Empty

Empty

Date: January 2022
Band: Direct Line
Style: Rock Ballad
Tempo: 97

This mix was an obligatory assignment from Sound Education Nederland.

Lyrics

Not available

Mixing and Mastering

Mixing and pre-mastering (loudness normalization and meta-data) was done in Cubase Pro 11 and WaveLab Pro 11by Antoine van Kampen using plugins from mainly Waves, SoundToys, and Fabfilter. 

Mix choices and evaluation

Concept

• Describe what the mix should radiate. This song is a rock ballad and I tried to keep a certain level of itimacy by trying to avoid too much emphasis on the heavy distored guitars in the second part of the song but without become too weak.
• Which atmosphere do you want to evoke? Guitar song with a prominent flavor of strings.
• What style(s) is the music related to?  Rock ballad
• Is there a specific theme that the music is about? No
• What are the strong parts / properties in the music and recording? I like to clean guitar in the part until the moment where the drums kick in. The string parts add a nice dimension to to song that I wanted to have clearly audible in the mix.
• What are the weak spots in the music and recording? The clean guitar becomes too ‘heavy’ several times once the heavy guitars start playing; probably, in an attempt to add more power too the song, but for me this doesn’t work. The middle part (without the vocals) is weak in general: too many repetitions of the same phrase without too much happening. Recording is ok but it seems that the kick and snare are samples and not recordings.

Performance

• Describe and justify your main balance choices. I first aimed too minimize the role of the role of the power guitars in favor of the strings and the clean guitar. This didn’t work out since the power guitars play a too important role in the song, and because the clean guitar becomes less interesting after the intro and first verse. However, I removed part of the guitar tracks (e.g., the harmonic guitars and some double tracks) to prevent to guitars becoming too overwelhming, and to allow a more prominent place for the strings. I also aimed for a strong and upfront position of the backing vocals.
• Describe and justify your main placement choices. 
  • Drum, bass, and clean guitar were all at the center.
  • Strings were panned to the left and right, and moved to the back with reverb.
  • Lead vocal in the center. Background vocals were mostly panned to left (some panning is automated).
  • The power guitars (3 tracks) were panned to left, center, and right, but with lower volume in the center. Some delay was added to move them to the back. 
  • Guitar riffs were mainly panned to the right to opposite the background vocals.  
• Describe and justify your main sound choices (audible EQ, compression, effects). 
  • Lead vocal: only little reverb to make it upfront. I used several compressors to keep the dynamics in check but also to make the vocals more full. I have hesitated whether or not to give the vocals some more air or to leave it as. I finally decided to boost at 5kHz as this sounded best to my ears.
  • Background vocals: compression and some reverb
  • Drums: I suspect that the kick and snare are samples that have replaced the original recordings. I didn’t do much to them but only removed quite a bit of the high end of the snare (perhaps not enough?). EQ on the kick to add punch. Some reverb on the snare, toms, and hihat. Parallel compression on the complete drum kit.
  • Bass: this was the difficult part. The dynamics was large resulting in soft notes disappearing in the mix. In addition, it was not really a well-defined bass part. It lack transients. I tried several things (Waves Bass rider, different types of compression) but at the end settled for a combination of high level (i.e., normal) compression and upward compression of the soft notes.
  • Clean guitar: only little reverb since it already sounded like reverb was added. I removed a resonance with the EQ and have cut-off large part of the lower frequencies since it interfered too much with other instruments in the mix.
  • Power guitars: little bit of delay to push in back in the mix. High/low pass-filtering and cutting around 2500Hz to give it a place in the mix.
  • Strings: I added reverb to push them back in the mix. I did EQ to emphasize the higher frequencies to allow them to cut through the mix and did some high-pass filtering. On the strings I did quite some volume automation to ensure it kept a prominant role in the mix. I tried to add some chorus (and other effects) to the strings to make them more smooth but to my ears this didn’t result in an improvement.
  • In addition to the choices above there are many other details like volume automation, and automation of effects.

Reflection

• What went well? I am happy with the final role of the strings in the mix while keeping also a prominant place of the heavy guitars. During the mixing I didn’t listen to the original Spotify mix but comparing both once my mix was done, I like my mix better (that is, of course,  subjective and, yes, I am biased). There is something in the Spotify mix that I don’t like but cannot really put my finger on. However, in the Spotify mix, the spatial effect on the clear guitar sounds great and the drums/bass are powerfull. I could have done a little bit better on that account.
• What went less? I tried to to something special with the middle part (no vocals) of the song since I think this was too long without any interesting happing. I tried to edit-in a drum break while at the same time cutting back the guitars, but that didn’t really work. The song collapsed. However, you can hear some remains of this attempt that I decided to leave in the mix. You hear two snare beats with a somewhat higher volume and a gated reverb, some kick beats removed in between and some with increased volume, the bass and strings turned up a few db. In the end it does not add that much I think. If I would have to do it again, I might try removing all guitars in the middle part except the clean guitar but add some effects (chorus, ….) on it. Anyway, more an arrangement problem then a mix problem. 

     Final mix

Original mix from Direct Line on  Spotify 

The final mix I made:

The final mix after feedback from Björn Warning (Warning Studios, the Netherlands) and others

  Feedback 

From Sound Education Nederland (door Björn Warning, Warning Studios)

Empty (Direct Line) - Mix feedback (pdf)

1 file(s) 409.85 KB

Download

From Crowd Reviews of Reverbnation:

Empty (Direct Line) - Crowd Review (Reverbnation) (pdf)

1 file(s) 172.96 KB

Download

  Audio tracks and Cubase project

I cannot providee the original files nor Cubase project since I don’t own the copyright of this song

Final mix: Loudness (normalized) ~-15.00 LUFS; Peaks ~-4dB; True Peaks: ~-3.9dBTP

     License

The copyright of this song is with Direct Line. 

     Software

• Cubase (Steinberg)
• Wavelab (Steinberg)