- I've been spending the majority of this week finalising all of the mixes. Obviously, the nature of the COVID-19 situation has meant that Zack has been overwhelmed with emails and I've been struggling to get feedback from him because of that. Instead of waiting around though, I turned to our composition group-chat on Facebook to get their 2-cents.
- For Smooth Talk and Reciprocate, it was suggested that the vocals didn't have as much presence or body as they should. Harry recommended a fantastic free plug-in called the Saturation Knob to help the vocals punch a bit more. I was a little wary given that the plug-in was technically a distortion pedal but I chose to give it a go and he was exactly right. It added a really nice depth to the vocals without compromising on their clarity - I even ended up adding it to a few other instruments where I needed a bit more punch.
- Following on from the advice in the group-chat, I added a bit of delay to the found-sound kit at the end of Reciprocate. This gave them the same kind of 'swirling' motion within the stereo field that the vocals have and, consequently, gives the end section a bit more 'oomph'.
- I have been struggling this week with Don't Go Quietly. I ended up re-recording the vocals but, seeing as they were still recorded separately of the guitar, I was struggling to get the 'natural' feel that I was after. In response, I chose to take the opposite approach and purposefully process the vocals and guitar in an unnatural way. I spent time experimenting with long reverbs and stereo delays in an attempt to change the feel from a natural 'live' kind of vibe to an almost dream-like one.
- I began asking a couple people about their processes for mastering - at this point i was fairly happy with my mixes (I don't enjoy nitpicking my songs) but wanted to give them a bit of a boost. Aidan let us know in the group-chat that Izotope were having a sale on their mastering suite so I chose to invest a bit of money for something that will be very useful both now and in the future. The suite definitely helped to make a difference to the tracks (better than I could have done attempting to do it step by step with stock Logic plug-ins) and I used a similar set up for every track as I wanted them to sound somewhat coherent when played together.