Gimme Shelter - Mixing
When approaching the mixing stage of my production of Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones I wanted to capture the same energetic and big sound of the original within my own. During the recording stages I had familiarized myself with the deconstructed audio tracks of the original so that whilst we tracked instrumentation such as the guitars, I could refer back to the original tone to compare against what I was getting from the instrumentation in our own version. I did not aim to create a sonic duplication of the original, but taking strong inspiration and working in some of my own taste to the mixing process I believed was the best approach and I am happy with the result.
The drive within the original I found came from a mixture between the drums and the overdriven guitars, with the bass gluing the mix and acting as the foundation for the relatively thin guitars to sit on. This I kept in mind during the mixing process of my version, with the lead guitars pushed wide to the side to make space for the overdriven rhythm which sat in a narrower stereo field along with a saturated piano line to add in some more harmonics and punch subtly to the tracks sonic bed.
With the vocals of the original being authentic classic rock n roll styled, with abit of grit not too focused on absolute clarity and instead more drive focused again, I decided on working in that direction also by adding some subtle saturated distortion and compression to the vocals, and pushed them into the mix in such a way to emphasis the loudness in the track, with the belting sections slightly fighting (suitably to the mood of the track) the added in high frequency distortion on these sections helped them stay present and near subtly while still washed with reverb to create the distant-belting over the instrumentation- sound that I was looking for.
I added some subtle overdrive also to the bass guitar so that it also fit with the aesthetic I was aiming for with the track, and matched the kit with some new york style compression and punch.
