Author: Lewis Whitworth

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Once the multitrack sessions were complete we were given the pro tools session to edit and mix ourselves in our own time with any computer with pro tools installed. I worked on the mix in the mac room. I began by organising the different groups  by labelling and colour coding them as shown in the screenshot below. This helped me identify the different instrument groups like drums and guitar as well as set the volume for a group  of instruments which saved me time throughout the mixing process. My intention in this mix was to get a good balance between the Stevie Wonder and Stevie Ray Vaughan version of the song by blending the guitar and clavinet parts at equal volumes and pan levels. As a result the song combines rock and funk without bias to either genre.

 

Once I finished grouping the instruments I removed any useless audio parts in each track for every instrument to remove any pointless background sound. In the screenshot below I have removed large parts of the toms because they only play for short parts of the song. I also rearranged some parts that were out of time. This was mainly the ukulele ukulele and first chorus of the clavinet. I removed several tracks for  number of reasons. The removed tracks were the 5 guitar tracks. 3 of which didnt follow the chorus and the other 2 sounded overwhelming and made the song feel less funky and more rock sounding. So in the end I used one guitar track panned to the left which left enough space for the mid clavinet. I also removed the bass via line which sounded very boxed despite despite tweaking the 7 band EQ, one saxophone track because 3 saxophone tracks playing together were overwhelming when played all at once. I used one vocal track by cutting the best of both vocal tracks and putting them into one. As a result the vocals get the correct pitch.

 

 

The next part of the process was to sort our any volume inconsistencies per track to maintain a balanced sound throughout the whole song. I did this by using the applying automation to volume at different parts of the tracks. In the screenshot below I had to change the levels of the ukulele because I played some of the notes with more strength which was louder than previous notes played. The same goes for guitar where Robin strummed the guitar with more strength after the first chorus so I reduced the volume.

 

The next step was to EQ every track. I used 7 band EQs for precision at certain frequencies. I boosted the high frequencies on the clavinet, saxophone, guitar, overheads and snare. I boosted the low frequencies on the kick drum, bass and toms. I lowered the low frequenices on the ukulele, clavinet and snares. I boosted the mids on the clavinet very slightly and on the guitar. I used pre set EQ settings in pro tools for various instruments and tweaked them to my preference. For example the classic rock guitar eq boosted the highs too much so I lowered the highs a small bit. The aux track was just experimenting with reverbs that sounded to strange and ambient for superstition so I didnt use them in the end.

 

The next step was plugins which I only applied to the guitar part. I tried adding a variety of plugins to different tracks such as the saxophone and clavinet but the sound was too artificial and not true to the Stevie Wonder or Stevie Ray Vaughan version. The original recording was fine for most tracks. I used 2 plugins on the guitar track. A classic rock guitar plugin which sounds clean like a 50s guitar track which is present throughout the whole song. The 2nd plugin is a fuzz wah pedal which is present during the chorus of the song.

 

I only wanted to fuzz wah pedal plugin to be applied during the chorus so in the plugin menu I selected the automation window which allowed me to choose which parts of the plugin to apply. I selected all of them. In the multitrack window I chose the plugin from the multitrack window then set the chorus areas to ‘on’ and every other part to off. I tested this and it worked fine. It sounded like a funky psychedelic twist which made the chorus stand out more. To make the chorus part of the guitar track more interesting I used automation with the pan control. I looked at the sound wave and identified where there was a change in chord then used the pen tool to draw up or down which pans left to right between each chord. Every time the chord changes there is a change in pan to the far left or right. 

 

My final song sounds clean and its different to the original mix in many ways. I have only used 1 guitar track out of 6 recorded and panned it to the left with plugins to give a classic less crunchy rock feel. I also used a fuzz wah pedal in the chorus which is what makes my mix the most different to the group mix. I have Used EQs on every track to boost and lower frequencies which brings out the most strength depending on the instrument. The saxophone tracks sound balanced together and blend with the clavinet. My mix achieves my intention  at the start which is the blend the best of the rock (Stevie Ray Vaughan) and funk (Stevie Wonder) versions of the song whilst maintaining a balance between them.

 

This week we recorded the trumpet track on saxophone and rerecorded the clavinet. The saxophone was an alto saxophone played by Daz. In the picture below we set up 2 microphones. 1 AKG 414 dynamic microphone which was position 1 and a half metres away and a shure sm57 cardiod dynamic microphone much closer. We used the sm57 because it captures high frequences well.

On the desk we sent input 1 and 2 to 10 and 11 on mix b as they were the last free tracks available.  Charlotte asked Daz to play whilst we set the levels to 0db. Once this was done and daz had warmed up we recorded it on pro tools with a few mistakes. We re recorded the parts where the 2nd verse was played to early by using the quick punch tool to correct the mistake. We then did a 2nd recording and double tracked track 11 to create a more rich and full sound.

After listening to the song back again we noticed the clavinet track from the previous week had some clipping sounds due to a faulty aux cable so we re recorded the clavinet track an octave higher with the cable fixed. We did this on track the previous clavinet had been recorded on.