Project Completion

Project Highlights

We have all worked well together as a team and have enjoyed working with each other. We have all put in extra hours in the evening to create two remixes that we are really proud of. It has been an extremely enjoyable and satisfying project. The individual remix highlights are as follows:

'Children' Remix

• Mike's harmonic dive-bomb in the guitar solo.
• The way the final outro section turned out. All the component parts really work well together.
• The way Lee copied the snare in Reason's Redrum to it's own track and applied reverb to give it a big 'Phil Collins' drum sound.
• The overall musical arrangement.
• The sound balance of the final master.

'Behind the Sun' Remix

• The 'spaghetti western' concept has worked extremely well.
• The research we did to learn and re-create a musical style which we were not especially familiar with.
• We believe that we have greatly improved the original track and have added new meaning to the song.
• The reggae section. It works really well and adds interest and it drives the song to a satisfying end (we really like the final bell sound).
• The improvisational approach we took to develop the remix. We were not afraid to try out new concepts and discard those that did not work.

Final Remix Wav Files:

Behind the Scenes Videos:

YouTube Music Video to Accompany 'Children' Remix:

Split Studio Session 15. The final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Produce a final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We all had identified small problems with our  previous mastered mix. The main ones being:

• The tremolo guitar was masked in the mix.
• The gunshot's were slightly too quiet.
• The horse whinny was slightly too loud.
• The reggae drums were being masked towards the end of the song.
• The vocals were slightly over-powering at times.
• The bell sound was slightly too quiet.
• The final bell's reverb tail was cut-off prematurely.

The various volume levels were adjusted using volume automation to get a better balance.
We added a small amount of compression to the vocals to prevent them overpowering the finale section. We also adjusted the level of compression on the reggae drums and increased the volume slightly to bring them forward in the mix.

We then produced a final master of the track using the following plugins;

• Studio Equaliser: Boosted the 200Hz frequency by 3dB to enhance the kick drum, boosted the 2kHz frequency by 3dB to help bring the vocals forward.
• Multi-band compressor:  Used a high threshold level and a 2:1 ratio to lightly compress the peaks. We wanted to retain as much of the dynamic range as possible.
• Stereo Enhancer: Used very sparingly to improve the stereo definition without adding unwanted artefacts.
• Limiter: Used very sparingly to slightly squash the loudest peaks during the song's crescendo.
• UV22HR dither tool. This was used as we are mixing down down from 24-bit to 16-bit resolution at 44.1 KHz.

Split Studio Session 14 (evening). First mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Produce a first mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We approached the mix by dropping all faders in Cubase. We then increased the fader for the drum track to zero to use as a starting point. We then faded up the bass, guitars, trumpets, whistle and effects one by one to achieve a balanced mix. We used the orchestral theme from 'Hang'em High' as a reference track to help achieve a good sounding mix. We found that we had to use volume automation to achieve a balanced mix because the song naturally builds in loudness as it progresses and the correct level for some instruments (such as guitars) for the crescendo were too loud at the start of the track. We also automated the panning to cause the gunshot and ricochet effects to bounce across the speakers. We also deleted some tracks which were masking other tracks and which were not adding anything to the mix themselves. We then mastered the track using the following plugins; Multi-band compressor, Studio Equaliser, Stereo Enhancer, Limiter and the UV22HR.

When listening to this master we all thought that the level of some parts of the guitar tracks was too high and the whistle was too low. We went back and remixed the song accordingly and remastered the song to a 16-bit 44.1 KHz wav file.

We were very happy with this new master file.

Next Steps

Listen critically to the 'Behind the Sun' master track over the next week and use the next split studio session to give the track a final polish if required.

Split Studio Session 13. Added an alternative bass line and an organ sound from an external synthesiser.

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Finish the recording of new material for 'Behind the Sun'. We planned to record an alternative reggae bass line. We also planned to use an external hardware synthesiser (to show that we are able to use external MIDI hardware).

What was achieved

Mike recorded a new reggae bass line on a Yamaha bass guitar connected directly to cubase via a DI input. The new bass line fits much better as is more interesting than the previous bass line it replaced.

As part of the assessment we needed to show that we are able to connect and successfully use external hardware. We therefore connected MIDI keyboard to the Roland JV2080 synthesiser and connected its stereo outputs to cubase line inputs 3 and 4. We used a preset organ type sound to record a new stereo track which complements the existing guitar skanks. Lee had heard something similar on the Bob Marley track 'Is this Love?'.

We added some further guitar harmonies to the skanks towards the end of the song to add interest.

Next Steps

Perform a final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'. 

Split Studio Session 12 (evening). Final mix and master of 'Children' Track

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Perform final mix and master of the 'Children' remix.

What was achieved

Mike pitch shifted the delayed outro guitars up an octave and created a new Cubase track. This was done to add interest and some additional variation to the final outro section.

We all thought that the cymbal crashes were too loud and were distracting from the mix at times. Lee re-edited the drum track in reason to remove many of the cymbal hits to thin out and reduce the overall level of the cymbals.

