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.