notesdontmatter

Audio Arts – Week 9 – “Mixing Pt 2”

Contrasting styles from one set of audio files:

I must say, I do love this kind of exercise. There is nothing like taking a little artistic licence to spice up the average pop song. To demonstrate that I’m not all about decimation I have included a ‘bare bones mix’ in which I have omitted all instruments and notes that I did not deem necessary to convey the vocal line and emotional impact of the song. This reduced the drum line to a laid-back ballad rhythm that should really contain a rim-shot instead of a snare. The bass has been reduced to mostly single sustained notes aided in their longevity by a delay line. Only one of the harmonic acoustic lines was used and the vocal reverb has been enhanced significantly.

For the ‘Hyper mix’ I upped the ante with the drum tempo, but in such a way as to let it sit under the vocals as they were in the previous mix. All this extra drum activity needed a bit of competition from the other instruments so fuzz was added to the bass for some punch, the electric guitars replaced the acoustics and were suitably smeared with some Amplitube dirt. I opted for a little crunch on the vocal line with this one as well as I think it helps it to cut through the mix.


Now for the fun part: ‘Death mix’. This one is not for the faint hearted, with double kick drumming, aggressive snare rolls, pitch shifted bass, electric guitar and vocals, over the top distortion, and a healthy dose of time stretching to tie it all together in a loose fitting minute of mayhem. I guess I wanted to give myself a challenge and see just how evil I could get with this innocent little pop tune. If anyone wants to take a guess at the time signature good luck…



Click here to link to online folder containing MP3s of all mixes.


Reference:

David Grice. “Audio Arts – Wk 9 – Mixing pt 2.” Tutorial presented at Studio 1, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 7th May 2007.

posted by David J Dowling @ 8:39 PM