Almanac
Answer to Yourself
Brandon Tew Mixing Sessions
In our lectures over the last two weeks we have been working on two tracks by the local artist Brandon Tew, doing some mixing practice and research with Jon Withnall, Coldplay / Rihanna. In these sessions Jon has been teaching us his approach to mixing from his experience as a recording and mixing engineer, working with his skillset accumulated from years of working alongside other established pros.
Game Audio Mixing
When it came to mixing the audio tracks for this project the main focus was to blend the ambience audio with the music in such a way to seamlessly merge the two into an evolving and varyingly detailed arrangement of sound. With the music tracks consisting of multi-track instruments, I first ensured the levels between each were level and consistent throughout each of the rooms.
Gimme Shelter Recording Project - Vocal Recording
With the instrumentation done at this point there was only the vocals to record in. For this I decided to again use the Tascam desk as there would only be one input channel for the recording and the Tascams functionality would be better suited personally for the session.
Tascam DM3200 - Mixing Consoles / Studio Signal Flow
The Tascam desk is a 32-track digital mixing console which we have the option of using within this module for recording and mixing during our recording assignment. Operating this desk requires the following workflow to get signal in, out, recorded and monitoring.
Audient ASP4816 - Mixing Consoles / Studio Signal Flow
During our lectures this first week we have looked at the signal flow of the Audient and Tascam studios on campus, creating signal flow diagrams and carrying out practicals to utilise this. The two studios we have been introduced to are prime examples of professional modern studio environments, each fitted with a mixing console - (Tascam DM3200 digital desk / Audient ASP4816 analogue desk)
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.
Applied Aesthetics In A Mixing Context
Over this last month I have worked on a 3-track project with an artist which has been aesthetically focussed to fit an outsider, somewhat low-fidelity and down beat sound. Using inspirations of the audio qualities of released records by artists such as Daniel Johnston and Jeffery Lewis, we aimed for a dark and moody style with the tracks to bring together the melancholic lyrics / vocals with the disenent guitar falling in and out of melody, calamity / rhythm in a overall disassociating atmosphere, which I emphasised in the mixing stage to enhance the audio quality from its original recording files.
Mixing Consoles - Signal Flow
Signal flow is the work of routing the audio signal from it’s source to destination, whether this be from a mic to an amp (macro), guitar to a mixer (macro), or daw output to headphones (micro). Any aspect of audio production where sound travels requires the signal to flow to it’s required destination comes under the topic, and this is differentiated by referring to either macro or micro signal flows depending on its scale, and they are typically charted with a signal flow diagram.