Audio Blog

Enhancing the Natural Performance

In class, we have recently learned how to edit and enhance a mix through sample adjustments, timing adjustments, re-arrangement, and tuning. Essentially changing the natural performance of the performers and their original arrangement of the song. In this post, I will discuss how I approached doing each of these things while mixing a song by Dan Wilburn. As well as the morality of doing so.

Just so everyone is aware, Pro Tools was the DAW of choice for this project. This is because it offers a multitude of ways of doing everything I mentioned above. Firstly I went ahead and adjusted the timing of drums and bass. While the session was set to a specific tempo, the drummer was not playing directly with the click. This is not a huge issue considering the band played along with the drummer, but it does become an issue when the performers come in slightly late or early. Since the drummer's hits do match up with the bars on the session, we can not copy and paste over mistakes according to what the session says is the start of a bar. This is where Pro Tools elastic audio becomes your best friend. After analyzing a clip in Pro Tools (analysis is based on which mode you pick: polyphonic, monophonic, rhythmic, or x-form) you can view a track in warp mode, which allows you to alter the length of specific parts of a clip. This makes it possible to change the entrance and exit of each note on a bass track or line in a vocal track. For this song in particular I focused a lot on adjusting the bass, as it was not always in time with the drummer. I also made it so that both takes of the lead vocal matched up. This way it would be more pleasing to hear as a double tack. I also did all of this before mixing anything else. It’s not necessary to do this first, but for me, it makes mixing easier because I will not get distracted later when I hear performance mistakes.

This song as a whole was recorded in a very minimalistic way. For example, there is only one electric guitar track (not counting the solo). To me, this is not a very creative approach for a song of this genre. I would prefer at least some sections, like the choruses, to have double-tracked guitars. Lucky for me, the chorus is repeated multiple times, so all I had to do was find a section I liked and create a new track and copy the audio. Within half an hour I was able to create two guitar tracks out of one.

This is where the morals of mixing come in. The tracking engineer or artist did not anticipate there being anything added or altered to their song. However, as the mix engineer, it is my job to enhance the music and make it enjoyable to listen to. My approach is to add what I want first and confirm with the artist later. If the artist does not like my additions I can always remove them and start a conversation about why I think the song needed something else. Either way, the artist will be informed about a weak section in their song and it is up to them to allow changes. Although, I don’t think there is any artist out there who would disagree with the more “invisible” edits like the timing and tuning adjustments.

One of the last things I did to my mix was use auto-tune on the vocals. However, I wish I would have done it first. This was my first time using auto-tune and I can certainly see why it is so popular. While I still have a lot to learn about the plugin, I was still able to tune some of the weaker sections of the vocals. However, since I had already adjusted some of the vocals using elastic audio, auto-tune sounded less transparent during those sections. I would have preferred to tune the vocals and render them as a new file first and then use elastic audio on those. Luckily since my vocals are double-tracked throughout most of the song, any of the severe tunings became less noticeable.

At the end of the day, I feel like all of my adjustments to timing, tuning, sampling, and re-arranging were justified. I know that some mix engineers prefer to keep the song as natural as possible, but in my opinion, it is our job to make the mix sound great no matter what. If the performers sound like novices, we need to make them sound like professionals. While this can be challenging and incredibly tedious, it is what it is. Ultimately, what is most important is that the client is proud of what comes out of the studio.