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Tutorial—Mixdown
— Tutorial 25
❒ The Automix
The general flow of the automix is described below in reference to absolute counter
times. Please note that the times given are not precise. Use them as a guide.
❍ 00:00:00
The first thing you’ll notice is that the channel ON keys for tracks 8 through 14
are all off. We’ll turn those tracks on just before the corresponding parts come in.
❍ 00:00:13
Channels 11, 12, and 13 are turned ON just before the chorus comes in on the
introduction.
❍ 00:00:15
The level of the second introductory lead guitar phrase (track 6) was a little lower
than the first, and it was getting buried in the chorus. We used fader automation
to boost it a bit.
❍ 00:00:25
The lead vocal track (14) is turned ON just before the lead vocal comes in. At the
same time we’ve turned the chorus tracks (11, 12, and 13) back off because the
chorus won’t be coming back in for a while. Why bother? Well, with any source
recorded via microphone you’re also likely to pick up some extraneous ambient
noise, and this can reduce the clarity of the mix if allowed to play while the
desired source isn’t doing anything. This is the case with the “So Fine” chorus
tracks. In fact, if you watch the track 11, 12, and 13 level meters while the chorus
isn’t singing you can see that there’s a surprising amount of signal where there
really shouldn’t be any. This type of unwanted noise can also be removed auto-
matically by “gating” (a type of dynamics processing in which signals below a
specified level are cut off — the AW4416 dynamics processors can do this). But
since the noise is effectively masked by the other tracks during denser parts of the
song, we’ll simply use channel ON/OFF automation for the “So Fine” demo.
You’ll also notice that we reduced the level of the organ track (7) at about this
point. This is because we wanted a slightly higher organ level during the intro-
duction to achieve a better overall balance before the lead vocal comes in. Now
that the lead vocal has begun, however, we’ve lowered the organ track back to its
“normal” level.
❍ 00:00:47
Chorus channels 11 and 12 are turned back ON, and the level of left female
vocal track (11) has been boosted a bit to maintain optimum balance between
the two female chorus parts during this section of the song.
The piano track (8) is turned ON just before the piano part comes in.
❍ 00:01:08
Chorus track 11 is brought down again for optimum chorus balance, and the
level of the lead vocal track is boosted just a bit to allow the lead vocal to come
through the denser instrumentation of the bridge section.
The strings tracks (9 and 10) are turned ON just before the string part begins.
Also note that the level of the lead guitar track (6) was boosted a bit just before
this point. We did this to emphasize the distinctive guitar part during the bridge.
The organ level has been lowered to “make room” for the strings, piano, and cho-
rus parts during the bridge.