Mix Prep and Editing with Dead Soul Revival
If you’ve been following my “first single release” journey for my new band deadsoulrevival.com you know I’ve been examining how we recorded our upcoming release. Today let’s talk about the first step of mixing which is editing.
Editing is a task that I’m actually doing throughout the recording. Before I actually start the mix I like to return to it and tidy up tracks completely. I like to refer to this as “audio housekeeping”. This is one more thing that helps me work faster and get more done when mixing.
Make sure to check out my course the Sound Visualization Method. where I am able to go into more depth on all this and more.
The first thing I’ll do is create a copy of my session and tag the title with “organization” in it. When I’m done editing I will import all my tracks into a fresh session. This session is created from my mixing template.
This allows me to have a session where all the extra stuff I don’t need has been removed. Extra takes, extra playlists, muted clips, muted tracks, etc. This way I’m looking at clean tracks, where clips have been consolidated and there is no extra fluff hanging around.
I treat my own mixes as if I was receiving them from a client. The reason is this allows me to be more objective which is key when mixing your own songs. It lets me kind of do a mind reset on the song.
If any virtual instruments haven’t been committed this is the time. I don’t want CPU hungry plugins like this when I’m mixing.
The next thing I’ll do is make sure all the track names are descriptive so I can know what I’m looking at a glance. For example “verse vocals”, “chorus vocals”, etc. Always try to avoid non descriptive names like “audio”.
I will also rearrange the tracks if needed so they are all grouped and color coded. All drums will be together, etc. When I get them into my mix session I’ll create groups for each instrument so all other groups can be hidden from view. This allows me to move around in a session much more quickly. Not as much scrolling to find a part.
By this point my vocals will have already been comped, but I will go through and trim any extra noise or space out of clips and apply fades so there won’t be any clicks or pops rearing their ugly heads.
Any effects/plugins I’ve been using just for monitoring I’ll get rid of as well. For example, I like to take a fresh look at my vocal effects when I am in a mixing state of mind.
Any decisions about parts I have put off I will make at this point. The primary things I will be thinking about when mixing are sonics and making sure the mix is always exciting. If I’ve done my job during recording and producing both of these should already be very close.
Looking forward, I’ll be discussing my mix template and the first steps inside the mixing session.
Until next time…
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