Mix One- Admiral Crumple "Keeps Flowing'

So here is a song I found on Cambridge.com titled 'Keeps Flowing' by Admiral Crumple. This amazing site allows you to download the entire stems to the track, and then open them up in your preferred DAW to hone your mixing skills. I am not quite up to chops with producing as of yet, but building my mixing experience is a must.

The original version of the track is as bare bones as it gets. The drums are weak, the vocal is not prominent in the mix, and the sample lacks tonal clarity. It sounds muffled. These are the three main elements I tackled in this mix.

After doing a rough level mix and some basic editing (removing extraneous noise from all tracks), I wanted to beef up the kick. For this process, I used a signal generator in Pro tools as a production technique.

Now the basic idea of a signal generator is to place the plug-in on a separate aux track, after which you will then place a gate and the signal activates on the strike of the kick drum, quickly turning off when it reaches the threshold. So every time your kick drum plays, this added signal will also play underneath it. This technique gives your kick drum some added low end and depth. Upon more research, I found that knowing the frequency and wavelength of a particular note can be very helpful with this technique.

On setting up the new Kick track, I applied an expander gate plugin and then set its input to the original kick track via a bus. This allows the plugin to read the signal coming through every time the kick hits. Unfortunately, I do not know the key in which this song was designed, but I found setting my signal generator to 49Hz or 'G' was a good level of low end to add to my kick. The video below is a great tutorial on this process!

Another production technique that was used in this mix is parallel compression. This helpful tool was used on both the snare drum and the vocals. Also known as 'Upward compression' or 'New York compression', basically, PC is the blending of a dry sound source with one that is a heavily compressed duplicate. The benefits of using this technique allow you to keep the dynamics of your original signal, but also give it an extra bit of body with the help of the duplicate signal. The video below is a great ' how to' on the entire process:

For the parallel compression vocal track, I used a 'balanced' vocal preset. It kept the VOX very rounded and also helped keep the high end sibilance in check. I also included a EQ3 7- Band which was given a High Pass Filter to remove some low end. I found giving the vocals a tiny nudge of 1.5dB at the 6 kHz range gave the vocal a lot more presence. Blending this with the original dry vocal made it really pop and sit more prominently in the mix.

Continuing on with the vocals as seen above, I created a stereo aux track for a reverb to be placed on the lead vocals. I then bussed the lead Vox to the newly formed reverb track. Using DVerb, I selected a medium plate verb and adjusted the wetness to suit the vocal. I didn't want the vocals to sound too spacey, so I set the decay at 808ms so it is present, but disappears quickly. I also compressed the verb track to highlight the mid range frequencies to help it sound a little different to the original vocals.

Moving on, I found that due to the sample track consisting of a synth bass line, keys and a cymbal all on the same track, it was difficult to alter one without affecting the entire sample. I bussed the sample to a stereo aux track and added a 7-band EQ. Knowing I have used a signal generator on my kick drum, creating a prominent low end thump, I could sacrifice a little bit of the low end on the sample to help make the other elements in the sample to sit forward in the mix a little more. A High pass Filter was added to do this and the MF, HMF &HF were given a gain nudge of 1.1dB each. By ear, this helped give some separation to each sound in the sample. I then played with the fader level to incorporate it into the mix:

For another production technique, I have used something called a "delay throw'. Basically, a delay throw is when you bring the signal into the mix and then back out again, taking advantage of the tails, or the repeats of the original signal.

An example of this technique is found in the song 'Autumn leaves' by Chris Brown featuring Kendrick Lamar and can be heard below-

Now for this mix in particular, I used the repeats to add excitement and urgency to the end of the song, also giving it width and some ambiance to the mix. Before finding a delay setting that would fit the track, I duplicated the backing vocal as this is the element of the track I wanted to get the delay on. This was to help re-design the arrangement. In the picture below, the purple and green tracks represent both the original backing vocals and the duplicated backing vocals. The green track was spliced to both overlap the original vocals, and to also take the originals place. This is the delayed track. So whilst most of the time the two tracks run in sync, the extra wave-forms present in the bottom track are delayed- causing the vocals to delay or repeat themselves. I set the delay time to 250ms and also decreased the wetness of the effect, so it dissipated reasonably quickly and didn't muddy up the mix too much. I think it definitely added an exciting twist to the original. This can be heard at around 1min 57 sec of the song.

Above is the final mix of the song on my SoundCloud account. As stated at the beginning of this blog, I set out to target the vocal, kick and sample of the multi track. I think the kick and sample now compliment each other far more than the dry mix. There is clear separation between the keys and the sample. I think with the help of parallel compression, the vocals have been brought forward in the mix; like a traditional hip hop song.

References-

Mottola, R. (2018). Liutaio Mottola Lutherie Information Website. [online] Liutaiomottola.com.

YouTube. (2018). How To Beef Up Your Kick Drum Using A Signal Generator | Tutorial Video. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2fyVDwePg8&t=305s

YouTube. (2018). How To Use Delay Throws On Vocals | MixBetterNow.com. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1I_1YbhLhA

YouTube. (2018). Parallel Compression - TheRecordingRevolution.com. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7rpw-8LvY8&t=292s [Accessed 26 Apr. 2018].