Here’s a track I was asked to remix for the guitar band I play bass for. It was recorded prior to me joining the band and has never been officially released. There has been some talk of re-recording the track somewhere down the line and perhaps fleshing it out a little more.

When remixing a song you are faced with an infinite number of options on how you want to sculpt it. The sound of the original recorded tracks can be altered beyond recognition which is why it is such an important part of the creative process.

When I first heard the original tracks on this song, the first thing that leaped out of the monitors was the mic spill on the drums; the snare rattle from the guitar amp vibrations where it was recorded live was overwhelming. This was cleaned up with a low pass noise filter. In fact, it was the drum sound as a whole that needed the most work; I was able to isolate the kick drum and shape it by slapping a SSL G channel on the track and EQ it with a little compression. I also focused the snare sound in a similar way. I took the overhead mics way back as they were overbearing and gave the high-hats a little push with some top end EQ and a healthy dose of CLA compression.

I recorded a completely new bass line using NI’s Guitar Rig 5 amp modeller – I love this VST instrument for getting a great live sound down quickly without the faff of mic-ing up an amp (I felt this track did not suit a more direct bass DI sound)

The guitars were already quite heavily fx laden and a good contrast in styles so did not require a lot to partition them – just some compression and eq-ing to glue them into the mix and some gain control. The outro solo I liked as is so largely left alone.

The vocals were originally a male/female dual harmony the whole way through the song. I felt a little variation could help the track so tried some alternate muting on the male/female vocal channels and felt it worked well for the laid back feel of the track (joining back together for the final verse). I cleaned up both vocals with a de-esser and the Waves Maserati vocal plug-in and some more CLA compression.

I put the final Mix through my tried and trusted Mastering chain (a secret I will take to my grave!) and it was complete.

(The middle eight guitar solo was added after I handed the track back. It was missing from the original source files so was not part of the original Mix/Mastering process)

The track can be found on Graham Young’s (guitarist) Soundcloud page which is linked to my own;