Mixing 'Red Hands'
The track I was mixing was a track that I personally recorded during my A-Levels back in 2015, and is a cover of a Walk Off the Earth song name 'Red Hands'. The song was recorded as part of my coursework for the year and received a B grade.
My client for this track was my A-Level music technology teacher, John Watson, who I got in contact with to ask if there was anything could do for him. I contacted John on Friday 27th January 2017.
The Reason project for Red Hands
The back of the Reason rack, showing the output routing
The inputs set to Reason in Ableton Live.
Live recording the tracks in from Reason.
The final mix for Red Hands
Original track from A-Levels - also available on dropbox
Re-mixed track for my client - also available on dropbox
He said that it was nice talking to me after a few years and said that he would be happy to help out where he can.
He suggested to me that I could do a second mix of one of my A-Level pieces because it would be good to see how much I've learnt since going to university compared to what i know now.
I took on the task as I felt that it would be a good opportunity to learn from my old project and see how I could improve my own work.
I opened up the project in Reason, which is the DAW we used during our A-Levels, to have a listen to the old track and see what I had done before.
I noticed some errors and issues with the track that I had not addressed back then and noted them for later editing, such as the vocals going out of tune.
As I no longer use Reason for my music work I thought it would be good idea to move the work onto Logic Pro, where I do the majority of my work and have different plugins to work with.
The issue with doing this is that Reason does not save the audio files that are recorded in to a specific folder, and save them only to the project itself.
This meant that getting the tracks out would be a big challenge.
Saturday 28th January 2017
I used Rewire which is built into Reason, to connect Reason to another DAW, in this case Ableton Live as I did not know how to connect it to Logic and already had a template to Rewire into Live.
I started off by removing any effects and processing on the tracks so that they were all clean.
I then manually changed the outputs on the back of the Reason rack for each of the tracks so that they were all connected to their own output in the master section.
This meant that if I opened another DAW while Reason was open, it would be able to pick up the Reason outputs as inputs in the second DAW.
I opened up my Ableton Live template, which had some of the inputs set for Rewire. I changed the few that were not set so that it was ready to record in.
To get the tracks to import from Reason, all I needed to do was press record and watch them all transfer into Live.
Once all of the tracks had been recorded into Live, they would be stored in a folder with the Live project. I then just took those files and dragged them into Logic Pro.
The audio files dropped into Logic Pro
From here I started mixing the track. I started with the drums as I figured they are the most important part of the track, so getting them to a good level is a good place to start and then I could build the rest around it. I then moved onto the percussion as that is at the start of the track and then onto the guitars and other instruments, leaving the vocals till last when everything else was where I wanted it. I did a rough mix of the raw audio before adding any effects or processing to the track because this way I could tell what the different effects would sound like in the mix compared to how it would sound when everything was at random levels. I used the original track as a reference when doing my mix as the goal was to try and replicate the original.
Monday 30th January 2017
I started to add some processing and reverb to the different tracks, including drums, bass and guitars. This was so I could build a more 'real' image of the sound and make it seem more realist to the listener.
I added some compression to the drums and guitars to stop the peaks in the audio. I added a Guitar Rig patch to a paralleled channel of the guitar tracks to add some depth to the sound while keeping the nice clean sound of the acoustic guitars.
I added a parallel of the bass track to add a Guitar Rig patch to it, so that i could get a different sound from the bass. I also liked the clean bass sound so simply doubled them up, with the result sounding good.
Tuesday 31st January 2017
Looking back at the notes I made upon re-listening to the track after two years, I set about fixing the pitch problems with the vocals. I added some 'Waves Tune' plugins, which are a Waves plugin for pitch correction. I fiddled with the settings until I got something that I felt masked the majority of the pitch problems in one of the vocal tracks. I then copied the plugin over to another channel and modified it to suit. I did this for all of the vocal tracks until I had something I liked. I then panned the different vocal parts so that they were spread out in the mix for listening.
I then added two different reverb patches so that I could change the level of reverb during the track for the transition between verse and chorus.
Saturday 4th February 2017
There were some things that I hadn't touched on my track yet, including the ukulele and cajon tracks. I added some compression to the ukulele and EQ'd some of the high end out as it was making a ringing sound. For the cajons, the job was the same. Add some compression and some EQ. I EQ'd some of the high end out of the cajons as the snares were rattling inside, and boosted the mids slightly.
I then looked at the reverse cymbal part I had recorded and thought it was too dry, so added some reverb. I then EQ'd out some of the mids as there was an annoying frequency there. I added some compression and left it at that.
Thursday 9th February 2017
I took the track in to get some feedback from my tutor who suggested the vocals still need some work as the pitch correction was not the best job. I modified the pitch correction to fix some of the issues and re mixed the vocals.
He also pointed out that there should be some automation on the vocals as the level changes throughout so i spent some time automating the levels.
Thursday 16th February 2017
I took the track back in for some more feedback based on what I had changed since i last saw my tutor. He said the vocals sound a lot better but still aren't that great, so I said that I was thinking of adding in another vocal line as I had asked my client about it and he was okay with it.
He said it would be a good idea, so I tried to find an artist to record for me.
The information about recording the vocals can be found here.
Thursday 23rd March 2017 and Thursday 30th March 2017
I brought Adam Clarke into the studio to record the vocals I needed for the mix, discussed here.
Saturday 1st April 2017
After recording the vocals I could finally get back to work on the track.
I imported all of the vocal tracks and pieced them in where they needed to go one by one.
I added some automation so that the levels were okay the whole way through and edited out the old vocals in the places where I thought there were issues.
I added another Waves Tune plugin to sort the small issues, and added some compression. I used the same reverb bus as the other vocals and mixed it in. I changed the small details needed to finish the mix and then exported it.
Thursday 6th April 2017
I took the track into the studio to try and run it through the tape machine. I did this successfully, but upon listening back there was a track of someone drumming in the background which shouldn't have been there. I tried to record over it and it wouldn't go, so I saved what I had, but couldn't make use of it in the end.
Wave Tune plugin in Logic
The arrangement of the Red Hands vocals.