Mix Breakdown of APOLLO

I tried for so long setting up my computer for screen recording to record a mixdown vlog for this track but when I came to recording it the words just wouldn’t come out! I find it really hard to speak when there’s no audience and I’m just talking to myself on my computer so I decided it would be much better for me to write about my mixdown rather than talk and post some weird video where it cuts every second word to a new clip.

As a side note, the way I do mixing with in the box productions is quiet a particular workflow that might need a small explanation.

Basically once I’ve decided that I’ve done everything I’ve wanted do in terms of the compositional stages and picking the right sounds together, I decided to bounce these into Audio stems and mix them in a completely different session, not only so that my computer doesn’t crash from the amount of plugins running at one time - but it also allows me to have a new perspective on the mix as I’m looking at it from a purely audio stance rather than being able to manipulate MIDI data etc.

That being said, a couple of mixing processes are applied to the unmixed version as sometimes I’ll need to use an EQ or something to craft a sound and get an idea of if the sound itself is right, and these get bounced within the stems too. An Example of this is in the Mix session of the track we can’t actually see any usage of amp simulators like Guitar Rig as these would have been used in the production stage, so I treat the audio stem as if it were a sound that had been recorded that way.

Without Further Ado here’s a breakdown of the mix of APOLLO

My mixes are kind of known to be very over the top with the way that I do things, for instance their usually very bright and tend to have things like huge sidechain compression that allow the drums to punch through. Though I like doing this for most tracks (and this track likely shares a bit of these qualities still), I really wanted to observe it from a genre perspective and try to think what is the most appropriate processing techniques on this track.

Let’s start with the drums which is where (in terms of recording) most of my work went into for this project. In the actual mix session itself, after the processing had been placed on the kick and snare (the same processing that I mentioned in my previous blog) not much else really had to be done to them to make them fit with the rest of the mix except for some EQ and level changes. In terms of processing each instrument not much is really being done on the rest of the elements besides high pass filters that I use to remove unwanted low end. As this was a track that is a combination of acoustic and digital elements, I did some variation on the volume of the drums to give them a bit more of a groove so they didn’t sound so static and robotic. The last major thing that I’ve never really used in my productions before was the use of Parallel compression by using Ableton’s “Glue Compressor” plugin by using it by having the Dry / Wet at 50%. I originally went for the glue compressor because I had read previously that it’s called the Glue Compressor due to the way it helps glue sounds together when applied on a group or master bus. I’ve never really understood what the glue compressor does or how it works so I actually decided to look into this and found a great video explaining what it actually does:

("Ableton Compressors EXPLAINED : Glue vs Native - What is Glue Compression?", 2017)

Basically Ableton uses this tool to be used on these busses and it actually adds a slight colouration to emulate what can be heard in Analogue Studio Desks. When this colouration is applied on a group in combination with the compression it allows for all of the sounds in the group to be more cohesive.

I used the glue compressor on the drums to make them sound more cohesive especially considering there are acoustic and digital samples working together. I wanted the drums to have some element of realism still there so I tried this effect in combination with the changing velocities of drums to help re establish some of the live sound.

The next thing where probably most of the time in mixing went into was in the guitar sections. I recognised these as a huge part of the song before I started mixing so I made sure to allocate more time for them as I knew it would be important that they sound the best that I can make them. I haven’t dealt with guitars in this kind of setting(where they are a main component) for a while in a project So I tried to look at them in a new perspective instead of going about mixing them like I would any other sound. I usually opt for the standard EQ Eight plugin (for those who aren’t familiar with Ableton this is basically Ableton’s standard Parametric EQ) when EQing sounds due to it being easy and efficient to do for my workflow, however it can be quite noticeable when making boosts or cuts and it’s really easy to change the overall sound with it. This is great for most things that but I wanted to look at these guitars in a different done and try to be more subtle with my processing. I instead went to use the Fabfilter Pro-Q as I’ve used this plugin in the past and I find that this is really good for picking out more intricate details, and it seems as though it cuts and boosts frequencies in a way that’s not really destructive of the original guitar tone but rather just lets it fit in the mix better. I’ve used this on all of the guitars elements on the track.

The main guitar riff of the track is separated into 3 layers, the main and most prominent one, a slightly more distorted (and more mid range) layer of this, and one that I have named the “Screamer Guitar” which is a very high end, distorted screeching rock guitar. I EQ’d these accordingly depending on what frequencies they fit better in, so that they complement one another holistically. To do this I had reinforced where they are are sitting mostly on the EQ, so for instance I accentuated the high frequencies in the screamer guitar and took out some of the mids so that the other guitars blended in well together. All of these guitars have some type of delay effect on them too which also helps them be in the mix without being too overpowering. I’ve actually used the E-Kramer Guitars Plugin on the Screamer Guitar, this plugin generates quite a bit of noise, however I felt that this was fitting for the guitar sound and could add some nice fuzz to my guitar tones, coming from producing mostly clean, perfect pop music this is something I’d get rid of but this time I found it fitting considering the genre and references.

There is another guitar in this category that is actually very different then the rest, which is a chorus heavy sounding guitar that’s playing a different melody than the others. I wanted this to stand out in the mix on top of the other guitars so I placed an S1 Stereo Imager plugin on it which allowed me to really widen the sound in the stereo field as the others are more centrally focussed. The S1 Stereo Imager is used quite a bit in this track as well with panning as I’m reflecting on feedback that my mixes are too static mono sounding.

The ambient section of the track was a challenging combination to mix on top of this as the two sections are so different from one another. The way I blended the two sections is by using a low pass filter that sweeps around and a ping pong delay. This section uses a lot of automation because like many ambient tracks are, I needed it to flow smoothly and be gradual.

There are many layers in this section that make up the sound and it was a challenge to mix the two sections on totally different perspectives, but there is nothing particularly worth noting as most of the processes in this section are all things that have been normal in my practice.

One thing that I tried that was really new in this section was an effect that I’ve never really used before on one of the arpeggiators called Grain Delay, I was watching a video on some ways to use grain delay for “Dreamy” sounds and decided to try this out and I ended up using it for one of my layers to give that extra depth. I’ll link the video below here:

("Making Sounds Dreamy with Ableton's Grain Delay", 2019)

Yes the youtube channel is a bit weird but the actual content that he speaks about it actually surprisingly valuable information.

So that’s about it mixdown blog in terms of things that I did more differently than usual. I am really happy with how the overall mix turned out but If I had more time on It I’d like to spend time listening to it on as many monitors as I can and tweaking different parameters. It would also have been interesting to ad some more analogue warmth to the track as this is something I’ve never really done before and I think that it would be fitting for the live elements. I’d be interested in applying some of the new techniques that I’ve used into the mixes for my future productions.

Thanks for reading!

References:

Ableton Compressors EXPLAINED : Glue vs Native - What is Glue Compression?. (2017). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/nBUTma3uIEo

Making Sounds Dreamy with Ableton's Grain Delay. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Noouom1jrSY&