Hi all,
I have been feeling this one! Thanks to Edling for providing this amazing music and to Mister Fox for all his hard work as usual.
Here’s the link for my mix
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sTzsAb ... sp=sharing
I mixed this on AKG K371 headphones via the Topping DX7 Pro headphone amp.
What I set out to achieve was to get an emotional response from myself. The first word I noticed was “Cancer” which made me think of people I’ve lost. Then when I read the notes I saw that it was more about mental health, which I have had some problems with, so I was instantly connected to the song. The instruments which bring the sadness for me the most are the synths on the verse and that picked guitar line which comes and goes. Sadly with synths I often find there isn’t actually that much to do with them, but I made sure the level was nice and high to create that atmosphere, almost like there is a choir. For the picked guitar I put it one side and made a delay for the other side, fairly subtle but I wanted it to last just a tiny bit longer. The verse section I was happy with for the mood I wanted.
When the chorus hits however, I found this section of music quite congested and difficult to maintain the mood. So it changes into one of defiance, some anger and disappointment. If you are suffering with mental illness, the last thing you ever want to do is hope someone else will be of any help at all, most ‘normal’ people don’t have the strength, expertise or patience to handle it. It’s something you have to learn to fight yourself in my experience. The way out is to learn as much as you can about it and start to find the ways to gain relief, of which some aren’t so hard to find. If anyone out there is having any of these problems, feel free to message me directly as I did around 15 years of bipolar and eventually made a full recovery with no medication needed so I do have a fair amount of knowledge about it.
In terms of the music, the feeling of defiance in the face of the situation is reflected most in the driving rhythm guitars. I experimented with various ways to have them but in the end I kept it fairly simple. Firstly though I tried some parallel distortion to help to create the ‘wall of sound’. I liked it, but for me it increased the feeling of congestion in the music so I deleted that track. I also tried to double up the higher strummed electric guitar, panned it L and R and processed each differently to try to create a stereo version of it and increase the sense of width in the song, but again I thought it sounded more congested. I also tried mid-side processing on the lower rhythm guitar to get it to sound wider, but in the end I felt that the stereo image was suffering too much and I deleted that also. As a result of my refusal to make things fatter or wider, it can sound a tiny bit ‘patchy’ at times as the natural playing is felt. However this is what I like in music and this is how I like real music to be, so I decided I will let the performances do the talking. In the end, I think the defiance is felt plenty in those guitars with only the light compression that I’ve given them.
Some specific mix notes on the MixBus:
I used the God Particle, which much as I dislike the feeling of not knowing what it is doing, it just seemed to work well for this tune. I do recommend this as the number one way to choose plugins. Don’t have a ‘go-to’ plugin for anything, instead have like 4 or 5 options for everything and then just run quickly through them, because sometimes one will just stand out as the better suited for the material and if there is this situation then you must get that plugin in there asap. In other words do not spend lots of time tweaking the wrong plugin. Spend a small amount of time finding the best plugin and then you can probably get it sounding good in a smaller amount of tweaking also. After that we have the UAD Hitsville mastering EQ doing +1 on 50Hz and +1 on 12.5kHz. Then is Gulfoss doing Recover 5.4% and Tame 10.2%.
I was trying saturation on the mixbus in the form of tape emulations, “THE OVEN” and Kraftur but in the end I thought it didn’t need it. Also I had Saturation on the lead vocal which I ended up ditching as again it was sounding so congested and for me that means the frequencies are doing pretty well for their harmonic richness.
Good luck to all
A friendly reminder: