Dark Roots Part 2 - The Mix
Dark Roots - The Mix
In this blog post, I will talk about some of the mixing decisions I made to my track Dark Roots, which you can listen to below. I won't talk about every little detail and parameter change but if you have any more questions or hear anything and you're wondering 'What the heck is that sound?', then you can always drop a comment below and I'll get back to you.
Let's get into it then! As you might remember from reading the last post, I used a reverb to help place the choirs in the 'proper' place, generally speaking, at the back of the proverbial hall.
The image above is a Quantum Leaps (not to be confused with the awesome TV show) Spaces Reverb plugin. On the left, we have the dry signal, which is how much of the choirs music I have routed in to the plugin. On the right, is the wet signal, which is how much of the signal is made dripping wet full of reverb. There a bunch of other features but for now, they're not important. The bit in the middle however, is the display that gives all the juicy details about the Reverb length and type. The LA Cathedral reverb is a beautiful reverb and I like using it on most of my mixes at the minute.
Adding Reverb to the Strings
In this template, the way I had things set up where all of the strings were routed to the same bus with a reverb plugin on it. Soon, I'll be updating my template to work more effectively but all that is for a future blog post.
If you look at the buses (B21, image below) you can see that the string section has the same amount of reverb applied to it as a whole. The basses generally have a little bit more, because they're typically situated a little behind the Celli.
There is a key reason that i route the strings through to a single reverb unit on a bus labeled Strings Verb (short for reverb). CPU. My MacBook is great and everything, but I already run into enough issues when running these large templates with almost 100+ instrument plugins, without adding a VERY CPU intensive reverb to every single track. So whats the old adage? Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Very relevant here.
The Synth Volume Balance
Looking at the image below, you can see how I adjusted the volumes for all of the elements in the synth mix. The way I had this set up going, was that each section of my template, Brass, Winds, Percussion, Synths, to name a few, goes to sub mix before going to the master (main) output. This way I can control sections and manage them, adjust effects plugins, reverb, volume, before bringing every section together to try and form a cohesive big epic sound.
Some of the synths in this track, from a default plugin perspective, are much larger and grand than some of the others. Some synths that I programmed in are also louder due to the parts I made them play.
It would be very easy to let the synths be loud as they generally sound awesome on their own (thinking about Tron Legacy, the new Thor Ragnarok score and Stranger Things, to name a few) but the synths are just one element out of a whole orchestra (with extras) so they need to be adjusted properly.
Playback Stems
Before I explain what I did in the images below, I'll explain what playback stems are because I know some of my audience won't know. Creating a stem is a process designed to reduce CPU load, consolidate all the musical and sub-mix decisions in to a single audio file for mixing and later, mastering. Clients and producers, mix engineers and mastering engineers, generally work from the stems as they're supposed to be clean, uniform concise versions of aspects of the track.
In this template (again see future post when I talk about the new template I am currently developing) I had 5 stems. These were:
- Stem A - Winds
- Stem B - Brass
- Stem C - Strings
- Stem D - Perc (Percussion)
- Stem E - Misc
So naturally, the strings stem, when 'printed' has all of the string information, long strings, short strings, everything, consolidated on to one audio track. There is some fairly clever routing that is a little a complicated to explain to the non-music engineer but for now, suffice it to say, I have 5 Playback Stems, routed to the master output now. I can then go through and freeze every MIDI track (Software Instrument track in Logic, if we're being technical) and then 'Turn Off' the tracks, to dramatically reduce CPU load and leave my DAW and MacBook to only deal with the Playback Stems and whatever plugins I put on the audio tracks that the Playback Stems are using.
N.B Just a note, the Playback Stems are called Playback Stems, because they are deisgned for playback purposes only. When I take these stems to a new project for the sole purpose of mixing them together and mastering, they're generally referred to as Mix Stems.
When I eventually get to the Mastering Blog Post, I'll need a single mix stem, so I will print all the five stems discussed previously, into a single stem so I can use mastering purposes.
N.B Printing is referring to the way I create the audio tracks called Stems. There are a number of ways to do this but in this instance, I create an Audio track, set the input for the track as the sub-mix bus or buses for the sections of the orchestra I want to 'print' and set the track to record the whole song. This turns tens, possibly dozens of software instrument tracks into a single audio track. Way more manageable.
The below image is a graphic Equalizer, specifically the Channel EQ from Logic Pro. Really useful EQ has a graphic analyzer and everything.
So all I did here really, is rolled off some of the low ends, which means to reduce some of the very low sub-bass rumblings that builds up from a lot of basses and mid heavy instrumentation and boosted some of the higher frequencies, with a gentle slope. This just adds a little shine and sparkle to the track.
Nothing too complicated but honestly, mixing is a whole art in of itself and I am working my ass off to improve my mixing skills.
So that is it for the mixing process on this track. Remember, I wrote this track nearly a year ago and a lot of my processes and skills when writing this have (hopefully) improved somewhat and that will be evident in songs to come.
As ever, if you have any thoughts, suggestions or comments, please drop them below and I will get back to you ASAP. Please share this post and let your friends know. Any of you have any musically minded friends, please share it with those especially.
But that is it from me for now, thank you for reading this and listening to my music.
See you in the next one!