Article Preview - Mix Rescue: Jacob Holm-Lupo

It's not often you're faced with mixing an eight-minute prog/indie-rock epic, but that was the challenge that this month's Mix Rescue candidate Jacob Holm-Lupo had set himself with his song 'Beach House'. Although perhaps best known in his native Norway as guitarist for established art-rock band White Willow, Jacob had been putting together this new song for his own side-project, recording guitars and bass at home on his Apple Macbook Pro running Logic 8, and collaborating with other musicians remotely, to add vocals, keyboards and drums.

Finding himself with more than 40 tracks competing for space in his mix, Jacob was encountering the common problem that he couldn't get the different elements to balance the way he wanted them to: by the time the bass, guitars and vocals were forward enough, they were drowning out the drums and making them sound weedy. However, listening to Jacob's MP3 mix I was also sure there was more that could be done with the long-term dynamics to improve the sense of drama, so I asked him to send me his unprocessed multitrack files, to see if I could get a better result using my Reaper-based system.

Given the scale of this mix, it's not really possible to discuss everything I did without filling up the whole magazine (or without repeating lots of things I've said in previous columns), so I'll focus on how I tackled the main task: finding a way to balance all those competing tracks while still retaining some mix clarity.

One basic tactic for improving the definition of different parts in a busy mix is simply to give each its own unique and contrasting character, and I spent a lot of time on this while mixing 'Beach House'. Some SOS readers try to achieve these contrasts mostly using the built-in digital EQ in their sequencer, and despite jagged EQ curves on every channel still find themselves unable to achieve the separation they need. The reason for this is that the simple frequency boosts/cuts incurred in this way aren't usually particularly good at delivering subjective tonal changes, however useful these EQs may be at dealing with frequency imbalances. One of the reasons why so many plug-ins now emulate vintage EQ units is that analogue equaliser circuitry tends to do much more than just adjusting a track's frequency spectrum — and it's these processing side-effects that make analogue EQ better for bringing about subjective tonal changes.

Listening to the raw tracks, I could tell that digital EQ simply wasn't going to provide enough tonal contrast, so instead I pulled up a couple of new Stillwell Audio EQ plug-ins I've recently discovered: 1973 and Vibe EQ. The former emulates the classic Neve designs I cut my teeth on years ago, and the latter is another vintage-inspired, analogue-style algorithm that really lays on the 'vibe' with a trowel. The bass and snare parts benefited from the slightly smoother sound of the 1973, while Vibe EQ's aggressive edge really helped to bring out the best in the most important guitar and keyboard parts, including the crucial main chorus guitar riff.

If you've looked at the screenshots in my previous Mix Rescues, you'll see that I tend to avoid boosting with standard-issue digital EQ plug-ins: I'm not a great fan of the sonic side-effects of boosting with digital EQ (especially at the top end), and given...