Final 20 Minutes of Recordings
Mixing & Mastering of Grown Ocean:
For all these tracks I spent time mixing and mastering the material to ensure it sounded as good as it possibly could, and although I spent more time on some than others, I believe I achieved a consistency throughout my five tracks, for the levels of volume and dynamics, as well as ensuring that in mixing a mastering I was over doing it by forcing volumes and dynamics to become too loud altogether, and at a constant volume, which would remove dynamic variation and make for an unappealing sounding recording.
Of all my projects I chose to devote the most attention in mastering to the first track, as it has the most instruments of any of my recordings, and would pose more of a challenge but could potentially be the most rewarding, as getting all these instruments to work together would enhance the overall sound to a level greater than a more sparse track from the portfolio.
I began mixing with the rhythm tracks like drums and bass, by which I mean I pulled all the faders down and introduced these first, ensuring that level wise they sounded right together, and then started to introduced the guitars and vocals, and other lead instruments that play little nuances and highlights. I checked all my individual drum mic signals, and brought them to a level where they sound like a kit naturally would if you stood in front of it and heard it played altogether. As the mic'ing for the kit was about getting a sound for the room, and not close mic'ing, my processing was less intensive, though I added a compressor to each mic signal which flattened peaks from extra loud cymbal hits in my overheads for example, but aside from this, did very little to them. I panned the overheads left and right to give the kit the stereo spacing as is common practice in mixing, but as they're not a focal point of the track and just provide a constant driving rhythm, I then turned my attention to the bass tone. This needed to be a consistent volume and not duck out at any point to keep in the motorik groove, so I found a bass tone in amp settings that sounded ever present and punchy, but also stylistically fitted with my tracks folk-rock origins, and then compressed the signal again, to prevent any massive volume surges with quite a severe threshold. After these were balanced, I introduced my rhythm guitar and vocals which were recorded together, and so therefore needed processing together. I checked the phase relationship of my guitar signal which was from the coincident pair, making sure the peaks and troughs of the waveforms weren't cancelling each other out and then after that, panned one left and one right for the large guitar sound required, which worked really well as we'd used a 12 string acoustic guitar and knew this would all work it's favour using this technique. I ensured then the level of the vocal and guitar blended naturally, with the vocal never being overwhelmed, and then introduced my backing vocals to this to ensure they too were a nice volume with the rhythm guitar. Then all this was balanced against my drums and bass which were already processed, adjusting levels as I went along. Crucially I didn't do a vocal reverb right away, as I hadn't decided what sound to go for yet, and wanted a solid mix before attempting it.
This was the core of my track complete, and then I set about adding the other little bits which enriched the track as it went along, and as these dropped in and out, I wasn't hesitant to pan them hard either side, as enough things were central in this mix already, and these may surprise the listener as they were introduced, and leave space in the mix if you think about it between two speakers for example, it would sound too full in the middle if these things were spread out between the left and right speakers. I panned my lead guitar slightly, and hard panned the piano, occasional flutes and the chimes and bells at the end as these all came and went in the mix and sounded nice in different positions. I was happy with this as mix in terms of levels, and got a second opinion, and from this decided that there was too much happening in the low mids frequency band (200-500Hz approximately) so began to shape the parts of the track, with the intention of the whole track sounding better for it. So one massive change I made was to my rhythm guitar, where I took lots of the signal at this range out, and boost high end, as actually in a full mix the high tones of an acoustic guitar which sound like a distinctive twangy sound, and picking tones and finger slide actually sound nice themselves, and the rest of the mix suggests the presence of a fuller sounding acoustic guitar which I didn't really realise until removing it, and this benefited my mix massively. I also made sure I calved a place for my bass to sit below 150Hz so it was clear and not fighting to be heard over instruments that aren't supposed to have any sound in this frequency range. Then I added my vocal reverbs last of all, as I knew these could make or break my finished track. I applied two slightly separate ones to my lead and harmonies, as I knew the harmonies needed to sound more distant in the mix as they just harmonically complement the lead, so as a result I used a larger room mode reverb with a wetter signal than my lead vocal reverb. But then I knew the two had to reconvene at the end of the track for the accapella outro, so automated the volume of the harmonies to rise at the end of the track for this, meaning they became more present for the ending.
All this meant I was ready to master, and the key thing would be to take my bounced stereo file, and bring up the level to a similar level to my guide track, which was the original Fleet Foxes track. I learned from looking at the waveforms that the guide was louder overall, but retained dynamic dips and wasn't forced to be loud, so I took this on board when mastering mine, as I put the multipressor plug-in on it, and began targeting frequency bands with some more compression, but subtly as I'd already compressed in the mixing stage. I then added a linear phase EQ which would put a mastering curve on the whole multitrack to increase it's perceived loudness, without effecting the waveforms too drastically and causing any audible changes between the left and right channel, as of course if an instrument panned one side is effected more by this curve than one panned right because of it's frequency, then this will change the balanced between the left and right channel, so linear phase tries not to do this. I loaded a rock/pop mastering preset, and noticing it's impact began to tweak it to complement the more acoustic nature of my track. I then finally used an adaptive limiter to boost the overall volume, and hopefully match the volume of my guide track, and this was a process of trial and error, based upon the principles that I couldn't add to much gain, and had to have a threshold at 0.2dB or less so digital clipping couldn't occur. This was all I did for my master of the track, and it sounded good when I was done. I did a quick master for all my tracks to get consistency across my 5 tracks, as I felt this was crucial for the overall product, and it would help me decide everything worked linearly.
The order of my 20mins was the last thing I decided. I had mastered all in one project so I could line them up and do the fade ins and fad outs, then bounce them individually, setting cycle areas around each track and soloing them. I decided to open with the only vocal track, for an instant impact and to draw a listener in, which I felt an instrumental may not do. I decided Get Carter should follow as it wasn't such a stylistic jump from the first, although I knew this would be a problem in an intentionally varied 20 minute EP. I followed that with my psychedelic improvisation as this was more effects laden, and felt it may bridge the gap between my groovy library/film track and my outright dance track which followed that. This left me with my Foxey Lady cover to end with, so I had a quite long fade out to end this track, and felt this was an appropriate way to end the portfolio. Sequencing the tracks wasn't easy because of their varied styles, and no particular order seemed to make great sense at first, but I'm happy with the flow of my project now it'd done, and feel the recording quality and mixing was consistent across all the tracks, so nothing stood out as being sub par in any way.
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