Next, the kick drum track: Listen
To get a sharp kick attack that punched through the mix, I applied -3 dB at 60 Hz, -6 dB at 400 Hz, and +4 dB at 3 kHz. Here’s the result: Listen
Thinning out the lows in the kick ensured that the kick did not compete with the bass guitar for sonic space.
Now the snare track: Listen
I boosted 10 dB at 10 kHz to enhance the high hat leakage into the snare mic. This is extreme but was necessary in this case. I also added reverb with a 27 msec predelay and 1.18 sec reverb time. Finally, I compressed the snare with a 7:1 ratio and 1 msec attack to keep the loudest hits under control. Here’s the result: Listen
The drummer did not play his toms on this song. But on other songs, to reduce leakage, I deleted everything in the tom tracks except the tom hits (see Figure 1). Cutting a few dB at 600 Hz helped to clarify the toms.
Next, here’s the cymbal track, unprocessed: Listen. Notice how loud the snare leakage is relative to the cymbal crash.
To reduce the snare leakage into the cymbal mics, I limited the cymbal track severely. The limiting reduced the snare level without much affecting the cymbal hits. This is very unusual processing but it worked. Note the cymbal-to-snare ratio with limiting applied: Listen
The guitars sounded great as they were… a little reverb was all that was needed. These two players should do a solo album! Check it out: Listen
The keyboards also needed only slight reverb: Listen
Moving on to the background vocals, we recorded three singers with three large-diaphragm condenser mics. Listen to the raw tracks with the vocals panned half-left, half-right and center
We applied 3:1 compression and added a low-frequency rolloff to compensate for the mics’ proximity effect. I “stacked” the vocal tracks, not by overdubbing more vocals, but by running the vocal tracks through a chorus plug-in.
This effect doubled the vocals, making them sound like a choir—especially with a little reverb added. Here are the background vocals, with compression, EQ, chorus and reverb: Listen
Finally, here’s the unprocessed lead-vocal track. Listen to how the word “never” is very loud because it is not compressed.
To tame the loud notes I added 4:1 compression with a 40 msec attack. Figure 3 shows the settings.
Figure 3: Vocal Compressor
The track also needed a de-esser to reduce excessive “s” and “sh” sounds.
To create a de-esser, I used a multi-band compressor plug-in, which was set to limit the 4 kHz-to-20 kHz band with a 2 msec attack time. This knocks down the sibilants only when they occur.
De-essing does not dull the sound as a high-frequency rolloff would do. Listen to hear the lead vocal with compression, de-essing and reverb. The word “never” is not too loud now, thanks to the compressor.
The Completed MIx
We’re done. Listen to the entire mix without any processing.
And listen to the same mix again with all of the processing as described.
As we said earlier, we recorded the electric guitars playing through their effects stomp boxes, so I didn’t need to add any effects to them. Those players knew exactly what was needed.
For example, here’s another song mix that showcases the slow flanging on the right-panned guitar: Listen. By the way, this song is in 5/4 and 7/4 time.
Of course, every recording requires its own special mix, so the mix settings given here will not necessarily apply to your recordings. But I hope you enjoyed hearing how a recording of this genre might be recorded and mixed.
Bruce Bartlett is a microphone engineer (www.bartlettmics.com), recording engineer, live sound engineer, and audio journalist. His latest books are Practical Recording Techniques 6th Edition and Recording Music On Location. style=