Mixing 'Trust Issues'
Conversation with Drew, my client
EQ for the breakdown vocals
Finished mix for Trust Issues
Trust Issues finished mix - also available on dropbox
Trust Issues finished mix - also available on dropbox
Trust Issues is a track by Coalescent Duo, who I got in contact with to try and get some work.
On Thursday 24th November 2016, I messaged Drew Dutoit asking if there was anything I could do for him. He suggested doing a mix of one of his tracks, as the mix he did he wasn't keen on. He said he would hunt the track down and send it over to me as soon as possible.
Due to university exams on his end, he couldn't get the track over to me until after Christmas and then due to my coursework deadlines the date that I was sent the track was pushed back even further.
I received the track on Tuesday 7th February 2017 as a Reason project. I needed to Rewire the tracks into Live, the same way I had done with 'Red Hands' not long before.
Conversation with Drew, my client, receiving the track
Wednesday 8th February 2017
I used Rewire to export the tracks from Reason into Ableton Live so that I could do a mix of the track in Logic Pro.
The information on how I used Rewire is the same process as how it was done for Red Hands, so to avoid repetition, the steps can be found here under the heading Saturday 28th January 2017.
Saturday 11th February 2017
I dropped the tracks into a new Logic Pro session and took a listen to the clean track. I didn't listen to the finished product as I wanted to make my own version from scratch to compare to theirs at the end.
I made a rough mix of the stems as to how I felt they should be. I immediately felt that the bass and synth parts were quite prominent and should be pushed up in the mix.
I was surprised when listening to the track as they are grime artists, but the track they sent me was more of an indie/pop track. I was informed that the track was 2 years old so they could have changed their style since, but I went with the track anyway.
I did a quick mix of the drums, but as it was played on a sequenced kit, the mix did not need much. I added reverb to the kit and EQ where necessary. I compressed the two kick and snare drum patched that were in the kit to tighten the sound and add some power to them. I added a parallel bus track in with a reverb unit on it set to max. This way I had the clean sound, and could mix in reverb as I felt appropriate.
I then went on to mixing the bass guitar sound.
I added some EQ to drop out the high end and used a parallel channel to add a second sound with Guitar Rig on. I panned the two bass track fully left and fully right so that the bass sound was different in each ear.
I moved on to the synth sound and simply EQd the bottom end off where the bass would be, and added some reverb to it.
Wednesday 15th February 2017
I played around with some of the guitar sounds, trying to add some Guitar Rig patched to each of the tracks. I noticed that two of the guitar tracks were simply the same thing, just panned fully left and fully right, so I panned them to accommodate, using the same processing on each. I EQd the guitars to take out some of the harsh and unwanted frequencies, leaving only the bits that sounded nice. I added a Grit effect and some slight tremolo to the second guitar tone and pushed them all through a reverb unit.
I moved onto the vocals and added some reverb. I noticed that the vocals were out of tune on some areas so added a Waves Tune plugin to pitch correct the main vocals. I duplicated this and edited it to suit each vocal track so that the vocals would sit nicely in the mix.
Saturday 18th February 2017
I did some more work on the vocals as there were a lot of vocal tracks. I started to automated the levels so that the tracks stayed the same level throughout. There was a lot of automation needed because the levels were all over the place. I got a the tracks level and then focused on trying to fix the pitch issues some more.
I then duplicated the lead vocals twice and added sample delays to them while panning them hard left and hard right to simulate triple tracking on the lead vocals. I cut out some of the vocals on these tracks so that it only came in when I wanted it to.
I added EQ to the vocals where needed and compression to fix the loud points throughout.
Thursday 23rd February 2017
I brought the track into uni with me to get some feedback form my tutor. He said the track sounded very nice but was lacking movement and needed some processing to make the track move.
I took this into consideration and decided to add a duplicate synth part, this time with a phaser added to it to add movement.
I also isolated the breakdown vocals to try and make a feature out of them. I tried many different ideas and ended up making the sound somewhat lo-fi by cutting out the low and high frequencies and leaving those only between 1-2kHz. I added a tape delay effect and some harsh vocal processing to make it really stand out using the 'Butch Vig' waves plugin.
Butch Vig vocal processing
Thursday 2nd March 2017
I brought the track back into uni after acting upon my last set of feedback and I was told that the improvements were a lot better than before and it sounds more like I polished track. The only issue was the reverb on the vocals was too small at some points and too large at other. To fix this I added two reverb units instead of one and automated them for the chorus and verse. This made the vocals sit better and feel real.
Another point I had been picked up on was the female vocal harmony towards the end being really harsh, so I added some reverb to dumb it down and wash it out a bit. I EQd some of the high end out as it was very harsh and compressed it to keep it level.
Saturday 1st April 2017
Finalised the mix and exported it ready to go through the tape machine in the studio.
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. The same thing happened with the mix for Red Hands which is unfortunate and I had run out of time to do it again.
Overall I feel the experience mixing someone else's track was strange but insightful. It is interesting to see what other people do when they make music and to see what habits they fall into. I tried not to use a reference track for this song as I wanted to see what I could come up with on my own and I'm glad I did because I feel the results are perfect. I have not yet sent the track back to my client but will be doing so soon to see what he feels about my work. When I had finished the mix I took the track into the studio to record it onto tape to get the nice warm saturation that tape produces. Every attempt at bringing the track back in to Pro Tools had someone's drums playing the background which must've already been on the tape. I tried recording over this and it stayed so unfortunately I had to scrap that idea. The recording is on this page for reference.