Conclusion

As an overall the track was a success, the final mix is well balanced with a good gain structure , I'm glad that I could experiment more with outboard equipment and by doing that I learned the studios set-ups and got my head around the processors available. Applying the techniques learned in class was a great experience. I got to test the techniques and see witch one fits my vision and how it reacts with the sound.  Coming back to the track the only regret I have is the fact that I could not do more for the mastering of it .
If I had the chance to do this again I will probably invest more time in the writings and the research of it.

Mastering

For the mastering process I had to cross fade all the track endings and cut also a final eq had to be done by boosting the high frequencies. Unfortunately I did not had a dynamic compressor so I had to compress and the limit the track in order to reduce the dynamics and bring the vocals on top of the track.

Mixing

Having a vas majority of processing done till now, the equalization was the last thing left to be dealt with. I have to admit mixing in the box in far less fun than getting your hands out there, however is easier to make changes.

            For the vocals we reduced the 800Hz which got rid of some of the nasal singing and we bust the 4kHz to give some clarity to the vocals, we also used a high pass just over 60hz and boost the 120 to give a closer feeling we used similar settings for the reverb return. We also used compression with a relatively slow attack and release just to keep the dynamics in check. For the backing vocals we added 4dB at around 300Hz which give us the body , lower the nasal by 6dB and we reduced everything above 4k to give it a smaller sound. We also added a different type of reverb on the high and low backing vocals to give us a subtle change in feeling to keep the interest of the listener. For the kick drum we boost the bottom end at around 80-110hz and also boosted at around 2.5kHz for a sharp attack. Because we processed the kick without equalization on we had to get rid of the processed sound therefore we had to add some compression to it to make it pump with a fast attack and release time and a makeup gain of around 8dB keeping the threshold at -10dB. For the snare drum, we boost the frequencies over 4kHz to give the crisp sound and added 150Hz to make it full.

We added a gate and a compressor as well because somehow the base guitar sound was feed into the return channel of the snare and it was recorded as well. We did not use se first edited snare because it did not match with the reverb. For the tom we added a simple compressor with a low ratio which barely compresses just to add harmonic distortion. Experimenting with the transient master in Pro Tools helped me understand even more the behavior of a one shot kick and snare but unfortunately I could not set the plug-in to give me a better sound. For the overheads, I just used a high pass over 500Hz because in my opinion it had enough air and brilliance, which made them point out in the mix.

In giving more air to the overheads, I had the mid Shure beta SM57, which counted as a close room microphone along with the Orpheus in the other end of the room.

            For the base guitar I used both channel the amp and the U87, because the amp was slightly brighter than the U87 I chose to reduce the bottom end and boost the growl of it along with the high frequencies to be more melodic and pronounced thru the mix. For the U87 I boost the bottom end and the high frequencies and cut slightly the growl. This method of equalizing helped me to define the bottom end of the base guitar and give it the accent on the high frequencies, which comes closer to a ribbon microphone that lacks in mid frequencies. For the electric guitar, I only used an outboard compressor just to warm up the sound a bit.

Finally, for the piano I boost the clarity and presence, I used a low cut at around 150Hz, and I lowered the 300Hz to reduce the boomynes of it.

Further Editing

After the vocals, I start analyzing the instruments once again putting them in harmony with the click track. Even recording the song at a slower tempo, I still had to deal with some timing issues. A way of doing that is to solo each part and listen to it with the click track highlighting the mistakes done. I did not want to make everything perfect because I would have got rid of the vibe of the track so I ended up editing only the bits that were really of time especially at the end of the track. After we recorded the vocals, I feed them to a reverb unit, first I feed the main vocals and the harmonies but doing it in this way, I ended up with a standard level for the vocals and harmonies. Listening to the mix again I realized that I do not have any control on the reverb amount of the harmonies so I recorded the main vocals and then do the harmonies again to gain more control on the reverb levels.

          After incorporating the vocals in the track, I still had plenty of time to experiment even more with outboard equipment so I ended up editing the drums even more. I added serial compression on the kick drum which gave it more low end and made it more noticeable in the mix, I added the same reverb with a slightly shorter decay time used for the vocals to the snare, I feed the electric guitar to a compressor without compressing just to give it some third harmonic distortion. 

Adding all those processors was the first time when I got the felling that I do not have enough channels on the desk, therefore I had to make a couple of channel inactive to get more spare channels to play with.

            Experimenting with al the techniques learned in class was a great learning experience, and by pushing the boundaries of the desk, I learned more about the system and how it works.

            I experimented with stereo groups, aux sends, pre-faded, post-faded, doubling channels, parallel compression but in the end, I had to trust my ears and choose which one sounded the best.

Recording vocals

                     With the recordings, we organized the tracks in the same manner doing a playlist and recording every take even the rehearsal. Sending the rough mix to Rocio, the singer, was a great advantage because she had time to rehears and had an idea on how everything is going to work out the only changes we had to do to in the mix was the time between the 3 intros at the beginning of the track.                   

                     For the vocals, we used the Orpheus and the U87 but this time we set the Orpheus to be omnidirectional and the U87 to be cardioid. Having the U87 feed to a reverb unit close to the reverb recorded in the echo chamber I managed to make Rocio sing some parts with less sustain on the vocals which gives me great advantage in post processing being able to fill the gaps with a high quality reverb chorus and so on. The noise floor on the vocal microphones is very low due to the loudness of her voice, which makes it a great advantage when you sing live because less gain means less feedback and less noise. Having the Orpheus set to be an omnidirectional microphone allowed us to set up a very sensible gate to get rid of the movement and small sounds recorded by the Orpheus, allowing the vocals to be as clear as they can be.

            The majority of processing done in the previous session had me left with blending the vocals in the mix.

Editing Instruments

The editing process involved mostly outboard equipment, for the kick we used the Focusrite gate with the TFpro P38 compressor set to mimic the 1176 vintage compressor having a ratio of 4 to 1 with a fast attack and a short release time to create a pulsating effect.

              The snare has the same treatment applied to in but instead of the 1176 we used the Focusrite compressor with a slightly higher ration and threshold, also the release time is higher to capture the ringing of the snare and the makeup gain is boosted to about +6dB. 

               Both of them are being daisy chained and used as an insert. I used the MPX 1 set to be on the first aux of the desk where I send the snare and then I experimented with the electric guitar. The MPX was straightforward in terms of settings, I gave it a short pre delay with a reverb tail of around 0.7 sec and the dry/wet mix set a around 36% gave it the boost needed to fit in the mix.

The connection was in mono for the MPX1 effects unit but a good gain structure was achieved.

                 Everything was rerecorded a couple of times at different gain level and with different setting in order to have spear takes. Unfortunately, I had a surprise and my booking was cut in half and also the room was different and I had plenty on background noise and I could not do much having only 4 hours at my disposal with the working guys breaking bricks on the next floor.