A Heavy Mix In A Week Using Stock And Free Plugins
Welcome to my blog! This will consist of various bits of my knowledge, mix challenges, tutorials, random sound engineer waffles and more so I hope you can find something you enjoy. To start off, I've decided we're gunna have a bit of fun.
So for the next week from now, I'll be walking you through the tracking, mixing and mastering process of a song using stock and free plugins (I will include song stems for if you'd like to follow along or experiment yourself). We're going to be doing a mix and master of the intro to the song 'In Memoria di' by Polaris, great band - great track and I absolutely love its tone - but I have a few tweaks I wanna make.
Here's the original song if you haven't heard it already:
I will include a comparison version of the final mix that I'll be creating in this series in the next post discussing the process of tracking.
The following is a list of the software and hardware I will be using for this project including instruments:
- Logic Pro X (And all its stock plugins)
- EZ Drummer 2
- EZ Drummer 2 Metal! Expansion Pack
- EZ Drummer 2 Metal Machine Expansion Pack
- Molot Compressor
- Izotope Ozone 7 Standard
- TSE 808 Overdrive Pedal Sim
- LePou Plugin set (Amps, Cab Sims, Etc)
- Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Studio Audio Interface
- Vintage SG Clone (Stock everything - D'Addario Strings)
- Dunlop Jazz III Pick (Yes I've listed the plectrum)
- Determination and Dedication
I know I said in the title that this would be using stock and free plugins only and EZ Drummer and Izotope Ozone are both expensive third party plugins. For drum tone without an actual drum kit (which I do not personally have access to) I really can't say a bad word about EZ drummer. Logic's default drum kit might do with enough work but you won't get anywhere near as good with it.
Izotope can be replaced, the stock/free replacement won't be as good definitely but I'll discuss alternatives when we get to the mastering stage at the end of the week.
So why are we using Logic? Well I'm going to be completely honest - I am ever so slightly biased. I've been using GarageBand since I was 8 and I've always been a fan of Apple computers. Despite this, I feel Logic is a fantastic DAW to start out with - in terms of price, it's a lot cheaper than DAWs like ProTools and FL Studio. I also feel Logic is a much more general tool that DAWs like FL and Abelton; These DAWs seem more tended to electronic and dance music whereas Logic is more open to varying genres. Logic also comes with a huge range of plugins, samplers, samples and synth/MIDI instruments for its price that can be used in any genre of music and in as many ways as you can think and so because of these reasons I am going to be using Logic for this short series.
Keep in mind - I will mainly be using Logic for the plugins in this project, chances are you'll have an alternative compressor or reverb or anything that you can use in place of what I'm using that will work just as well if you apply the same principals.
With that said I will leave you until tomorrow where we will talk about the tracking process and programming of MIDI drums and bass using EZ Drummer and Logic X's default bass MIDI.