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Mix Rescue: Ollie Wright | Audio

Audio Examples From Mix Rescue December 2009 By Mike Senior
Published December 2009

Here is a selection of audio files to accompany this month's Mix Rescue of North To Alaska's track 'All The Same'. You can listen to these as MP3s in the media player in the main article (/sos/dec09/articles/mixrescue_1209.htm) or can download from this page as CD-quality WAVs for more critical auditioning in your DAW.

Gtrs Logic Guitar Amp Pro Audio icon gtrslogicguitaramppro.mp3 File gtrslogicguitaramppro.wav

Here are Ollie's original guitar parts, as they appear in the final remix. They were recorded via direct injection into Apple Logic and processed with the sequencer's amp emulation plug-in Guitar Amp Pro. Even with the further remix processing (in the form of cuts at 4.7kHz and 6.8kHz from Universal Audio's Neve 1081 and a 6.7kHz low-pass filter from Reaper's ReaEQ) the melodic and harmonic elements of the sound were still pretty buried under the noisiness of Ollie's overzealous overdrive settings.

Gtrs Guitar Rig Audio icon gtrsguitarrig.mp3 File gtrsguitarrig.wav

Here is the first of two less overdriven extra guitar layers I added by reprocessing Ollie's DI guitar signals in order to give the overall guitar sound more edge and harmonic definition. This one uses the Fender-inspired Tweed and Tweedman models from Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 3, but with a lot of low end rolled off below about 700Hz (using Reaper's ReaEQ and Stillwell Audio's Vibe EQ) so that it was mainly adding a bit of attack definition and a harder edge to the overall tone.

Gtrs Simul Analog Audio icon gtrssimulanalog.mp3 File gtrssimulanalog.wav

The second added guitar layer came courtesy of Ob PS1, Boss DS1, and Rednef Twin, all freeware plug-ins from Simul Analog. The first of these plug-ins was a phaser which added some nice movement to the sound, but I didn't want to over-egg this so I placed this before the Boss DS1 distortion in the chain, making it more subtle. Again, I reined in the low end of this sound with cuts below 900Hz from Reaper's ReaEQ, but left enough controlled low end in there to usefully fill out the mixed tone.

Gtrs Bass Audio icon gtrsbass.mp3 File gtrsbass.wav

This is the processed bass part used in the remix. As you can hear it's pretty heavily compressed (using Bootsy's Density and Stillwell Audio's The Rocket), and I didn't bother to smooth out the timing edits as much as I might normally do, because they're simply not audible against the other guitars in context. I shaved off a few decibels of low midrange with a shelving cut at 200Hz and a peaking cut at 330Hz (both from Universal Audio's Neve 1073 plug-in) to clear space for more low end from the guitars; low-pass filtered at 2.5kHz to scotch some excessive pick noise; and high-pass filtered at around 50Hz to avoid too much interaction with my added sub-bass synth part.

Gtrs Sub Audio icon gtrssub.mp3 File gtrssub.wav

I programmed this simple sub-bass part by ear based on Ollie's bass guitar recording. The sound is coming from Reaper's simple built-in ReaSynth plug-in, low-pass filtered at around 250Hz.

Guitars Untimed Audio icon guitarsuntimed.mp3 File guitarsuntimed.wav

Here are the rhythm guitars and bass in context for a section of the final mix, but without any of the timing corrections I did via audio editing.

Guitars Timed Audio icon guitarstimed.mp3 File guitarstimed.wav

A large part of the remix work was tidying up the timing of guitar and bass parts against the drums. Here's what the GtrsUntimed file sounds like when I substitute my edited versions of the guitars and bass -- not the most immediately obvious of changes, but nonetheless and important factor in adding impact to the remix.

Gtrs Mix Audio icon gtrsmix-1209.mp3 File gtrsmix-1209.wav

LV No IQ4 Audio icon lvnoiq4.mp3 File lvnoiq4.wav

Here are the chorus lead vocals within the context of the final mix, demonstrating the harshness which crept into Ollie's voice on some notes as he cranked up the volume. However, because some notes weren't as harsh as others, simple static EQ provided no decent solution.

LV Final Audio icon lvfinal.mp3 File lvfinal.wav

Here's the same section as in the LVNoIQ4 example, except with the Platinumears IQ4 dynamic EQ plug-in taming the harshness with independent narrow-band (Q=4) dynamic peaking cuts at both 3.8kHz and 5.4kHz.

LV Edited Audio icon lvedited.mp3 File lvedited.wav

Here are the lead vocals as they appear in the chorus of my remix. I've edited both pitching (with Celemony Melodyne) and timing (with Reaper's audio editing) to tighten up the lyrics, smooth out the sound, and make the singers blend better with the mix.

LV Unedited Audio icon lvunedited.mp3 File lvunedited.wav

Compare this with LVEdited to see what the vocals would have sounded like had I not carried out any of the pitch or timing edits.

Original Mix Audio icon originalmix-1209.mp3 File originalmix-1209.wav

This is the original mix that Ollie Wright sent in to Mix Rescue of his song 'All The Same', co-written with band-mate Brian Leftley.

Remix Audio icon remix-1209.mp3 File remix-1209.wav

My remix of 'All The Same' based on Ollie's original multitrack files and with some added sounds from Sonic Reality's Ocean Way Drums and various guitar-amp modelling plug-ins.