Multitrack Mixdown
‘Ain’t Like The Rest’
About the Mixdown
I started my career in music with an Americana and Country genre background. With this mixdown project, I wanted to return to my roots while simultaneously blending my new experience and knowledge with rock. When I found ‘Ain’t Like The Rest’ by Caleb Henry on the Plugin Alliance website, I knew it was perfect. Rather than approaching this mix with my style of mixing, I decided to dive into the Grammy award-winning mix engineer, John Paterno’s, other works and do a sound-alike mix with my own added flare.
John DeFaria & John Paterno’s latest album, ‘Southern Outlaw,’ was my reference material, especially concerning panning. I like how everything has its place and can be heard; my goal was to learn it, replicate it, and eventually integrate it into my future mixes.
The Process
Before I started my mix, I listened to ‘Southern Outlaw’. Afterward, I gave myself one hour to do the best pans and faders mix I could. I pushed myself not to scrutinize over every detail, and allow the imperfections to unify the mix, rather than looking at every element under a microscope.
After I finished my initial mix, I divided and focused on individual sections: Drums, Bass, Guitars, Fiddle, Keys, and Vocals. All of the tracks had already been edited and equalized, so my EQ focused on broad tonal shaping and fixing any smaller abnormalities.
After EQ, I compressed each track individually to even out their volumes, and then, specific to the Kick, Snare, and Toms, after EQ, I added a gate to help with clarity in the drums. At this point, before continuing with my mix, I rebalanced my pans and faders. Afterward, I added compression to my mix busses before adding reverb.
I wanted an overall natural sound for my Drums and Bass, so I used the “Space” reverb plug-in in ProTools and blended in a hint of hall sound to my Drums and a touch of a medium plate to my Bass. As for my Guitars, Fiddle, and Keys, I wanted to make them sound more affected without creating mud. To do this, I used the “Magic7” reverb plug-in from wave alchemy. On the Guitars, I mixed in 5% of their “Studio B Close” preset, slightly adjusting all of the controls. For the Fiddle, I added 7% of their “Clear Ambience” preset and adjusted the about of low end and air. With the Keys, I settled on 5% of the “Crystal Plate” and slightly shifted the amount of pre-delay.
Finally, for the Vocals, I started with the FabFilter Pro-R 2 “Vocal Reflections Rich” preset and tailored every part of it. I found this preset was a good starting point to go with my vocal, but it did not provide exactly what I wanted to hear. After adjusting it, I mixed in 8.83% to the dry vocal.
To wrap up my mix, I added automation to all of my tracks, including my Master fader, to emphasize dynamics. Finally, I added the 304E Equalizer to my mix bus to unify everything before adding light compression to finish it off. I then exported my mix to iZotope RX 11 to master the levels according to Soundcloud’s guidelines.
