Doing a rough mix

The first project will be to mix a track that has drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitars, vocals, and backing vocals. When I heard this song, I filed it in what I think is the pop/indie genre today. The first mix of this song will be all in the box with use of ProTools plug-ins. To get to the session, go to HOME and select the csumbuser account > folder MPA308 > RawTracks1 session template. Time to get started with cleaning up/organizing the audio and getting rid of things we don’t need in the mix. Start with organization, because it is easier to manage your workflow when things are in order and you know where/what tracks are what. We only need the 2track patched in because we are only monitoring. Listen to the files to make sure they are the correct instrument and are corresponding with the track names. Use standard track order and meaningful names to ensure efficiency in the studio: Kick / Snare / Toms / Overheads / Room mic / Bass / Guitars / Vocals and any other instruments in the mix. Cut and erase all unnecessary audio that is taking up space and is redundant (you don’t need toms in the snare track when they are already on their own track!). Make sure you solo each track so you can hear what you are listening for. You can use the Strip Silence function for quickly editing unwanted blank audio, but make sure to zoom in and check if you are hacking off any important decays in the performance, and sometimes you can use this for just about all of the tracks. You’ll notice some of the individual tracks were summed in the mix. We don’t necessarily need to use these tracks. They are allowing different mix options. The kick and snare are on a track together with compression, and the toms were summed as well. There are several room mic options as well so be sure to choose the ones you want and hide/mute the ones you don’t need. Group all of the drums together with the bass when you are finished sweeping. There are plenty of guitars in this mix to make it sound full, so there are many options when deciding how to make the solos stand out in the mix. Leave the solo C pan, and try a few things with 4 rhythm guitar tracks: Gtr 1 center, Gtr 1+2 center, Gtr 1 L, Gtr 2 L, Gtr 1 R, Gtr 2 R. Try the same series with guitars 3+4, or 1+3, or 2+4, or any other creative combinations you can think of. There are many options and different timbres, recorded with different mics, and some were already processed with outboard compression, so don’t hesitate to experiment! Set up a REVERB stereo aux track and send the lead gtr there. Turn up the input to 100% on the reverb module. Dial in what you think is necessary. Moving onto the vocals, we definitely want them center, and also sent to a little reverb. Back up vox can be panned for a more huge sounding effect. Set up a delay aux channel, and send both backing vox track to it. Pan one of the backing tracks: dry track hard L, and the wet track hard R. Take the other backing track that is sent to the delay and: dry track hard R, wet track hard L. Now we will have what sounds like 20 people singing. Use complementary EQ for all the tracks. Listen to the mix as a whole for overbearing frequencies in the individual tracks, and scoop out what is necessary using the parametric 7-band EQ. A low cut/high pass filter should be used on the reverb and the backing vocals to take out the fundamental note that is already there. Reverb on the bass end of things tends to make a mix muddy and ruin the aesthetics of what you are trying to achieve. Go through the song and add markers in the appropriate places to outline the song form. That way you can easily see where a chorus or verse is if you need to make edits in sound quality, performance, and arrangement. SAVE the session in the MPA308 RawTracks1 folder as Group4RawTracks1.