Unit 48 - Brief 4 - Ready for release? Mixing and Mastering

For this unit we had to mix and master one of the projects I had already done and another song called Stick Together. For the project i had already done i chose to do my sequencing task with was Clean Bandits Rather Be.

Stick together

Rather Be

I stared with Stick together because i had listen to both songs and i felt like this one was the one that needed the most about of mixing and mastering done to it. Then i moved on to Rather be. the different mixing techniques used I did on both tracks.

I started with laying out the track of the project in groups and colour coding them. I then went through and any place in the song where there was a 5/6 bar break i would cut that out to make the tracks look more organised and so i knew where everything was. I then added some FX channels and set them as different sends so i could add EQ and inserts to all of the vocal tracks at the sam time.

Mixing

First i started with EQ and this was something that was familiar to me as i had done some stuff with EQ before. EQ stands for Equaliser and this is what balances out the sound of the different tracks you hear. EQ means you can boost or cut different frequencies of the audio, For example I chose to cut the low end frequencies of the vocals using the vocal send FX channel and i boosted the high end frequencies.

Next i added some compression to the different tracks. compression makes the different levels within a track all the same. Basically it changes the volume and flattens out the waveforms of the tracks so that there is no peeks in the tracks and it all sounds he same.

I then added reverb to the guitar send, this was to make the guitars sound like they are in a room and if you dial in the reverb it means that the guitars will sound more natural. Reverb adds a delay to the tracks and i used a guitar synth to do this effect.

Gates get rid of unwanted sound like background noise and breathing on the vocal tracks. This is something I used for the vocal tracks. This got rid of the background noise of something happening in the studio and the breathing before she started singing.

Track	Effects
Track 1 – Lead Vox
Track 2 – backing Vox 1
Track 3 – Backing Vox 2
Track 4 – Lead Guitar	VST Amp Simulator
Track 5 – Guitar Solo	VST Amp Simulator
Track 6 – Trombone	EQ, Compression
Track 7 – Trumpet	EQ, Compression
Track 8 – Cymbals	EQ, Compression
Track 9 – Hi Hat	EQ, Compression
Track 10 – Snare	EQ, Compression
Track 11 – Bass	EQ, Compression
Track 12 – Vocal Send	EQ, Compression
Track 13 – Guitar Send	EQ, Compression, Reverb

Mastering

There is 2 different ways to master a track, one way is to export the track as an audio mixdown and then re-import it into cubase as 1 track and master it from there. Another way you can do it is to add another send track that you will be mastering off. then you can link all of the track to this track and master this.

To master you would add a multiband compressor to the mastering send. this means that you can compress all of the different frequencies so you can get a really balanced sound. you would apply this the same way as you would add a normal compressor through the inserts but you would click multiband compressor.

Next you would add some EQ to the mastering track. You would do this just to get the sor of sound you are looking for. if you want a more bassy track then you would add more to the bass and if you dont vise versa.

Next you would make the levels of the mix balanced. for this all of the tracks can be turned up and down to make all of the instruments sound the same or you can boost one like the bass to make the track have a punch to it. When doing this however you need the master as close to 0dB as possible without getting any clipping to the track.