Heavy Weather: The Mix and Master
After wrapping up on recording the album, my task of mixing and mastering truly began. Recreating the sound of a 1970s fusion album is a hard enough task, let alone with such a stripped back but sonically dense arrangement like ours. While great care was taken during the arranging process to avoid any excess mud, by the nature of the bass guitar there’s always going to be some present. To counter this, I put a lot of emphasis on getting the tones right at the source (you can read more about that here) and getting a good even articulation. As a result of the way I recorded tones on the way in, the bass guitars slotted together remarkably well. Aside from some light EQ to slot the basses together, very little needed to be done in the mix aside from balance. The drums needed a little more sculpting to create a more cohesive sound, however I was always keen to try and keep a natural sound to try and maintain the jazz fusion aesthetic. When I reached buss level processing, that was where the mix really began to come together. Introducing parallel compression on the drums really made them start to pop and the light buss compression across the mix glued everything together nicely.
The largest challenge I faced with mixing this album was definitely giving it a space to sit in and grow. Valhalla DSP’s Vintage Verb plugin really came in handy here. With modes modelled after that huge 1970s sound, it really gave the mix some life and helped give it that authentic flavour. Alongside some depth from reverb, I also mixed the drums a little differently to my usual approach. This time I featured the room mics a lot more prominently, this not only gave the drums more width and space, but depth that allowed the bass guitars to interact with the kit and give it a more live jazz sound.
The 2buss processing and mastering on this record was also relatively simple. I first ran a Pultec EQ, a tube EQ that’s extremely musical and really allows you to sculpt your mix and make it shine. Following that, I used an LA-2A style compressor to introduce some more analogue warmth and colour to the signal. I kept the gain reduction to just a couple of db as I wanted to focus more on the sonic qualities of the optical compressor rather than the compression itself. Following this I used an SSL G series buss compressor to really help glue the mix together and bring everything in. Next was a further stage of EQ, but this time using mid/side processing. By filtering out some of the low end, and giving the top end a gentle boost on the side channel, it increases the perceived width of the track. For the mid channel, I just gently cut some low mids to help clean up the track a little and make it a little less dense. The final step in the master was to use a limiter to bring the tracks up to a competitive volume and get a little more saturation across the track.
Heavy Weather: A Reinterpretation is out right now on Bandcamp. Coming to streaming services on the 18th of June 2021.
