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How I've grown as a mixer in 8 months

For my recent Mixing Masterclass event I remixed a song I did for the band Cardinal Chase just before I moved to Vancouver. I was kind of surprised how quickly the mix came together this time and how few plugins (compared to the first mix) I used. Last night I compared the two unmastered versions, one from May 2010 and the latest from Jan 2011. A dramatic difference! Perhaps still not a great mix but the band and I were happy with the one back in May.

Have a listen.

May 2010 Mix *unmastered* ~11 hrs to mix

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/theaudiogeek/side-of-the-road-may-2010[/soundcloud]

Jan 2011 Mix *unmastered* ~6 hrs to mix

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/theaudiogeek/side-of-the-road-jan-2011-2[/soundcloud]

Both mixes have the same peak level but the latest is clearly denser. Both were done using Pro Tools 8. The latest used primarily stock digidesign/AIR plugins with only a couple of 3rd party processors; a mix bus comp, and a multiband comp.

A Very interesting experiment, I encourage you to try remixing one of your old projects from scratch, maybe even once a year to track your progress.

Here is the Mastered Version
[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/theaudiogeek/side-of-the-road-mastered-jan-2011[/soundcloud]

7 Comments

  1. m24p
    m24p January 12, 2011

    Yep, there’s a pretty big improvement in the new mix. Sounds like a cool way to track your progress.

  2. Joe Clar
    Joe Clar January 13, 2011

    Good job. The second one sounds more dense and also each individual instrument sounds cleaner.

  3. Georg Nikodym
    Georg Nikodym January 13, 2011

    Yeah man, really nice. Really nailed that first flam. Better balance all round. The bass player might be a little bummed about the way you pulled back his frill just before the vox comes in. Too bad for him 🙂

    I wouldn’t mind hearing the mastered version of the old mix for comparison (to see if mastering highlights or hides the “mistakes” of the older mix).

  4. strangenotez
    strangenotez March 3, 2011

    Was wondering what your multiband and mixbuss compuresser you happened to use on this mix. I’m in the market for something non-waves I hope. great sound!

  5. Jon
    Jon March 3, 2011

    @Strangenotez
    I think it was The Glue and Wavearts Multidynamics5.
    I think the multiband was used only on the guitar bus to compress the lows. I tracked them well enough that even though there were a lot of guitar tracks they didn’t need individual processing.

  6. online mastering
    online mastering March 11, 2011

    Cool, practice makes perfect so they say, it’s all about getting stuck in, working hard and having the drive to succeed in something.

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