Hey! glad to be part of this month challenge, first of all I want to thank formfish for providing such a beautiful and well crafted song
, the arrengement is spot on! and the overall feel of the track is quite powerful. It was a pleasure to mix this.
Processing:
Acoustic guitar: (ReaEq) Low cut at 70hz, notch filter at 190hz, -2dB reduction on 800hz and 2dB boost at 2Khz with broad Q. (Classic compressor - Kjaerhus audio) Threshold at -18db, 2:1 ratio, soft knee, fast attack and release.
Acoustic guitar solo: (ReaEq) Low cut at 125hz, -3.7dB at 250hz, -4.6 dB at 800hz narrow Q, 2dB boost at 2Khz broad Q, notch filter at 255hz for resonant frecuency at the lower E string and -6dB at 200 hz with narrow Q. (ReaComp) Attack 12ms, release 70ms, Ratio 6:1, 4dB knee, threshold at -34 dB.
Electric guitar slide: I filtered the high frecuencies of the original track and filtered the low frecuencies of the DI version so I could pan them separately, I used Boogex (Voxengo) for the guitar cabinet on the DI track and added some chorus to it with Azurite (Distortique)
Electric guitar picked: (ReaEq) Low cut at 177hz and -3dB at 438hz. (ReaComp) attack 3ms, release 100ms, ratio 2:1, threshold at -28dB.
Electric guitar chorus: (ReaEq) low cut at 160hz and -4dB at 800hz.
Piano: (ReaEq) low cut at 98hz and -5dB at 280hz. (SL543 - SmackLabs) compressor reducing between 4dB and 6dB at loudest peaks, fast attack, medium release.
Bass: (ReaEq) -6dB at 256hz, notch filter at 358hz, notch filter at 730hz and high cut at 2Khz. (MKII Bass professor) I honestly dont understand much of how this works but I know its compressing a lot and adding some saturation, I just played with the parameters a bit and made it sound huge.
Vocals: (ReaEq) low cut at 90hz, -2dB at 460 hz. (ReaComp) attack 10ms, release 50ms, ratio 3:1, knee at 1.5dB, threshold at -27dB.
Backing vocals: For each channel (ReaComp) fastest attack 0ms, release 65ms, ratio of 3:1, knee at 3dB, threshold at -21dB. (ReaEq) low cut at 118hz, -4dB at 260hz, -7dB at 9.6Khz. Grouped the tracks into 2 busses, one for the female vocals and one for the male ones and added Ferric TDS (Variety of Sound) to glue them a bit more and add some warmth.
Shaker 1 and 2: (ReaEq) low cut at 2.8Khz. (ReaComp) attack 24ms, release 44ms, ratio of 4:1, knee at 3dB, threshold at -68dB. I edited the trakcs to be moore in time as I felt that It kinda went off too much at some points.
Tambourine: (ReaEq) low cut at 1.4Khz, notch filter at 2.4Khz, notch filter at 6.8Khz, notch filter at 8.5Khz, notch filter at 15.4Khz. this track had a lot of nasty resonances. (ReaComp) attack 3ms, release 260ms, ratio of 1.5:1, knee at 3dB, threshold at -31dB.
I grouped the shakers and tambourine tracks to a bus and added ReaVerbate: Dry at 0dB, Wet at -10.5dB, room size at 98, dampening 80, stereo width flipped, initial delay 10ms, highpass at 965hz.
Reverb and delay sends:
I made a reverb send for the main vocals, another one for the background vocals and another for the guitar trakcs. I also made a specific delay send for the electric guitar picked track.
Main vocals Reverb: (ReaComp on the way in to make the reverb less dynamic) attack 3ms, release 100ms, ratio 9:1, threshold at -52dB. (OldSkoolVerb - Voxengo) I love this reverb plugin because it has a mode editor feature that lets you tweak parameters that change how the reverb reacts to the input thus giving you the option of creating different reverb types (plates, spring, hall. etc).
Ramp type log up, Op count 21, Vol ramp 2.5, dly ramp 3.27, len ramp 2.02, cross gain -22.4. Pre delay 20.2ms, space 60, time 3700ms, width 40, damp low 50hz, damp high 3.57Khz,
Background vocals reverb: (OldSkoolVerb) OP count 41, vol ramp -2.7, delay ramp 4.54, len ramp 2.83, cross gain -30.4dB. pre delay 10ms, space 33, time 8000ms, width 50, damp low 44hz, damp high none. (ReaEq) -10dB low shelf at 246hz sharp Q, -10dB high shelf at 5.6Khz.
Guitar reverb: (epicVerb - Variety of Sound) pre delay 24ms. time 3000ms. (ReaEq) low cut at 113hz, -4.6dB at 219hz narrow Q, -3dB at 620hz +5.6 boost at 2.5Khz broad Q, -10dB high shelf at 6.3Khz.
Electric guitar picked delay: (MjRotoDelay) tempo sync on, ts echoes 6, ts beats 6, mod depth 17ms, mod rate 0.04hz, lfo shape fake sine, lfo cutoff 18hz, wet rotation 30.42deg, feedback gain -11dB, feedback center freq 3251hz, feedback Q 0.026, feedback rotation -90 deg.
Automation:
In general what i did was to automate the panning so the mix would start in mono, open up a little bit on the verse, and finally be super wide on the chorus. The piano for example begins in mono, I turned the width of the track to 0 and opened up to 100 at the chorus.
There is alot of volume automation too on the piano as I found that the dynamics of it changed a lot during the song, also on the main vocals and on the electric guitar picked track.
Finally I added Classic Master Limiter (Hjaerhus audio) to the master track with a 9dB gain as I mixed the song at really low volume and I was peaking between -11dB and -9dB at the loudest parts. At this setting the limiter is only working as a gain booster and isn´t compressing the signal.
Here are the links
WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v33a491942b2d ... x.wav?dl=0
MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pkpamgv801gux ... x.mp3?dl=0
I hope you like this! cheers and good luck to everyone
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