We then exported the drum track from Reason as a 24-bit WAV file. We exported the main Cubase project (minus drums) as a 24-bit WAV file. These files together with a synth track that was created by Bob at home in Cubase 6.5 as a wav file were imported into a new 'pre-master' project in cubase and was mixed down to a single 24-bit WAV file.

This WAV file was then imported into a 'Final Master' project where the following plugins were used:

1. Multi-band compressor. A small amount of compression was used (ratio 2:1) and the low frequencies (under 100Hz) and high frequencies (over 10KHz) were attenuated slightly by 2 - 3 dB
2. Studio Equaliser. The frequencies around 150 Hz were boosted by 3dB to give a better definition to the kick. The frequencies around 6KHz were also boosted by about 3dB to help clarify the lead guitar.
3. Stereo Enhancer. A pre-set of 'Mastering - More Room' was used to widen the stereo  field.
4. Limiter. The limiter was used very sparingly and the threshold was set to only just prevent a few loud transients from clipping. Most of the time the limiter was not actual doing anything.
5. UV22HR. This was used to provide a random dither to the least significant bit of the output when mixing down from 24-bit to a 16-bit 44.1KHz WAV file.

The output from this process is our completed 'Children' track at CD quality (i.e. 16-bit 44.1 KHz WAV file).

Next Steps

Complete 'Behind the Sun' Remix. Bob to produce technical video of what we did to create our 'Children' track.

Split Studio Session 11 - Mixing 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Start mixing 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We first made some simple changes to the arrangement. We EQ'ed the gun shots to tone down the high frequencies to place them further back in the mix. We also EQ'ed the guitars. At this point Loz, our tutor, came into our room and we played him our rough mix. He liked our concept and arrangement of the track. However he wondered why we had toned down the reggae part of the track. We explained that it seemed to us that it did not fit well with the track. Loz thought that it could work really well but it conflicted with the style of the original drum track. He encouraged us to be bold and to embrace, and run, with our original concept.

We therefore stopped what we were doing and revisited the arrangement of the song. We found some reggae style drum loops in Reason. We exported these as wav files and imported them into our Cubase project to replace the original drum track where the reggae feel is introduced. Lee experimented with some new bass riffs using a virtual synth in Cubase. Having worked out a bass riff which works well we will need to re-record it using a bass guitar.

Next Steps

Bob to book the bass guitar for the evening session. Bob also booked out a fender guitar and a Shure SM57 mic in case we needed to re-record any other parts for 'Behind the Sun'.

Bob booked the Roland EF-303 effects processor for our evening session to allow pitch shifted delays to be added to the outro section of the 'Children' track. This will also let us demonstrate the use of external hardware processors.

Split Studio Session 10 (evening)

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Improve final mix for 'Children'. Add recorded vocals and sound effects to 'Behind the Sun'.

What was achieved

After repeated listens to our first mastered version of 'Children'. The following shortcomings were noted:

1. The lead guitar part was panned slightly to the left of the mix. This gave the mix a slightly lop-sided feel.
2. The kick drum was not prominent in the mix.
3. The crash cymbals were over-powering.  

We spent the first hour of our evening sessions correcting these faults. We re-panned the lead guitar to the centre of the mix. Lee added another midi track to Reason containing a different kick drum sound. When mixed with the original kick drum this increased allowed the kick drum to be more prominent in the mix. This also had the effect of moving the cymbal crashes back in the mix. However when mastering, and a compressor and limiter was applied to the final stereo output, the cymbals again became too dominant in the mix. We decided to tackle this issue at a later date because we wanted to concentrate on 'Behind the Sun' for the remainder of our evening session.

We had booked out a selection of mics to record vocal sounds. We used a shure SM57 mic to record Lee whistling a spaghetti western style refrain. When a large reverb was added it created the evocative intro sound we wanted.

We used a D112 kick drum mic to record Lee creating a horse gallop rhythm by slapping his thighs. We used EQ to boost the bass frequencies to give a realistic horse galloping sound and rhythm. We also recorded Lee jangling some coins to create a horse bridle sound. We used the D112 to record Bob thumping the door to create a kick drum sound. We also used the D112 to record Bob, Lee and Mike individually shouting 'Hoos' and 'Haas'. When mixed together they  gave a great backing sound we could use. The D112 mic seemed to work well in this role as it rolls off the higher frequencies which automatically places these sound effects further back in the mix.

Bob had previously researched and downloaded the following sound samples from the internet: a horse whinny, a rattle snake's rattle, and a variety of gunshots with ricochets. These sounds fitted well in the mix and were all used.

We then performed a very rough mix to get a view on how it sounded so far. Various ideas were tried and experimented with. Some were kept and some were rejected. In particular, we decided to tone down the reggae feel, we kept the rhythm guitar skanks but removed the reggae bass riff. We have also dropped the idea giving the track a dub-step feel as we all thought that it would conflict with the overall feel of the song as it has developed so far.

We were all very pleased with our progress so far. The spaghetti western sound seems to really work for this song. 

Next Steps

Sort out the problem with the cymbals for the 'Children' mix.

Critically listen to our 'Behind the Sun' remix over the next week to decide if there are any more parts that could be added. Lee is going to try to produce a drum track to see if that adds anything to the song. We then need to mix the track.