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catsittingstillSo, I'm guessing mixing (recording-type mixing) is probably different things for different people. Probably lots of people are much better musicians than I am and they play their rhythm guitar part and maybe they have to try a couple of times, but they get one with no mistakes in it. No wrong chords, but also no buzzes and no places where one of the strums in their strum pattern didn't happen, or whatever.
That's not how it works for me. It's generally not worth trying more than three times, though if I really crash and burn I delete that take and do another. (And if I'm *really* crashing and burning I give up and put that song off to the next recording session after more practice.) I do two (if things are going well) or three (if I feel insecure) vocal takes also. Or sometimes more than that.
Then for mixing I start with the rhythm track. I listen through it for a bit, trying to get a sense of which take worked best--had the best tone and the fewest mistakes and the most consistent loudness. Then I take that track and work through it measure by measure marking every measure where I had a buzz or where the strum pattern isn't right. Usually I put in markers at the start of each verse and chorus to help orient myself. Then where I had a bad chord, I find a good one of the same type, either in another take at that same point or at a different point in the song. I cut the good one free of the rest of the track, copy it, cut the bad one free of the rest of the track, delete it, replace it with the good one, stretching or squishing to fit as necessary. (I can vary by up to 5% in speed, even within a single line of a song, I notice.) Sometimes I have to make the inserted chord louder or softer by a couple of dB to make it sound about as loud as the music around it. I play through it to make sure I haven't manufactured any clicks or weird bits (which you can do by joining things poorly, for instance.) Then I delete the marker for that mistake and go to the next. If I have a good Dm chord on the clipboard I try to fix all the bad Dms before I move on to the next chord; this is quicker than having to hunt around for another good Dm every time. When all the markers for bad chords are gone, I'm done with that.
When I have the rhythm track pasted together (this took me 2 hours for a five minute song today) I go through the vocals. I listen for confident starts, good tone and rhythm and notes that hold steady on the correct pitch rather than sliding through it. I try to pick the best take and fix that, but often find myself starting with take 3 and switching to take 2 somewhere in the middle and doing multiple patches of individual words and phrases.
When I have the vocal track patched together (which took me another 2 hours or so), I go through it with the tuner, looking at the visual representations of every syllable, and fixing the things that went off pitch by hand. There is something called autotune that would be much quicker but either Reaper's is unusually bad or I just hate them in general; I have enough vibrato that it doesn't hold a "single note" all to one pitch but jumps back and forth between two or three which just sounds completely unacceptable. Fixing these things by hand can be a slow business as I need a smidge of silence at the beginning and end of something whose pitch I want to change. It doesn't take much; 5 ms will do, but if I don't have it, there will be a clicking sound where the pitch changed. There are ways around that, but they are time consuming and sometimes sound funny. I don't like to change the pitch more than 2/10ths of a semitone, because it comes out sounding ever so slightly hollow when I do, but sometimes I have no choice if I want it in tune, so I tell myself no one will notice when the reverb is on. Also if I slid through a pitch I can change the location of the slide, but I can't make it a level pitch.
Once I have the vocals as in tune as I can get them, it is time to line up the vocals and the instrumentals. In this process I also set preliminary levels for each so that neither drowns out the other. Now I record them either by singing along with a scratch track of me doing both together, or by playing to a metronome and then singing to instrument + metronome. If I have the metronome it gives me a very definite beat to align to; that is easy. If I don't, I try to leave the vocals alone, because making bits play slower or faster makes them sound a bit funny to my ear (see above about hollow), and while the same difference probably results from scootching the octave mandolin part, I just can't hear that as well, so I don't mind it as much. So I try to align the rhythm octave mandolin to the vocals, and scootch the vocals around only if their rhythm sounds funny, and then as modestly as possible. This can easily take another hour or two. I am 1/3 of the way through that five minute song.
When I have that done, I will go through the vocals and reduce the volume of every breath by about 2 dB, so the breaths won't be so in your face and gaspy. People say you can use an "expander" to do this automatically, but I tried it once and couldn't find the magic setting that would reduce the volume of the loudest breaths but leave the quietest syllables and consonants alone. So I do it by hand and it takes another half hour or so. But it doesn't require any agonizing decisions; it is easy to tell what is a breath and what is not; they have a distinctive shape and scribbliness to them in the wave form.
I have a standard set of effects that goes on everything; the compressor is a given and I have presets for voice and strummed octave mandolin, though there's one major setting that is a bit different for every track. The EQ likewise; there is one plug-in I use on everything and I have presets for vocals and different instruments left over from the last album so that is easy. The major aim is to reduce any boominess and make the distinctive "voices" of instruments clear from each other and the vocalist. Reverb likewise, though I don't add that until I have done all the detail work. Reverb alters the relative levels, though, so that means adjusting the loudness of voice versus instrument again, and then adjusting the loudness of the whole to peak at -3 dB.
And that's my first pass. My next pass will involve riding the levels on the vocals much more attentively, bringing up the volumes of the soft parts so all the lyrics can be heard, and reducing the volume on the loudest parts--not so much as to make them passionless but enough that I can raise the volume of the whole song a touch. In some places I will back the instrumental off so the soft parts can be heard better also. The reverb also makes the esses a lot louder so I often end up adding a de-esser. But that comes later.
So perhaps it is no wonder that mixing a short easy song can take four hours and mixing a longer more challenging one twelve. But this is why I am concerned that "October" may not be time enough. Especially since I also want to write and record harmonies, which takes time, and will produce more tracks that have to be mixed.
