19/12/2014
Here's a remix of Wheels Within Wheels by CYNIC. Some info below:
I originally mixed this song on a laptop with limited CPU power, using headphones for monitoring. To make things even worse, the drums were recorded in our rehearsal room using cheap mics on a cheap interface with only 8 inputs. That means no room mics, only 1 kick mic and 4 toms were summed to 2 channels, going through a cheap Behringer mixer. The toms were also EQed on the mixer and the overheads were slightly clipping.
I always loved this song and the performance, so I dug up the old backup drive and remixed it, using some new techniques and a lot of trick to get these crappy recordings to sound big and professional.
Here's some mix info for the nerds:
- I simulated 2 rooms out of the overhead tracks. Using both convolution and algorithmic reverbs.
- The kick and snare are layered with samples ever so slightly. I'm usually not a fan of using samples, but in this case, it was needed. Slate Trigger to the rescue!
- I cut up the toms so I could manually spread them to 4 different channels and mix them individually.
- I used tons of analog sounding plugins to get these tracks to come alive. SoundToys Decapitator, Devil-loc and all of Slate's virtual analog gear plugins. Man I love that stuff!
- Unfortunately, I didn't have the DI tracks for the guitars and bass anymore, so they're mixed as they came. Too bad, because I would have loved to re-amp the gtrs through my Axe-FX II. They were not that badly recorded though, so I managed.
- I completely got rid of Paul's vocal effects from his TC Helicon unit and redesigned all the spacious, alien robotic vocals. I also melodyned the hell out of his vocals.
- Back when I originally mixed this song, I didn't use that much automation, which resulted in very static mixes. These days, it's my best friend. Everything, from volume, panning, reverb and delay times, stereo width, and so on... it's constantly being automated to keep things breathing.
I originally mixed this song on a laptop with limited CPU power, using headphones for monitoring. To make things even worse, the drums were recorded in our r...
