TwilightOdyssey
Darkness on the edge of Tone
Re: Need mixdown help
Hmm, okay:
1. First thing I did was listen to the original track and your rough premix. To tell you the truth, I prefer your arrangement to the original.
2. Took acoustic no. 1 and imported it into Cubase twice. Then I offset one of the tracks a few mS and panned them 90% left and right.
3. Took acoustic no. 2 and EQ'd it slightly different from acoustic no. 1 and panned it just left of center. I did the same with the intro guitar, so that when the vox start, they are the only thing panned to the center.
4. For reverb and compression, I used my UAD-1 card. I used a small wooden room for the acoustic tracks and ran a separate track for the 'verb. I then ran an insert from each acoustic track to the 'verb and adjusted the send level until it sounded right.
5. I did the same for the vocal track. This allowed the vox to be in the same sonic space as the guitars. I then added another vocal reverb with a subtle slap-back to the vocal track to give it some depth. I offset the predelay on the vocal reverb by 20mS.
6. EQ was pretty minimal. I added a small HF shelf to the acoustic guitars to give them some chime, and high passed all of the tracks (acoustic guitars around 100Hz, vox around 150Hz, bass at 50Hz). I added a bit of body to the vocals at 300Hz. Bass guitar had two boosts (at around 5k and 9k) and a cut at 2k to allow the vox to sit in the middle.
7. I primarily used a UA 1176SE compressor for the vocals, acoustic guitars, and bass. The bass was not compressed much to keep the attack and transparency high.
8. Vocal rides. LOTS of vocal rides. This evened out the vocal performance BEFORE I applied compression, which I used to smooth out the tone, not to dictate big level shifts.
9. There is a major vocal clunker at 3.40 on the original track. I copy/pasted an earlier pass at the same line and inserted it here to make the ending stronger.
10. I strapped a limiter across the stereo output and watched the levels overall.
11. Then I took the mixdown and added some corrective EQ, primarily at 10k to add some shimmer and attack to the guitars. I strapped another 1176SE across the mix to get the level hot and applied a minimalist limiter.
12. Finally, I inserted an Apogee UV22 across the stereo output and tried all of the dithering filters. Filter 2 gave me the most open and dynamic sound and added a couple dB of headroom to the mix.
I think that's everything.
Oh, just saw this post.
Hmm, okay:
1. First thing I did was listen to the original track and your rough premix. To tell you the truth, I prefer your arrangement to the original.
2. Took acoustic no. 1 and imported it into Cubase twice. Then I offset one of the tracks a few mS and panned them 90% left and right.
3. Took acoustic no. 2 and EQ'd it slightly different from acoustic no. 1 and panned it just left of center. I did the same with the intro guitar, so that when the vox start, they are the only thing panned to the center.
4. For reverb and compression, I used my UAD-1 card. I used a small wooden room for the acoustic tracks and ran a separate track for the 'verb. I then ran an insert from each acoustic track to the 'verb and adjusted the send level until it sounded right.
5. I did the same for the vocal track. This allowed the vox to be in the same sonic space as the guitars. I then added another vocal reverb with a subtle slap-back to the vocal track to give it some depth. I offset the predelay on the vocal reverb by 20mS.
6. EQ was pretty minimal. I added a small HF shelf to the acoustic guitars to give them some chime, and high passed all of the tracks (acoustic guitars around 100Hz, vox around 150Hz, bass at 50Hz). I added a bit of body to the vocals at 300Hz. Bass guitar had two boosts (at around 5k and 9k) and a cut at 2k to allow the vox to sit in the middle.
7. I primarily used a UA 1176SE compressor for the vocals, acoustic guitars, and bass. The bass was not compressed much to keep the attack and transparency high.
8. Vocal rides. LOTS of vocal rides. This evened out the vocal performance BEFORE I applied compression, which I used to smooth out the tone, not to dictate big level shifts.
9. There is a major vocal clunker at 3.40 on the original track. I copy/pasted an earlier pass at the same line and inserted it here to make the ending stronger.
10. I strapped a limiter across the stereo output and watched the levels overall.
11. Then I took the mixdown and added some corrective EQ, primarily at 10k to add some shimmer and attack to the guitars. I strapped another 1176SE across the mix to get the level hot and applied a minimalist limiter.
12. Finally, I inserted an Apogee UV22 across the stereo output and tried all of the dithering filters. Filter 2 gave me the most open and dynamic sound and added a couple dB of headroom to the mix.
I think that's everything.
