Unit 25: Music Production Techniques - Finished & Mixed Multi-track

How I mixed the track:

The first thing I did to the track was editing the audio regions and adjusting their position to ensure that timing was correct. I first tried to time everything to the kick drum, as that plays constantly through the track and would be good to allign the rest of the drums and instruments to. I made slight timing alterations to some parts of the guitar track, but didn't make any extreme changes like beat mapping. I used strip silence on each of my tracks to eliminate background noise, but didn't on my left and right overheads as these picked up sounds from the whole drum kit, and strip silencing them may cause balancing issues, and loose certain sounds, changing the characteristics of the drums. So the strip silence worked effectively I changed the threshold and seconds of silence before action settings so that it worked effectively. I also shortened regions with silence at the start and end so the track wasn't swamped with unneccessary background noise.
The next step was to EQ channels to create a sound that worked individually when the channel was solo'd and with the rest of the instruments in the entire track. The first thing I EQ'd was my kick drum, And I used the EQ bands to scoop out unneccessary frequency bands, which would create space for other instruments to occupy and hopefully give my completed mix extra clarity and definition to the instruments. I applied EQ to all the instruments but not to the left and right overheads as they contain lots of drums at different frequencies so removing certain frequencies may have a detrimental affect on the sound of the kit. Also when EQ'ing I tried to compensate for some sounds, for example the bass recording sounded quite dull so I made a little EQ band to excentuate frequencies around 250Hz which made it sound nicer. After all the EQ was done I then added compression to some instruments. The compression creates a threshold to how loud a sound can go and gives a ratio setting which dictates how a sound above the threshold is acted upon. Ultimately the compressor brings all the sounds down, and then gain is added to bring them up to the level they were at before, but with less dramatic changes in pressure levels and volume, meaning it sounds more settled in the mix with other instruments. I added compression to my lead and rhythm guitar, bass and  kick and snare drum to make sure these weren't ever too loud or quite throughout the tracks duration.
I didn't have any massive timing issues in my track so I didn't need to use time flex or map kick drums to a timeline, but I did make small ammendments to the guitars where occasional strums were out. To do this I either cut out an incorrect strum and replaced it or dragged it into time with a fine movement selected. Also whenever I cut an audio region I added a cross fade over the cut so there isn't an obvious click if the waveform isn't at zero as it moves from one region to the other.
After all this I started to change the characteristics of the sounds and making the mixer sound nicer with effects like reverb to add depth to sounds, and also using amp designer to create a nice distorted guitar tone for the lead guitar. I first put the amp designer plug in on the lead guitar track and created a nice tone by moving the parameters like middle, treble and bass and then experimented with some pre-set sounds before deciding on a final sound. The reverb could be used as an effect itself or to give the end product a unified sound that sounded like a group recording and not different elements brought together. I used a plate reverb setting on my snare drum to give it character and then later applied reverb in groups to the drums as a whole.
The final step was adding plug ins and effects to the master fader. These were not to alter the instruments but to bring the entire mix up to a professional standard of 44,100 KHz and 16Bit. It's worth noting also that by this stage I'd bounced all my tracks to audio files and put them in a fresh project so not to be distracted by effects plug-ins as that stage was finished. I created a "smile curve" to give the illusion of extra volume, and also brought levels up to a maximum of 0.3 on the master fader so nothing was clipping, but ensured the dynamic range was still intact so the track wasn't boring with very little dynamic interest. Once all this was done the track was finished.