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.