colour code and setup a few groups depending on what there is e.g. drum group, vox group, instrument group or whatever.
Then, like you I’ll quickly do a rough level mix and some panning.
Then I will do clean up. This might be chopping out parts that should be silent, removing background noise or more subtle stuff like automating a few loud essess that I think a de-esser won’t suitably pick up or removing some obtrusive breath noises, fret noises etc.
After that, I will generally go straight into automating the vocal levels and deciding what initial HPF and LPF I want into each track and some corrective EQ if needed.
Then I will move on to the compressing, ‘tonal’ or ‘musical’ EQ , reverb and effects.
Usually I start with either the lead vocal or the bass (& maybe drums).
Depends on what about the recording is annoying me the most. Do I hate the snare? I’ll fix the drums first. I have FX chains that I use for bass and vocals just to make the mixes more presentable at first based off of previous mixes. Bass and vocals stay pretty uniform (obviously voices are much different, but many occupy the same frequency range), so that’s how I do it. I tweak both of them to taste later. Guitar tone and drums vary wildly, so I mix them from the ground up with a good idea of how I like them to sound.
I do more or less what @ramshackles does.
I have one more step though.
After colour coding tracks and creating busses, I do what’s called gain staging.
I do this even without listening to the song but only the meters.
I raise or lower the gain (not the fader) of each track so that it peaks at around -10dbFS. I find that this helps me keep on the safe side of clipping the master fader.
Then I move to the balancing and panning. I believe that’s an important stage so I stay there for about an hour maybe.
I know my techniques are very unusual. I put on my headphones. Start a click track. Label the first track acou and vox. Start a second track called temp 1. Grab an acoustic and start playing and sing along with utterings and no real words to establish a melody line. when I run out of thoughts I will sit for a few minutes and then start the process on a new track temp two. Later on I will blend them.
Start track 3 and 4 labeled Prs and Gibson and lay down the electric guitars. Next will be the bass track. Then will come elect guitar fills and accents. Now i will pan the electrics wide R and L, and the acoustics (if I keep them) like at 70 %. Next I will start making up actual lyrics listening to the first melody notes. Next will be bgv’s. Then EQ, compression, and reverb or delay. I don’t know how to do automation, so I will go back to the vocal track and manually bring down the more powerful notes. Next will be melodyne to fix the mutt notes (which seem to like every fifth one lately)
That’s pretty much it. Once in a great while i will find a great drum track and then start playing along with it especially rock stuff. I bet you are scratching your head about now.
Mixing or Composing is like running a marathon. Requires preparation.
Ear:
I tend to relax the ear first before jumping from one mix to another. I usually spend time in a studio playing and listening to woodwind instruments so its specially important for me to reset the ear but I think everyone should reset and relax their ears before jumping into new genres.
In orchestra we are taught to relax the ears by pressing gently with your palms on both ears and moving your shoulders at the same time. Listening to natural sounds from the source is literally the best way to reset your ears. Go outside and listen to sounds directly from their sources, wind, birds, water streams even the honks of vehicles.
Pitch drills:
Just like a singers, doing pitch drills or just listening to the drills will help your ears get back into pitch. You dont have to have perfect pitch to mix, you dont even need relative pitch to mix but it is important for the ear to sonically remember certain pitches subconsciously. Choose a soft instrument or soothing vocals for this.
Setup
Once 1 & 2 are complete, its time to daw it up. I match the sample rating to the recording of the vocals, or whatever track was actually recorded and not played digitally. In case of wasteland, I matched it to the recording of 24bit 44.1khz.
I usually pull all tracks in without worrying about grouping and busses. Then before I hear a note I run my loudness meter on it and do a quick spectrum analysis (this is to save my ears) . That way I know what I am about to dive in.
Once the mix is setup I give it a full listen then, I start grouping things, setting up side chains for effects and such.
I play with faders till I have a good raw balance.
Getting into specifics
After a raw balance is achieved I do E"Q" sweeps first to find potential problem areas. If problem areas are there, i tend to do basic cuts first with a transparent eq . After that I try to “zone” into the mix, try to get inside the mind of the artist, feelings, emotions and the works. Trying to get to the “core” of the performance before I make any kind of mixing decisions.
In case of @Cristina 's wasteland, I heard a lot of emotions, natural cracks in the voice, solitude, dryness of a wasteland and a personal touch. I knew right away that a song like this should not use a generic “commercial music” template. I painted a picture of the sound in my mind and made choices like isolation of vocals by creating an envelop around the voice, enhancing the feeling of isolation, anger and pain. I chose strings to increase the intensity of the emotions.
Normally at this stage, I look for proper reference tracks I used some Christina Perri and Rachel Platten and Dixie Chicks songs for the reference for wasteland.
Ill be honest, I never listened to the original reference track till after I submitted my mix. Did not want to be biased and I am so glad I didnt listen to the original.
Anyway after that its just listening and tweaking, compression, tuning, panning, playing with effects.
