I am pleased to report that mixing for "Aloud" is complete thanks to an immense effort by Nadim at Let 'Em In Music and delivered at the expense of a fair amount of sleep on my part. As I have previously iterated, we were quite careful by and large in the tracking stage about getting a good sound, but nonetheless mixing proved to be immensely challenging and it took 8+ hours Tuesday and an extra 3 hours Wednesday to get something we were both happy with.
Mixing is very much like putting together a puzzle and designing it at the same time. On the simplest level you're trying to fit all the pieces together such that they lock into each other in just the right way to make the desired shape. They can't be stepping on each other or you're gonna have unsightly bulges in certain places. The trick is that simultaneously you're figuring out what each piece should look like individually. Every change you make to one piece affects how the other pieces need to look in order to make them all fit together as a whole. You EQ the guitar cause it's not delivering enough on the low end and doesn't sound "thick" the way you want it. Well, now the bass isn't very articulate since the guitar is stepping on it's upper end more, so maybe you boost a key frequency to see if you can improve definition. Well now you can't hear the vocal very well because the guitar and bass are all up in its business so you turn that up. Now the whole thing is just blaring... oh and where did that kick drum go? It's hard work and it's exhausting work. It requires a lot of focus and a lot of know-how. Being able to accurately assess what's causing a given problem in the mix and knowing where to look for the right tool requires a well-trained ear and a deep knowledge of the tools at your disposal. That's not to say trial-and-error doesn't play a roll. In fact it plays a huge role. But when you're on the clock you want to be making educated guesses wherever possible, and the digital tools available these days are so myriad you could spend weeks trying out different plugins that do essentially the same thing trying to decide which works best in a given situation. Again, these are among the reasons why I am glad I decided to work with a professional engineer. As I bonus, I've learned a lot in the process.
Three major challenges for "Aloud":
Bass: My idea with the bass was to mix the DI signal with an amp signal that we could distort a bit to get sort of a gutted, overdriven sound that would cut nicely at all volumes. Ultimately what we discovered is that we just weren't getting a sound that was working with the overall mix using that approach and ended up using primarily the DI signal for a deeper, richer, but perhaps more subtle sound. As it happens, this really fit the song best because of the guitar lines that are either chugging along during the verse with palm muting or ringing out during the chorus with an open low E string. Essentially the guitar is providing a lot of the "bass" in the song. Thus we ultimately realized that we needed to let Pat's bass sit more on the true bottom end, with just a little edge and some boosting in the midrange to make it possible to follow along with what he's doing even if you don't have speakers with good low end reproduction. Both Nadim and I agreed that we should spend a bit more time getting the tone right on the bass during tracking next time.
Guitars: We spent a fair amount of time during tracking finding a guitar tone that could pass muster, yet even so what we got was a bit harsh around the high end. Ultimately Nadim was able to work some studio wizardry, cutting out several specific problem frequencies and also applying multiband compression to tame some of the peaky frequencies (the guy's got plug-ins and he's not afraid to use 'em). I'm happy with how the guitars sound on the finished product but perhaps we can do even better next time, or at least make our lives a bit easier. Nadim is convinced that Fender amps do not handle distortion well (apparently this isn't the first time he's had issues with them), but I'm not sure I'm buying it. For one thing, we did end up using my distortion pedal, not the amp channel. For another, my Fender Prosonic does not have the characteristic bright-on-the-high-end Fender clean channel. In fact I think it's fairly dark and rich. It's also worth noting that I think the guitar line itself could accentuate certain difficult-to-manage qualities, such as the upper extensions in the verse and ringing notes in the chorus. I would be interested in trying out some different mics next time around and also possibly either placing the amp against the wall to close off the back or trying out my Peavey 5150 closed-back 4x12 speaker cabinet, which delivers a much darker sound (we'll see if I can manage to transport that). Maybe I'll even look into a different pedal. No, wait. No more spending money on stuff. I need to save so we can record songs!
Vocals: We were really pleased with what the Studio Projects C1 mic did for my voice, but the song presents certain inherent challenges in that the first two lines of each verse are sung rather quietly in a low register and the second two are sung loudly in a high one. We did record these parts separately so we could get a proper level for each, but we found it challenging to get the quieter part to sit on top of the mix without just turning it up ridiculously loud. By the end of the night Tuesday we had applied a doubling effect that seemed to do something to help it cut, but when I listened to our mixdown Wednesday morning on headphones I found it incredibly annoying. I happened to listen back to the rough mix from the tracking session, which I remembered being quiet listenable and not having any real issues with audibility. Lo and behold that part of the vocal line sat much better. When we reconvened Wednesday night I mentioned my observation and we tried dropping the old track into the mix. For whatever reason, it was a step in the right direction. From there we applied some subtle EQ to help with intelligibility and a subtle reverb for body (I didn't want to add too much because I wanted that part to sound close to the listener).
I am very pleased with how some of the embellishments that I had worked on on my own after tracking worked into the final mix. As I alluded to in my last post, I spent several hours in the studio Friday, Sunday and Monday and at home Tuesday experimenting with some sounds and dropping them into the Logic project file from the tracking session. I think they really added something to the song, especially during the 8-bar "breakdown" in the bridge, where I was able to let things get a little wacky in a way that I like without derailing the song (thanks to my crazy noise synths, a brake drum run through a guitar amp plugin, and a delay loop from the end of the slide guitar lick I played run through a filter for an video-game/alarm-like effect). The slide guitar lick itself that leads into the bridge helped smooth over a high B I sang which was a bit shaky, as did my idea to add a harmony a fifth below it and 4th above it (an octave above that, Bon Jovi style). A quiet organ part that fades in during the outro adds some weight there.
The final additions, cobbled together Tuesday morning at 6 AM, were some talk radio samples. I actually reused some material I had recorded in college for a video off of my clock radio. The samples feature what is actually a politically tinged rant by some guy about herbal medicines and supplements, but I edited out all allusions to that and just left some of the impassioned political rhetoric. These open and close the song. I had thought of this idea for the beginning of the outro at some point a while back, but I remembered it while playing the rough mix for my girlfriend. I had a video interview open on some web page on my computer and it just started playing in the background at that point in the song. We both thought it was cool, so I made a note to make use of that idea in some way.
These additions caused the meaning of the song evolve a bit for me, which is somewhat surprising given that I wrote it over two years ago and it hasn't changed much over that time. I even went back and made one tiny, tiny change to the lyrics to reflect my new understanding (I've edited the previous post that includes the lyrics to reflect the change).
-Terry
No comments:
Post a Comment