Mixing Walk-through

Pre-master Mix

Client - Violent Birth of the Moon

Track - Galled by the King

1 – Mixing Drum Kit

• Kick Drum – A 7 band EQ was used to boost the low end punch of the kick and find the snap of the kick sound, which was found around 2.5kHz. A lot of the mids of the kick, around 500Hz were taken out due to unwanted resonant frequency's making the kick sound flat and boxy.

• 'Smack' compressor was then used on its smack ratio to add even more punch to the kick. The output had to be gained up quite high due to drummer's light touch on the kit. A final EQ, Oxford EQ, was used to add acute touches to sweeten up the low punch of the kick and take out a 'popping' resonant frequency around 600Hz.

• The kick was panned very slightly to the left as to not be straight on top of the snare.

• Snare – An EQ was used to highlight the body and the rustle of the snare drum in the higher frequencies with peaks at 700 and 5000Hz. An unpleasant ringing frequency at around 220Hz was cut out using a finer Q. Smack was then again used to at punch to the snare, in a similar was used for the kick.

The snare was panned very slightly to the right as to not be straight on top of the kick.

• Toms – I approached the mixing of the toms in the same way I approached the kick drum. I used a 7 band EQ to bring out the low end punch and snap of the toms. I used Smack compressor to give the toms more beef, then used Oxford EQ to sweeten up the 'punch' and cut out resonant mid frequencies.

The rack tom was panned left and the floor tom hard right.

• Overheads – For the overheads, I just wanted to highlight the air frequencies to highlight the shimmer of the cymbals. I used Oxford EQ + Filters, cut out all of the low end up to 150Hz, the boosted the high frequency shelf +3dB at around 8kHz+.

Overheads were panned hard left and hard right.

• I created 3 stereo aux tracks. I used Send A on all the drum kit tracks and sent it to an aux track and this became my drum reverb bus. I used Oxford reverb to add reverb to all except the kick drum. I used the EQ on the Oxford reverb to highlight the cymbals. I then made the output of the drum tracks to but 3-4 and made the input of the other aux tracks bus 3-4. I used these two aux tracks for parallel compression using Oxford Compressor/Limiter.

2 – Ride Cymbal

• I used Oxford EQ + Filters to cut out all of the low end under 350Hz, then boosted the high frequency shelf to add air to the ride cymbal. This was applied to all ride cymbal tracks.

• A stereo aux was created and the output of the ride cymbal tracks sent to it. Oxford reverb was used on the aux track to add reverb to the cymbal and the EQ on the reverb used to give shimmer to the cymbal.

3 – Acoustic guitar

• Not that much processing was necessary for the acoustic guitar, as I wanted to keep the natural sound. I used EQ3 7 band EQ and used a high pass filter to filter out bass frequencies under 100Hz and boosted frequencies around 2kHz with a wide Q to fill out the body of the acoustic guitar sound. This setting was copied across all acoustic guitar tracks.

• Two stereo aux tracks were set up for the acoustic guitar, and the outputs from the acoustic tracks sent to both via the same bus. Purple Audio limiting amplifier was used on one of the aux tracks to add very slight compression to the acoustic, plus a little amplitude. Oxford reverb was used on the other to add a short reverb time effect to the acoustic.

• Mid-side recording technique was used on the acoustic, the two side mic tracks are panned to decode the side mics.

4 – Bass

• EQ was used to add low end to the bass at just under 100Hz and to take out the 'muddy' mid frequencies. The treble texture of the bass was made more noticeable by a boost with a narrow Q at 3kHz.

• Smack compressor was then added to tighten up the bass.

• I decided the bass needed a bit more grit to it, so I duplicated the bass track, with plug ins attached, and added a sans amp to the new track to add a little distortion to it. I blended the two bass tracks to acquire the sound I was looking for.

• The bass was panned to two o'clock to the right so that it is just off centre.

5 – Electric Guitar

• As the electric guitar was recorded straight into the Pro40, I used the 'Eleven' guitar amp plug in to add some distortion the electric guitar signal. A preset was chosen, then Oxford EQ was used to take out a low of low end under 120Hz, and an unpleasant resonant frequency at 1kHz. EQ boosts with narrow Q's were added for the body of the electric guitar sound and the treble tones around 5kHz.

• This track was sent to an aux track with Mac DSP Revolver reverb set to a medium sized reverb with a timed delay to mimic the ¾ timing of the song.

• Automation was used on the volume of the aux channel to add extra effect during the middle eight of the song.

• The guitar is panned almost all the way left so that it more to one side than the other. I chose the left so that it is not on the same side as the bass.

6 – Vocals

• EQ3 7 band EQ was used on the vocal tracks, a high pass filter was used to roll off a lot of the bottom end that was unnecessary and a boost around 4kHz. This was set for all vocal tracks.

• 2 aux tracks were set up and the vocal track outputs were sent to them. One aux track was used for the vocal compression and the other for the vocal reverb.

• Automation was used at 2:25 in the song for two different vocal parts being panned to opposite sides, hard left and hard right.