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Mix Rescue: Alice Sweet Alice | Audio Files

Hear For Yourself
Published May 2008

These audio files accompany the Mix Rescue article from SOS May 2008 and demonstrate the differences made to the various instruments and to the full mix by Mike Senior:

The drums track made remixing tricky on two counts: firstly the sounds were all mixed together into a stereo pair, and secondly there were heavy effects already recorded with them.

Here Mike soloed the added elements which he used to bolster the kick and snare sounds within the mixed drum track. The snare was sliced out of the main track and copied to a separate track, where it was treated with distortion and limiting to add body and brightness. The kick, on the other hand, was replaced using a kick sample from Sample Lab's Drum Fundamentals.

The remixed drum parts, combining the extra kick and snare elements, adding in a little multi-band compression to even out the high end, and mixing in a touch of reverb to blend the drums with the other tracks.

The unprocessed bass part that Scott supplied, showing some inconsistent levels and quite a bit of unwanted noise.

A sneaky extra synth line Mike used to underpin the live bass part and fill out the extreme low end of the track.

The processed live bass part which was limited for level consistency, low-pass filtered to remove some of the noise, and high-pass filtered to avoid phase problems with the added synth layer.

The bass part as it appears in the remix, combining the processed live part with an added synth sub-bass line.

The two original guitar parts which play during the choruses, both of which exhibit some nasty clipping distortion in addition to the guitar amp modelling.

These same electric-guitar parts combined and processed for the remix. Some judicious EQ and a dose of Silverspike's Room Machine plug-in helped to smooth out the sound and fit it in with the prominent bass part, as well as giving some sense of liveness that was missing in the original DI'ed parts.

The original acoustic guitar DI track completely defeated Mike, with its combination of recorded effects, clipping distortion, and clouded tonality, so he asked Scott to track it again for him clean.

Scott's rerecorded part, tracked through an ART Tube MP preamp, was much more usable.

The rerecorded part as it appears in the remix, incorporating a lo-fi mono reverb patch to add complexity and some chorusing to recreate something of Scott's original effects sound.

The unprocessed lead vocal part was pretty cleanly recorded through Scott's Soundcraft Compact 4 with a Shure SM58 dynamic mic.

Compression, de-essing, and a little pitch-correction helped sit the lead vocals into the rest of the mix, and you can also hear in this example how Mike supported the main part during the choruses with an existing low harmony and a double-track he conjured up via some crafty editing.

The mix of 'With You, With Me' that Scott Martinez submitted to Mix Rescue.

Mike's remix of the same song.

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