This weekend I managed to get back into the studio to mix the recordings I did with Hartwood a couple of weeks ago.
On listening back, I am really happy with the way these recordings turned out, although I must say that the Dettwiler method is not very forgiving of quiet acoustic ensembles which also contain a single snare drum. The snare was a bit problematic to keep controlled in the mix, as it bled so much into all of the other mics. If I were to record this session again the future I would probably pop Sophie (the percussionist) in a separate room to try and get a bit more separation.
Saying that, the recordings sound really good, and I don’t think we would have got anywhere near as musical a performance out of the vocals in particular if we hadn’t recorded them all together at the same time.
I decided to do this mix entirely in the analogue domain using the University’s Studio 1. I limited myself to not using any software plugins other than the Neve Genesys Control plugin which allows desk automation and fine control over the analogue EQ and dynamics available in the console. This meant that I didn’t get bogged down too much in the detail and allowed me to mix all 5 tracks in a day, giving a result that I am very happy with indeed. I now need to send these off to the band to check that they are happy with them – I’d love to post them here as well, but that isn’t really appropriate without the artist’s permission and until they have been officially released.
I tried to apply some of the principles I picked up while reading Gibson’s The Art of Mixing (2005) to this project, in particular the use of grouping vocal harmonies into separate busses and processing them together.
