So I’ve just got started on the mix for the new St Liquor-ish EP which looks like it’s gonna be out on a 12″ as soon as it’s all finished. It’s really exciting for Jerry to get this on to vinyl, it was our goal for the first EP but it just didn’t happen in the end and I think the tracks for this one deserve to be on vinyl and blasted out.
I thought I’d go through a little run down of the mix process for the 2 key tracks for the EP and let you guys see whats involved. I’ve uploaded both tracks “pre mix” which come straight out of Jerry’s MV8000 sampler, gutter mixes as he likes to call em. Jerry bounces out each individual track from the sampler and I drop em in to Cubase for the mix, pretty standard process for most people. Here’s the tracks for ya…
100 Snakes
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Sexxy
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100 Snakes: I really like both these mixes but there are a few thing’s which i’ll be working on to just step the track’s up.
- the first thing is the stereo field on the track is mostly all mono because Jerry uses samples straight down the middle on most of his tracks, I’m not gonna go super wide but just moving things around will give me more room for the beat and vocal to hit harder.
- low mid definition needs some work as it’s a little messy down there
- the general EQ curve of the track also needs a little work
Sexxy: I think this one’s gonna need a little more work, here’s my first thought on it
- the synths and samples are hittin on the right so moving a few thing’s around and gettin some balance needs lookin at. I like to double tracks in cubase and then use the time slider to move them around in the stereo mix
- it’s all very dry at the moment, I’m not a reverb fan but gettin a few short delays in should work
- bass needs some work and a little more weight to it
I’m sure that once I get in to it i’ll get more of a feel with where I’m going with the mix. Jerry likes to have the general levels the same as his gutter mix and as in the first EP, gettin the beats to really “krak” and just giving the mixes some width is what I’ d like to achieve.
My question to you is what do you think needs doing to the tracks, what would you do, how might you approach it? I’m always trying new thing’s and learning more about mixing so it would be great to know what ya think. I’m also going to be sitting in with Chris Chetland up at Kog studio and goin through the mix with him, it’ll be great to learn from one of the best and get this runnin through some of the Manley and API gear up in the studio.
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Good tunes from Mr. Liq once again.
Your points are pretty on point, I got nothing to add to that I can think of right now.
As for how I’d go about it, I don’t really have a “fixed” workflow, so I dunno, but I guess I’d start off with the regular stuff.. eq’s, panning & positioning. Then move on to compression and trying to find some nice reverbs & delays.. make some buses.. experiment with some weird stuff like ringmodulators, dopplers and ish (which I always wanna use and which almost never works lol, but if you don’t try…).
Maybe some reversed reverbs on the vocals, a hair of flanger on the drum bus perhaps, or maybe one of those “high-pitched” delay’ish flangers (as you can see my geek speak is off the charts lol) on something, to get a bit of sparkle. Maybe some lo-fi break, 12bit power, or some lo/hi cut filter automation, mono dub delays… I dunno, just thinking out loud.
Oh and I like that twitter badge thingie, very clean.
Just a thought about that Twitter badge… You should change it so when you click retweet it does it from your name instead of the tweetmeme one.