Sharp Practise
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6/16/2008 11:21:36 AM
Getting Movement Into A Mix
Hi everyone,
I did promise to talk about the final choice of songs for the new record this time but I’m still working on the twelfth song and I want to talk about that in detail so I’m going to veer off slightly at a tangent and tell you about getting movement into a mix.
As you know, I’m working on a side project involving a girl singer. One of the pieces we’re working on has a synth pad and also some lovely backing vocals that echo the main melody line in places.
Synth pads – aren’t they great for solidifying a track and making it boring? Well, my approach to this problem was two-fold – (a) make sure it sits under the more rhythmic parts so that it is a colour part and not a feature i.e. make it do what it’s designed to and (b) when the rhythmic parts stop and the synth pad part emerges, ride the faders so that the pad appears to move from right to left and then back again across four bars. The easy way to do this is record the part across two tracks and then play with the levels at the appropriate moment.
As for those backing tracks, again a bit of forward planning is required but here’s my recipe. Put four tracks down, two to be mixed in different areas of left of centre, two for use right of centre – that gives a left to right movement (department of the obvious strikes again). Here’s the twist though – add different reverbs to ach of the left hand parts , and mirror this with the right hand parts, so the backing vocals also move front to back. Simple enough to plan and record, and a really good feeling of movement to add interest to your mix.
I’ll keep my promise about the choice of songs next time. Happy music making!
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