This week in labs we have spent the majority of our lab time cleaning up the tracks as best as possible. I've found by listening to others mixes that simple edits in certain parts of every track really help the real, uncluttered feel that we strive for as we mix. We noticed that in the beginning of the song, there are around 9 or 10 tracks of drums playing at once. There is only kick, snare, and hi hat, in the beginning, with a ton of redundant and unnecessary audio in 7 of the other tracks. We decided before doing anything the the drums seemed to be off in the distance, and there was a lot of extra room noise. We were looking for a tight drum sound. The first thing we thought of was EQing it a little. That didn't produce the effect we wanted and so we moved onto compression. This didn't work either and only brought out the huge drums sound we weren't looking for. I thought about the overheads, realizing that soloed, they sound very distant. Simply by muting the beginning region of drums on the overheads, the drums snapped into place,and sounded super tight. The verse and intro really came to life. My point of this is that we don't necessarily need drastic eq's and a ton of compression or effects to get a great sound. As long as the instruments are speaking well with each other then it leaves a great amount of room to put just the little touch it needs. I am becoming more and more surprised at how much attenuation is required to clear up a mix, and gathering a more clear understanding of how frequencies talk to each other. This week I tried out a grouping concept with the drums. I set the output of all the drum track to a stereo auxillary DRUM mix. This way, after EQing the individual drums I now had a drum mix that I could work on EQing the drumset as a whole. We tried experimenting with the intro and doing a little rearrangement. A few simple edits and I think the song hits a little harder. When I hear verses and choruses sound like they are building up musically, I start thinking of ways that I could help build it up aesthetically. An example of this is automation of the reverb send on the snare drum track. For this particular song, I thought it sounded good to have a more close, laid back reverb for the verse. When the chorus came in I automated the reverb send level up 7dB, giving a more full, ambient effect to back the distorted guitars. And when EQing the guitars, using a low shelf helped the low end be still present but not so boomy. In the 2K to 7K range, We dipped the guitars with a bell EQ and it really brought out the vocal timbre. There was much more clarity and again, we did not need to use heavy compression or any drastic EQ boost. This next week we plan to do a new mix, stereo, and out of the board. We will use the disressors on the kick and snare, and put the bass through the milennia. I want to try putting the vocals through the SPX 90 and the NEVE preamp. HI Pass filters on many of the drum tracks, as we want most of the lows and all of the sub frequencies coming from the bass. Guitars will have reverb via the aux sends. I would like to try live automation as well, and record some panning of the vocals into the mix. When in the studio, paying attention to the meters is always a good idea, but just because the meter peaks doesn't mean distortion is happening. By the time the VU meter hits the red, you have already heard change in SPL happen, and it is hard to sync up what you are seeing with what you are hearing. Bar meters are easier to analyze and can respond to electrical pulses more quickly. Amplitude and Level are two different things. Amplitude is a representation of the changes in air pressure as vibrations displace air. Level refers to the overall magnitude of a signal. Meters are important to watch while mixing, but ultimately you should mix with your ears. When listening to a mix or mixing, we should start to decipher how the stereo spread is laid out, and how much depth the music has. And just by boosting and cutting certain frequencies, we can invoke emotion. Boosting lows creates a dark mysterious effect, and highs bring out more brightness and happiness. A good balance of the entire frequency spectrum from 20Hz to 20kHz creates a more balanced.