Week 9 Audio Arts

I still don't know how to host stuff normally but here's the link to download the mix:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/1db2a3/


For this week's task we had to mix the recording we did in class 3 weeks ago. Having gone through the drums in last week's task, this week we were left to focus on the individual instruments (bass, piano, electric guitar and saxophone). To mix it, I first made a copy of every intstrument, then muted all the copies. Then I went through the instruments one by one and mixed them with their copy as appropriate.

In the bass, I EQ'd and compressed one copy only, then mixed it with the more natural sounding original. The bass is mixed to emphasize frequencies around the 100hz mark, which means you might not get a good effect on poor headphones, but you can definately hear it on good ones, because it is the only instrument that hovers around that area. In the piano, I first copied and inverted the figure 8 (having miked it with an omni and a figure 8), then duplicated all tracks. After panning the original figure 8 hard left and right, I inverted the copies of the figure 8 and panned them a softer left and right. One omni stayed in the middle and the other was a bit to the left to compliment the guitar, which was panned to the right a little.

For the guitar, we only had 1 relatively average track, because there was so much spill. So after copying it, I EQ'd both tracks hard, to place the guitar in its own frequency range, somewhere between 1000 hz and 1500. It had a relatively narrow Q, because it made a good contrast to the other instruments, which were often EQ'd very widely. The guitar was also compressed quite a lot.

For the saxophone, we only had 1 working mic, so I again EQ'd is hard. This time, I emphasized the mid highs and highs, with a little focus on very low frequencies (200 hz and under) to keep it from sounding wussy. I panned it to the middle, and gave it enough volume to cut through everything else when it played because it was the main melodic line.

For the drums, I used one of my previous mixes, but copying the 2 overheads and messing around with their volume gave it a lot more breathing space.

Overall the mix sounds very good to me, my only problem was some slight peaking, and I will find out how to fix this next lesson (I didnt' know how to turn down the master track, or split sections so that I can turn the volume of the whole section down without ruining the mix). Sounds good to me though, every instrument comes through clearly and they all mix nicely.