The Stamp Mixing Session Planning and Preparation
After our successful recording session last week with The Stamp, next we are to go forward with the mixing session alongside the band to finalise the track we recorded. During the recording session we did a fresh take on their previously released track How we Livin, this was an indie rock reggae influenced track with drums, bass, acoustic guitar and electric lead. The recording process went smoothly, with first drums and acoustic setup and recorded together for the drummer's timing, with the bass in after, followed by lead guitar, acoustic re-take, backing vocals, vocal re-take and finally additional vocal harmonies. Due to the layering within the track, there was a large total of tracks ready for the mix :
- 6 outputs on the kit
- 6 on the acoustic
- 4 on the lead guitar
- 3 on the bass (1mono/1stereo)
- 5 vox
These were grouped in the session together in some preliminary mix-prep by Das, we’d also gone through and selected the best of the takes, with editing points kept in mind and marked. The preparation for the mixing session itself consisted of prepping both the DAW mixing sessions, one in Logic Pro to bring into the desk to use in the mix, and the second in Pro Tools to allow for reference against and editing before bringing the stems into the Logic Pro Session. Once there, using some of the in-built Logic Pro plugins I began a rough mix for grounding going into the mixing session on the desk.
This consisted of aux grouping so that the groups can be brought into the desk independent of their stem channels and in management stereo outputs for the final bounce. The tracks themselves did require some technical adjustments beforehand also so that the session itself can be creatively focused, there was for example mixing that needed to first be applied to bass elements like the bass guitars sub low-end which the band had emphasised they were after with the reggae influences calling for that classic round sub and solid low-end kick, which as the dry recordings were lacking needed implementing using my usual tape-delay filter and feedback tricks to reinforce areas of the frequency spectrum to the tracks. This was especially important for the kick, as it’s frequency response in the mic pickup resembled brown noise in an analyser and was imperceivable in the mix unfortunately due to the kick itself lacking a front skin (someone unknown to us had decided to take it off and lose the buckles to reattach it). We knew this would be an issue going into the mix, therefore this shaping and redefining process was an essential aspect to do preliminarily. There were also some positioning effects done to utilise the stereo rendering capability of Logic Pro to set the acoustic guitars in a wide grand arrangement, along with the vocals and kit overheads.
In the session it will be our responsibility to complete the mix with the band taking into account their vision for the track and working in an efficient and professional manner to reach that. This will include Daw operation for editing and cleaning clips, this will also require desk operation, with each channel set to come into the mix desk at each sequential and relevant channel, these will then be processed in a hybrid mix setup between the desk and daw, with the Daw primarily for tone adjustments and imaging, with the desk for final levelling, external effects processing and playback.
