Major Project Write Up

This song was pretty fun to mix in surround sound. Going from the whole sound of surround sound, to stereo wasn't fun. Stereo didn't have the width and color that surround, but it again wasn't too bad to mix. 

It actually took some time to just set up all the sub mixes and do all the busses in surround, just because there were so many tracks, and they each were not really named so I had to go back and name them all, bus them, color them accordingly. It was a necessary evil though, it helped bunches with the organization of the session. After I got that done, the mixing wasn't too hard either. 

I started mixing the surround first. It seemed that the stereo would be easier because its only two speakers, and surround was five. I started out fixing the vocals, doing a lot of doubling and adding compressors to make the vocals stand out and have a much warmer quality to them. I did the same to the backing vocals. I panned the backing vocals more towards the back and wanted to only have them back there, but it seemed too distant from the rest of the song, so I pushed them more toward the middle of both front and back speakers. It worked out nicely. As for the stereo mixing of the vocals, I just had to adjust levels really and panning a little.

With the main vocals, I ran one of the tracks through the T.C effects processor and used a lot of reverb to give it more body. I took that signal, pushed it to the back speakers and buried the vocals. As for the stereo, I just buried them behind everything. 

The kick had a few tracks on it but still it didn't seem to really pop the way I wanted it to. I put one of the tracks through the API compressor and buried that signal under the other kick tracks. It really add more punch and a little more defined low end to the kick that I thought it was missing. I did the same thing with the bass. It was a very muddy, flimsy bass sound. I, at first, wanted to just bury it under everything, but I put the signal through the compressor and used the compressed track over the original. It gave the bass more body and more punch. 

I used the song “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker as my influence. In that song he uses a lot of traditional country instruments and sounds, along with more contemporary instruments and sounds. The song I mixed has the same sort of mix between contemporary and traditional use of music and instruments that I couldn't really find anywhere else. The song also had a very warm welcoming tone to it just like what I wanted to portray as many songs in the country genre have.

One of the major differences in-between my mixes is that one is in stereo and one is in 5.1 surround sound. In the 5.1 versions though, I have a few different versions. As I was bouncing the song, I would hear something that didn't sit right with me in the mix, either the vocals were too loud, or not sitting right in the mix the way I wanted. It wasn't much anything that had to do with the instruments too much. It was really a lot to do with the panning and volume of the vocals. 

Then when I switched to the stereo mix, it was more of just volume automation. The backing vocals really gave me a hard time. At some points of the song they were too loud, the others too soft. So it took more time to even that out but once I got that done it was just listening to see if everything was sitting right. I did side chain the instruments to the vocal sub so the vocals could sit more evenly in the mix rather than on top of everything. I also had to almost mute the outboard reverb because there is so much of it in the stereo mix. It was easier to bury them in the surround mix. 

I think both mixes came out extremely well and I would want another chance to mix in surround again. The possibilities are endless to what I could do with panning and effects. I liked mixing this song very much it was very fun and frustrating at the same time, but I think all my hard work did pay off end the end.