Assessment 5 – Full Production

A variety of treatments for you to consider (that I’ll be listening and looking for), listed in an arbitrary order:

01. use of effects – reverb (s), delay, chorus, flanger, phaser

02. double/triple/quadruple tracking of instruments and/or vocals

03. carefully considered stereo placement

04. automation – on any parameter that may be automated ie. volume, panning, reverb time, filtering eq. Think of automation as mix expression. Where task 4 was all about accurately recording a typical band line up for a demo (more often than not, a static mix with limited arrangement consideration), this task is ALL about the mix and arrangement.

05. ghost effects – by which I mean cutting and pasting either multitrack or single parts, creating half speed versions, possibly reversing them and placing them in the background as an ‘ambience’, ‘flavour’, ‘colour wash’, or ‘tint’ (just trying to describe visually the effect you’ll hear).

06. reverse reverb – take a complete track or part of a track, isolate it in the mix, send to a reverb plug-in, then just record the reverb. Import the reverb and place on a new stereo track and try treating in a similar way to point 05.

07. For convenient level control try ’sub-groupling’ all families or related sounds (ie. drums, vocals) by switching the output of those tracks from ‘out 1-2′ to a stereo bus, then adjusting the level of that group from the assigned bus. Unlike controlling the level from a fader group, reducing the sub-group fader will have no impact on the post-fader send levels of individual tracks within the group allowing you to control the ‘wet/’dry’ balance. Reduce the sub-group fader to minus infinity and you’ll hear effects only, take the sub-group fader above zero and the mix will become progessively ‘drier’.

08. Take care not to over ‘boost’ eq. Where possible dip or shelve frequency bands first.

09. Try ‘Guitar Amp Pro’ to effect tracks other than bass and guitar. It can be particularly effective for producing a slightly distorted pre-amp vocal sound.

10. Introduce punctuation to interrupt the meter. Perhaps introduce a beat or two of silence, then fill the space with a sound effect, delay, reverse reverb or record something specifically for that moment.

11. Use sound effects if appropriate. They can be very evocative.

12. Reduce the mix to ‘a cappela’ moments, if not for voice as the term suggests, perhaps isolate a group of instruments.

13. As you fade try increasing the effect that track is bussed to.

14. Less is more. You may have 20 to 40 tracks of material, but think of how you might create a mix or arrangement counter-point, presenting only a handful of those tracks at any moment, or building to an all-inclusive climax.

15. Feel free to bounce the whole mix or parts of the mix, then treat those bounces in other applications such as MAX/MSP, SuperCollider, or             Ableton Liv, then re-introduce into your Logic Project.

16. Use master inserts, on ‘Out 1-2′ to limit the whole mix with the adaptive limiter and perhaps introduce effects like filtering or gating at                 particular points in the mix.