Masaya Wada - Mix Description

I'm mixing an album right now for Japanese Major Label (AVEX) artist "Masaya Wada". (you know my site is translated into Japanese now, click on the little japanese flag icon on my main page, pretty cool!) Masaya is a pop singer who sings partly japanese and partly english, and his english is excellent. So are his songs. Kinda reminds me a bit of George Michael, like pop with an R&B edge. I'm also producing a song for him, i should be mixing that this week. So i just finished mixing a song called "Back To You", here's a quick run down of some of what i did with the mix.

Here's the instrumentation.......
Kick, 2 Snares, Clap, 2 hi hats, shaker, conga, two acoustic guitars (main drive of the song), rhodes, strings (hooks), bassline, chimes, Lead vocal, layered hook background vocals. The song is kind of a ballad, a little reminicient of that recent remake of "More Than Words".

Everything was separated out into individual mono or stereo stems, the hats, shaker and congas were grouped to a stem, BV's were on a stem, snares and clap were grouped to a mono out. The rest had their own dedicated mono or stereo outs, out of the Apogee DA16x into the 16 inputs of the SPL Mix Dream. The kick was on Mix Dream 1 with a Lang PEQ2 program Equalizer across it boosting 60Hz (i also used a plugin called "Big Bottom" on it). The Lang is alot like a Pultec only better and more versatile. Yep, i said it. I love the ability to use my outboard gear when i mix, so i'm not just mixing "in the box". I've done alot of in the box mixing, and I'm a fan, but i gotta say, mixing in the configuration i am now sounds like mixing on a full blown SSL console again, only the recalls take 10 minutes instead of 2 hours. I'd call my setup Hybrid Mixing, or maybe Best of Both Worlds mixing, which it really is.
I did a bunch of stuff with the snares and clap. The clap wen thru an outboard Yamaha SPX90 set on "Pitch Change C" which kind of spread the clap out a bit, and one of the snares went into 2 different Lexicon 960 reverbs, reverbs were set to different halls. 960#1 was panned hard left, 960 #2 was panned hard right (this is kind of a Dave Pensado trick) and the snare fed both for just a splash of depth. I used both of these 960's on the Acoustic guitars more heavily. The left guitar feeding the left 960, and the right guitar feeding the right 960, guitars also panned hard left/right. The guitars were also on their own stem, and on the stem output i used a Cranesong Pheonix plugin and for outboard i used Neumann PEV mastering EQ's on both guitars, boosting at 1k and 10k. These guitars, in addition to feeding Lex 960 #1 and 960 #2, were also feeding my EMT 140 Plate reverb (yes a real one), and i ran the send thru a pre delay of 80 milliseconds. The guitars didnt sound soaking wet with verb, but it gave them a nice depth and importance in the mix as they are the main melodic instruments of the song.
I squashed the bassline with a plugin limiter and boosted a little midrange with a plugin EQ (it had almost no midrange and was barely audible in small speakers, so i had to boost some mids. I also ran the bassline thru my Roland Dimm D, which is this cool spacializing box, kind of like a chorus, but nothing like a chorus.
The rhodes just got some midrange boost around 1.3K, and i pulled a bit of mids out of the strings and boosted real high so they'd sit above the vocals in the chorus.
I used the Lex 960#3 as kind of a small room that just gave a bit of depth to the hi hats, and 960 #4 went on the Lead Vocal, i dont remember what the original patch was, but it sounds pretty sweet on Masaya, i also used some delay thruout, and a big noticable delay in the bridge on his LV. The Soundtoys Echoboy is a really good delay plugin. Between that and the Echo Farm, delays are covered. I did too much to the lead vocal to include in this blog, but i think it came out sounding amazing. Usually i'll use the outboard GML Equalizer on lead vocals (it is an incredible EQ), but i was so happy with the lead vocal sound that the GML stayed unused. It helps that they used a good mic, the vocal was recorded well, maybe a bit bright on the tip top, but it came out great mixed. The backgrounds in the hooks got some of the same treatment as the lead vocals effects wise, but in a different way. Oh, i also split out the lead vocal onto 3 different tracks and eq'd/compressed it 3 different ways for different sections of the song. It still sounds like one consistent voice (it would not have if i didnt split it).
Across the mix buss i used the Sontec Mastering Equalizer, that thing sounds amazing, what a difference.

One of the hardest parts of this mix was getting the kick and bassline to work together. The bass was real subby and when the kick sounded good on its own, the bassline would just swallow up the low end of the kick and make it sound small, so i spent alot of time working out eq's and balances until they both sounded right. I spent the most time in the mix on the vocals (this is almost always the case with any mix). Vocals are SO IMPORTANT. I hear so many mixes where the beat sounds amazing but the music sounds better than the vocal. Making sure the beat sounds hot is definitely very important, but conveying the SONG is the most important thing, and the voice is going to lead the way, this song especially. I put the vocals into the mix fairly early on, untreated except for some real basics, and kind of low, just so i could remember sonically where to leave space for them, and so i could formulate how i was going to treat them. I dont really think when i mix, this is all feel stuff, but putting it into blog words, it kinda sounds more like a real concious thing, its not, its 80% vibe and 20% more vibe. Anyay, it all came together really nicely and sounds like a finished record to me. I hope Masaya thinks so. He's loved the other mixes so far, and I've loved mixing this album, its gonna be a good one.

-Ken Lewis

PS. is anybody out there actually getting anything from these mix description and session description posts? If so, please drop me a comment. Its alot of work to write these things up, so if its not having an impact, I'll find other things to write about. I'm trying occasionally to make sure i write some techie kinda stuff for the people who like that kinda stuff. Drop me some comments. Do it.