Live mix - Spit Shake Sisters

I recently mixed a track for a Brighton based band called Spit Shake Sisters. They are a classic rock outfit and like to be considered as a harder, rawer version of Led Zeppelin.

http://soundcloud.com/phil-hutchins-prodctions/sss-spit-me-out

This was my first attempt at mixing AND mastering a track. There are a lot of elements that i like about the track but the stems that i received to mix with made it a little harder than usual as the quality was not great. However, this is probably due to the fact that it was live.

The kick and snare were compressed and EQd first followed by the overheads and bass.

I had to add a bitcrusher and a bass amp modelling plugin to add extra grit and depth to the sound.

The guitars were fairly hard to get right and to get them to sit in the mix well proved very difficult.

It was a challenge which i think payed off with the amount of time that i spent on it. However, i think that i could spend hours on them and still not be satisfied. As a result of this, i decided to leave them where i was most comfortable with them at the time and move on.

The vocals had to be redone as the vocalist was not happy with the way the originals sounded. As a result i had to be careful with bleed in the overheads and other microphones. This didn't seem to be too much of a problem in the final mix.

I used my standard vocal setup that i have used on him before - a single SE Electronics Z3300 microphone with a pop shield. The room (small rectangular room with bare plaster walls) proved to have very suitable acoustics for the project.

We used the elements within the original live take to add production value such as a throat clear or two as well as the applause at the end of the track.

I sent each of the tracks, bar the kick drum and lead vocals, to an aux - Aux 1 - which contained the space designer reverb plugin.  

The vocals had tape delay and space designer reverb inserted into the channel strip and automated.

The reverb was used as an insert rather than being put on an aux as it was the only channel using that setting so i decided to save CPU.

The delay was used right at the end of the track to give the last vocal line/ scream added impact. I increased the feedback of the delay to give the desired effect and faded it out using volume automation.

Mastering the track was very interesting and i am fairly happy with the result for my first attempt.

I added overall compression to bring down the highest transients in the waveform. I also used a bit of EQ and boosted the high end a little bit to draw out the cymbals a little bit more.

A Limiter was inserted as well to prevent the track from clipping and  distorting as the guitars sounded muddy and unclear at higher volumes. I limited the track as the original volume of the track in comparison to others in iTunes was very low.

The track took me two days on and off to mix and master as i had to come back to it a lot and a lot of automation and thought was required.

 

Periphery - Icarus Lives!

Periphery have a track called 'Icarus Lives!' on their debut album on Roadrunner Records called 'Periphery'.

The genre is progressive metal but also goes by the name of "Djent" for the guitar tone/style.

The album was recorded and produced at a home studio.
The kick drum seems to be tuned to a similar or same note as the kick drum. As the guitars and kick drums are so tight in how they are played, they both compliment each other and provide a lot of energy to the backbone of the song. The EQ seems very heavy on the bass and and a little EQ on the high end to give it punch.

The cymbals and snare seem to have been given a more live feel than the kicks and the cymbals really portray this.
This could either be a lot of overhead signal or artificial reverb on the snare/ cymbals - more likely the premier.
The toms, on the other hand, seem to be given the clean, dry signal approach to match the kick drums and seem to be in a similar frequency range to each of them and the kicks meaning that they fit really well with the guitar. This is very important for the style that they are playing in as Djent required tightness from all instruments otherwise it sounds really disjointed.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfOnq-zXXBw

SPL - Small Diaphragm vs Large Diaphragm

SPL is Sound Pressure Level.

This is the level of sound which the microphone can handle without distorting the sound or damaging the diaphragm.

The SPL is based on two factors:

• The rigidity of the diaphragm and distance between the diaphragm and the back plate.
• The power level the pre amp sets limits for the amount of signal that can be received by the mic without the signal clipping.

As smaller diaphragms are stiffer, they tend to have a higher SPL as there is a lower chance of the signal distorting/ clipping compared to a larger diaphragm.

                                     (http://www.dpamicrophones.com/da/MikrofonUniversitet/Tech-Guide/Large-Diaphragm.aspx)