Whuf. Probably if I were a better musician, this would go quicker.
That's not how it works for me. It's generally not worth trying more than three times, though if I really crash and burn I delete that take and do another. (And if I'm *really* crashing and burning I give up and put that song off to the next recording session after more practice.) I do two (if things are going well) or three (if I feel insecure) vocal takes also. Or sometimes more than that.
Then for mixing I start with the rhythm track. I listen through it for a bit, trying to get a sense of which take worked best--had the best tone and the fewest mistakes and the most consistent loudness. Then I take that track and work through it measure by measure marking every measure where I had a buzz or where the strum pattern isn't right. Usually I put in markers at the start of each verse and chorus to help orient myself. Then where I had a bad chord, I find a good one of the same type, either in another take at that same point or at a different point in the song. I cut the good one free of the rest of the track, copy it, cut the bad one free of the rest of the track, delete it, replace it with the good one, stretching or squishing to fit as necessary. (I can vary by up to 5% in speed, even within a single line of a song, I notice.) Sometimes I have to make the inserted chord louder or softer by a couple of dB to make it sound about as loud as the music around it. I play through it to make sure I haven't manufactured any clicks or weird bits (which you can do by joining things poorly, for instance.) Then I delete the marker for that mistake and go to the next. If I have a good Dm chord on the clipboard I try to fix all the bad Dms before I move on to the next chord; this is quicker than having to hunt around for another good Dm every time. When all the markers for bad chords are gone, I'm done with that.
When I have the rhythm track pasted together (this took me 2 hours for a five minute song today) I go through the vocals. I listen for confident starts, good tone and rhythm and notes that hold steady on the correct pitch rather than sliding through it. I try to pick the best take and fix that, but often find myself starting with take 3 and switching to take 2 somewhere in the middle and doing multiple patches of individual words and phrases.
When I have the vocal track patched together (which took me another 2 hours or so), I go through it with the tuner, looking at the visual representations of every syllable, and fixing the things that went off pitch by hand. There is something called autotune that would be much quicker but either Reaper's is unusually bad or I just hate them in general; I have enough vibrato that it doesn't hold a "single note" all to one pitch but jumps back and forth between two or three which just sounds completely unacceptable. Fixing these things by hand can be a slow business as I need a smidge of silence at the beginning and end of something whose pitch I want to change. It doesn't take much; 5 ms will do, but if I don't have it, there will be a clicking sound where the pitch changed. There are ways around that, but they are time consuming and sometimes sound funny. I don't like to change the pitch more than 2/10ths of a semitone, because it comes out sounding ever so slightly hollow when I do, but sometimes I have no choice if I want it in tune, so I tell myself no one will notice when the reverb is on. Also if I slid through a pitch I can change the location of the slide, but I can't make it a level pitch.
Once I have the vocals as in tune as I can get them, it is time to line up the vocals and the instrumentals. In this process I also set preliminary levels for each so that neither drowns out the other. Now I record them either by singing along with a scratch track of me doing both together, or by playing to a metronome and then singing to instrument + metronome. If I have the metronome it gives me a very definite beat to align to; that is easy. If I don't, I try to leave the vocals alone, because making bits play slower or faster makes them sound a bit funny to my ear (see above about hollow), and while the same difference probably results from scootching the octave mandolin part, I just can't hear that as well, so I don't mind it as much. So I try to align the rhythm octave mandolin to the vocals, and scootch the vocals around only if their rhythm sounds funny, and then as modestly as possible. This can easily take another hour or two. I am 1/3 of the way through that five minute song.
When I have that done, I will go through the vocals and reduce the volume of every breath by about 2 dB, so the breaths won't be so in your face and gaspy. People say you can use an "expander" to do this automatically, but I tried it once and couldn't find the magic setting that would reduce the volume of the loudest breaths but leave the quietest syllables and consonants alone. So I do it by hand and it takes another half hour or so. But it doesn't require any agonizing decisions; it is easy to tell what is a breath and what is not; they have a distinctive shape and scribbliness to them in the wave form.
I have a standard set of effects that goes on everything; the compressor is a given and I have presets for voice and strummed octave mandolin, though there's one major setting that is a bit different for every track. The EQ likewise; there is one plug-in I use on everything and I have presets for vocals and different instruments left over from the last album so that is easy. The major aim is to reduce any boominess and make the distinctive "voices" of instruments clear from each other and the vocalist. Reverb likewise, though I don't add that until I have done all the detail work. Reverb alters the relative levels, though, so that means adjusting the loudness of voice versus instrument again, and then adjusting the loudness of the whole to peak at -3 dB.
And that's my first pass. My next pass will involve riding the levels on the vocals much more attentively, bringing up the volumes of the soft parts so all the lyrics can be heard, and reducing the volume on the loudest parts--not so much as to make them passionless but enough that I can raise the volume of the whole song a touch. In some places I will back the instrumental off so the soft parts can be heard better also. The reverb also makes the esses a lot louder so I often end up adding a de-esser. But that comes later.
So perhaps it is no wonder that mixing a short easy song can take four hours and mixing a longer more challenging one twelve. But this is why I am concerned that "October" may not be time enough. Especially since I also want to write and record harmonies, which takes time, and will produce more tracks that have to be mixed.
Whuf. Probably if I were a better musician, this would go quicker.
