Over the summer I recorded a song called What Can I Do with piano and 2 vocal tracks, but have only now taken the time to mix it. I did the mix entirely on hardware apart from edits. Considering I only had 4 inputs into the desk (stereo piano and 2 vocals) the complexity of the routing became crazy.
The piano was simple, having processed the signal on input the only thing I added was an EQ in the insert point (a pultec clone) and some compression, side-chained from the vocal. This went directly to the main bus from here after sending to some FX.
The vocals were considerably more complicated, my mixing desk only allows me to put one FX in each insert so I bused for the sake of gaining a second insert point. Each channel had a HPF, further EQ and compression before the insert point. In the inserts were 2 LA2A clones that were taking quite some level out of the signals. The 2 vocal channels then went to 2 respective buses for the secondary inserts, in these I had 2 Deessers. These 2 channels went to the main bus from here.
You may have noticed that no FX sends were mentioned from here. That was because I duplicated the initial channels then gated them with a small range. All of my FX sends went from these 2 channels that did not dirrectly go to the master bus. This had the effect of making the quieter lines slightly more intimate with less time based effects.
FX. I used 2 delays, a reverb and a chorus from inside the desk and routed out to my outboard microverb by alesis for a second reverb sound. The main FX was the internal, slightly longer reverb and all other FX returns were sent into the reverb send at a low level.
Finally, there was some fader riding to do to get the mix sorted out. I rode the piano at the beginning to make it a little more present in the introduction then ducked it down slightly for the verse. I didn’t need to bring it down far because the side-chained compressor pulled a small amount out when the vocals started. The vocals both needed to be held in place in the second verse, getting them to sit together. To give some literal width to the mix I also panned the vocals out when the harmony came in. Finally, there was a gentle fade out at the end. I don’t usually use fade outs but in this case I thought it would be nice.
I will upload this track to You Tube very soon
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