Drums
I trimmed all of the drum parts, cutting out the 4 bar drum stick click in, and i also manually cut out the long periods of audio unused by the tom mics, leaving just the tom hits.
To start with, I took the right overhead and panned it hard right, and the left overhead, and panned it hard left. This gave a nice wide stereo image and a full representation of the drum kit. I had to play around with the panning a little to get the snare directly in the center, but eventually i got the sound that i wanted. I used a bit of light compression to give the overheads a little more punch.
Next i brought the kick up and began experimenting with its level in the mix. the kick is relatively snappy, so i boosted some of the top end to add to the click. I boosted a bit of the low end too, in order to add some more bass. I compressed it fairly heavily, giving it good presence in the mix.
next came the top snare and bottom. The bottom snare i almost literally did nothing with, aside from compress it slightly. I wanted it to have the main body of the sound. The top snare i changed around a lot. I heavily compressed it, to get a very boxy, roomy tone, and added some subtle spring reverb. with the snares combined together, the result has a lot of snappiness, but still has some body and character. i ran a super low pass filter on both snares, taking out everything below about 30hz.
And lastly, I panned the toms 45 right and left, the left tom left, right tom right. I boosted some of the mids on the toms, and applied some light compression to even them out. I also used a fairly large but dry reverb, which isn’t too obvious in the final mix, but i think it helped to add presence. again, i cut out the very low end, from about 30hz down, in order to remove any rumble.
Guitars
I began by cutting out all of the low end on the guitars, rolling off from about 50hz.
After playing around with the 6 guitar tracks, i eventually decided to just delete everything that i didn’t need. so i got rid of both of the room mics, and two of the close sm57 mics. I kept the mic pointed at the inner cone for one take, and i also kept the the mic pointed at the edge of the cone for another take. I decided that the different takes and the slightly different mic sound would be enough variation to make an interesting mix without destroying the guitar sound. I panned them both left and right, at about 60. I heavily distorted both of the guitar sounds, much more than the original clean tone. I used the Eleven amp sim to get the tone i wanted, a patch called vintage crunch. I also used a fair bit of spring reverb on the guitar sound, to try and create a vintage 70s feel.
Bass
I used both the DI’d bass and the mic’ed up bass. The DI i used as the main bass sound, compressing it and bringing it up in the mix. I had the bulk of the bass, so i left the EQ alone on it. I brought the amp’ed bass up to slightly below the DI bass. I cut a fair bit of the low end, from about 50hz. i kept the high end information though, as it had a lot of the character of the amp. I boosted the mids as well, just slightly, to bring out the warm tone.
Clav
I actually left the clav as it was, mostly. I used the higher clav as my main part, compressing it and bringing it up in the mix. I brought up the second take, on a lower octave, and panned it to the right slightly. On both of the clav parts i cut a lot of the low end, so it wouldn’t occupy the bass frequencies in the mix.
Vox
With the vocals, i did a fair amount of editing. i started by comping my favorite takes together onto one comp track, using the playlist tool. I went in and cut out all of the blank background noise inbetween the vocal performances. I also cut out the breath inhale before the performances, but found cutting out the exhale at the end of the line made it sound unhuman. I compressed with a vocal setting, and used the EQ to boost the lower mids and upper highs, to add presence and sparkle to the sound. I used a slapback delay effect to add a bit of vintage slapback. I felt this made the vocal sound a lot more like the retro 60s/70s ‘processing’ with echo chambers etc. i also used spring reverb and the lo-fi plugin to the same effect, the regrading the sound sonically to give a lot of the character of the early tape recordings.
Sax
The sax was the last thing i processed. I found it difficult because the sax was very powerful and yet very dry. I used one room mic in the center, compressing it heavily to add character to the sound. with two of the close mic performances, i panned them left and right, at about 50-60, and brought them back a lot in the mix. I cut a lot of the low end, and boosted some of the highs. I also added a bit of artificial reverb with a long tail. I think the overall sound is good, they are not massive in the mix but still fairly prominent.
Sadly i decided not to use the ukulele track we recorded, as i couldn’t fit it into the mix.