If you have been following up on the blog, you will know that I recently tracked Austin Nichols for their song ‘A Harmonic Minor’. While at the time of writing this I am still working with Austin to make a definitive mix, I have recently had to turn in a “Final” version for class. So, for today’s blog post, I thought it would be interesting to talk about my approach to mixing the song and what I have learned from it.

First, I am super happy with what I and my partner were able to extract during tracking. Having as many guitar tracks as we did with five microphones recording the amp at one given time, we were blessed with how smooth everything went. Come to find out later, putting multiple microphones on the amp at once was a super risky thing to do. If the distance between each microphone and the amp were different or had we not used the same pre-amp/setting for each, we could have had some serious issues with what we recorded. Needless to say, we were very lucky. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to re-record the drum kit. There are some moments in the song where the drummer is stumbling into a section or is just offbeat. Most of the issues can be fixed with elastic audio, but to me, it is just easier to re-record. But enough about the tracking let's discuss what I did mixing-wise.

Shout-out to Pro Tools routing folders! These came in so handy for this session, especially with the guitars. While in the studio Austin messed around with each microphone that was on his cab until he said, “that’s the tone, don’t touch it”. So I did as he said and put each file per guitar track (rhythm, lead, harmonies, solo, all double-tracked) into corresponding folders and treated each of the files recorded as one. (see image for example) This allowed me to treat their tone as one sound, instead of going in and messing with each file. It also saves a lot of processing power. As for mixing the guitars, I didn’t do too much so that I could preserve the tone Austin wanted. I added a little bit of compression and brought everything forward while also cleaning out some of the low ends to make room for the bass. I also added some reverb to the harmony guitar tracks per Austin’s request.

We recorded the bass through an amp and DI box. I eq’d the amp tone to get something I liked that had some low-end push to it. Then, for the DI I removed pretty much everything except for the mids. Combing these two tracks made for an amazing dirty bass tone that still had some low end, but was far from muddy. Of course, with the help of the sans amp plugin, this made the bass even crunchier.

Nick, the singer Austin brought in, absolutely killed it. I treated the multiple vocal tracks in the same way I did with the guitars, routing everything to multiple routing folders and doing most of the heavy lifting on those. Nick liked to switch between low growls and high growls on a dime, which makes it difficult to keep his voice at one constant level. During tracking, we recorded him through a distressor which kept his voice in “a solid bubble” if you will. From there I added some slight de-essing on each track and added my main compression to the lead vocal routing folder. I also put my delay and reverb on the routing folder so that when double-tracked vocals came in, they would match perfectly with the lead. The group background vocals were treated the same way except they had a more cavernous reverb. Speaking of which all the vocals before the solo were written in the studio without Austin’s knowledge. Austin had Nick write all the lyrics and told him where they did and did not want vocals. However, when we were in the studio, we all thought the “outro, except it's an intro” section, yes that is what Austin called it, needed something else. So in a matter of minutes, everyone came up with the lyrics and helped with the marching chant that made it into the mix.

Honestly, I like the sound I was able to extract from everything in the kit except for the snare and cymbals. Like I said previously if I could redo one thing it would be the drums. Not only are there timing issues and weird fills but in my opinion, the snare is very inconsistent. I’m not sure if the mic got nudge mid-way through or if the drummer was just drumming differently but there is a clear difference in tone between the first and second halves of the song. I added a triggered sample snare that had more of a snare bottom sound that helped with some of my problems but not all. If I had some more time to experiment and tinker with the trigger plugin, I probably would have replaced the entire snare track.

After hearing my partner’s mix, I think there are things that both our mixes did well. When it comes to creating a final version of the song, I think it would be best to take elements from each of our mixes to create one definitive mix. As of writing this Austin is listening to both mixes and taking notes on what they like and do not like. By the end of the year, I think they will have one amazing song