Monday 13 June 2016

Mix hour #5


The final mix didn't quite go to plan, as when I uploaded the mix to Soundcloud it was immediately taken down for copyright protection purposes. If interested in what I mixed, the track was Bannockburn by Cnoc Un Tursa
Instead of spend ages describing the mix process, without a reference track, i'll skip it and conclude the experiment.

Conclusion

It was a greatly revealing challenge, which highlighted the most time consuming elements of a mix and also showed what parts I was a bit slow at completing.
Mixing drums seemed to consistently be a long part of the mix, taking roughly half an hour in every mix. This wasn't a surprise to me as previously drum mixing has never been a quick process.
One of the most revealing things was genres, and how mixing techniques can vary so vastly between some. The second mix was the prime example of this, showing how an electronically produced track barely cried for any EQing, compression or even time based FX. They could have been added, however it was far from a disaster leaving the tracks bare. My use of panning was interesting, while I had very little time, I still created a fair bit of interest in the track, making up for using compression and EQs to give tracks contrast.
In terms of FX usage, while it didn't show that adding reverb and delay to tracks was a hugely time consuming task, but it did demonstrate that rushing FX is never a good idea, proven by the very mismatched reverb present on various parts of the third mix.

Time wise, it certainly showed that while one can get a very basic mix completed within an hour, if the aim is to have a create a reasonable product that can be taken away after one hour, you should probably focus on mixing the elements of the recording, then add some time based FX, and only apply EQ or compression if you have a lot of time or if a track is in major need of fixing.

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