Wednesday 23 May 2007

Week 11 - AA1 - Mixing(1)

First up I pulled all the faders down. I then went ahead and made a mono mix, so I centred all the panning. I then went ahead and simply started making a balance of the tracks, starting with the drums and working my way right making sure the next track that became unmuted wasn’t too loud so as not to “chase the tail.”

I then made a mix with panning. I starting by alt+click to zero all the faders so as to hear all the tracks at once. I then started panning (without adjusting levels at all) listening for where the sound appeared clearest the most. I then adjusted the levels to balance the tracks.

For the third version I used eq to clean up the sounds. I used HPF and LPF and a bit of parametric to boost a bit of some of the tracks here and there. There was no eq boost at all on the vocals but there seems to be a lot of sibilance. Since a de-esser is technically compression, I left the sibilance alone. I assume we’ll need to address this in the next mix though.
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This exercise was good, but at the same time I feel it was a waste of time simply for the fact that everyone (apart from those living under rocks) has heard this song before and already has “the way this song should sound” already stuck in their head. It was very difficult to get away from that. Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone actually used this song as their reference?!? I know songs get remixed all the time, but we weren’t asked to do that. We were simply asked to balance the tracks. It would have been better if we say, had to mix a song a third year had recorded. As long as it wasn’t anyone famous it would be pretty much a given that we wouldn’t have heard the song before. Hmmm, are we going to be mixing the NIN track as well?

  • (with panning and eq)


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Fieldhouse, Steve. 2007. “Audio Arts 1 Seminar – Drums.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 15th May.

Digidesign. 1996-2007 Avid Technology, Inc All Rights Reserved.

Eskimo Joe. 2006. “New York” Black Fingernails, Red Wine (album). Mushroom Records.

5 comments:

edward kelly said...

I aint never heard this song before, as such I went in with no preconceptions other than the ones the song yelled at me.... " BIG " it said.

and the mp3's dont work 4 me :(

Freddie said...

Too busy listening to non comercial radio? Must be why we differed on the 'formula' of hit records. You don't listen to any. ;)

Darren S said...

Tight mix and I like the boot in the kick drum.

Darren S said...

Also, I don't know this song but I know one of their others, which is like knowing this one! I turned all pans to level, all volumes down and started from there (and I only listen to Radio National!)

Darren S said...

level=centre