3 Things I Learned From This Month’s Dueling Mixes

I’m a big lurker in the Dueling Mixes community.

I usually just grab the multi-tracks, have some fun with them, watch the videos from Joe and Graham and learn some of their secrets.

It’s such a great way to be subjected to different styles of music and it keeps you on your mixing toes.

This month’s track is a real fun folk tune that’s really up my alley. Female vocals, upright bass, B3 organ and acoustic guitars. My type of instrumentation right there.

Here’s a snippet of the chorus I’ve got so far:

Fun track right?

As I was having fun with this mix I jotted down some things that I learned that you might find useful.

1. Sometimes the Recordings Mix Themselves

After doing the levels and panning I listened back to the track and said to myself, “Now what?”

It sounded great without me doing anything to them. If I had hear the track as is on the radio I probably wouldn’t have thought it was unmixed.

It came down to the quality of the performance and the great sounding tracks. A great sounding performance beats a heavily processed mix every time.

2. Sometimes Playing Around Gets out of Hand

Plug and Mix was having a crazy deal on their plug-in bundle over at Don’t Crack that I took advantage of. They might still have it up here if you’re interested.

So I decided to use these tracks to test out some of their plug-ins.

And….I might have gone a bit overboard.

In one of the tutorial videos this month Graham goes over what he did in his mix. When he got to the shaker track he just said,

“If you’re putting plug-ins and tweaking your shaker track, move on people…it’s just a shaker.”

When I heard that I got instantly embarrassed because….I had not one, not two, but three! plug-ins on the shaker track.

But like I said, I was having fun and experimenting with all my new toys so I didn’t feel too bad about it.

But because I did think the shaker was sounding kind of different I’ll tell you what I did:

• Mid/Side Compression – I cranked the compression in the center to push the shaker to the sides more. It made the shaker sound like it was coming from nowhere in particular while still being present in the track.
• Analog modeling – This was pretty pointless to be honest but I just wanted to hear how the Plug & Mix Analouger would add some grit to the shaker. Might leave it in, might not. Haven’t decided.
• LS-Rotator – I came across this subtle leslie rotating effect that made the shaker move a little in the mix. Underneath everything the shaker sounded more fluid and gave some movement to the track.

Like I said, probably a bit overboard and Graham would probably laugh at me if he read this but it was fun. And that’s one of the things that’s so good about Dueling Mixes, the songs can be so frickin’ fun to play with.

3. Automation is Key

The vocal in this track is absolutely beautiful. It’s also very dynamic. Automating the vocals is key to making the mix sound good because otherwise the vocal might sound perfect in one part of the song but buried in others.

If it’s perfect in the verses it’ll be too loud in the chorus. And if it’s great in the choruses you’ll have to push up the phrases in the verses.

I know automation can be tedious and I tend to avoid it sometimes if I can. But whenever I take the time to really automate a mix and glue everything together I’m glad I did.

If you want to have fun with this song I recommend signing up for Dueling Mixes below:

www.audioissues.com/duelingmixes

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Music Mixing