When mixing anything you need to think about what you are using to listen to the track. This is because some headphones like DrDre Beats, boots bass frequencies and high end so this needs to be taken into consideration when mixing. I used standard headphones and my logitec computer speakers as there are what I like to call normal listening devices i.e. nothing special, just normal.
The first thing I did when opening the track in protools was sort out the levels and dynamics of the drums. When listening to the drums the main things that stood out were the cymbals were too quiet and so was the kick drum so I raised the level on each of the overheads, which resolved the issue of the cymbals but I had to heavily compress the bass to make it sound more punchy whilst also upping the bass frequencies to make it stand out more. I felt this still wasn’t enough so I duplicated the kick track to make it stand out more and then I stuck a small amount of reverb on it to make it sound a bit more real apposed to the sound of dropping a sack of potatoes on the floor.
I then listened to the other instrumentation again, not changing much, apart the acoustic guitars where I boosted the bass frequencies slightly to try and give it more of a warmer feel opposed to them sounding rather tinny and higher ended. I also changed the sound of the solo guitar by adding about 15% reverb onto it to give the sound a bit more depth. I also used a bit of compression so that the sounds that were played quiet could then stand out more and to reduce the track from clipping.
When it came to the bass guitar, I used quite a bit of compression to give it more of a punchier sound and to raise the level of the quieter sections that were too quiet.
Once all the levels of the instruments were done I then spent a bit of time on the vocals as when I played the entire track, the vocals stood out too much almost as if it shouldn’t be there and it was directly in the middle of the stereo mix. I started by duplicating the track and panning both either way slightly to give it more of a stereo feel to the vocal. I also used a bit of reverb to make it sit better within the rest of the track. I then added quite a bit of compression as the dynamics of the vocal changed quite dramatically at times.
I then added a bit of compression the whole track and bounced the track down to MP3
I felt that I struggled a little with the technical aspects of this project i.e. why I should add a certain insert. I feel as if my knowledge so far is pretty standard. Next time I do any recording; I will look into the parameters of each insert more and try to apply them practically and professionally. For my mix my ears were the main tool I used i.e. thinking, that sounds too bassy or that has too much high end with I feel has helped me a lot within this project. I feel that we all worked well as a team throughout and everyone was eager to get involved and the quality of the musicians helped a lot as it would have been a lot harder to put things in time etc. Over all I think I did well and I am happy with the overall result.