Mixing Garage Hymnal

Last week I had a very short amount of time to mix the Garage Hymnal sessions for the broadcast on ABC.  Yes I was recording them for work purposes, not just for fun.  They'll be broadcast on our religious music program this Friday night at 2105.  Radio people always talk in 24hr time.  We are clever in that way.  Click here to find your fequency to listen to them.

Anyway, because we are churning out so much stuff all the time we don't spend heaps of time doing stuff.  If I was mixing this session for an album release or something, I would have spent up to a day per song for mixing.  Not because I'm slow, it just takes that long to get all the details right.  But for this radio broadcast, I spent a day and a half on 7 songs.  Then I spent a couple of hours mastering it.  So it's a little rough, but it's meant to sound live anyway, otherwise you might as well just stick on the album.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out considering the time limitations.  I would like to go back in sometime and do a bit of polishing, just for my own satisfaction.

So, some tricks in the mix.  Don't tell the drummer, but I replaced the kick drum with a sample, thanks to the Drumagog plugin.  It's really good because it replaces things sentitively and takes into account changes in dynamics, so it's not all the same level hits.  It follows how the player played it.

Reverbs I used were the M6000 - 4 different engines going at once, plus the Lexicon 224.  It is a bit of a luxury having so much expensive reverb to choose from.

The SSL automation is really nice and easy to use.  And because the desk is fully digital I can go abck and recall all my mixes and tweak them anytime.  The only problem is finding studio availability.

I had a bit of trouble getting the bottom end right becasue this was the first time I've mixed on the new speakers we have in the studio.  they are Dynaudio Acoustics Airs.  These are really nice speakers, but I just wasn't used to them so the bass is a bit out of whack.  I really want to go back and fix that especially.

Here's some more photos from the session on the GH facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Garage-Hymnal/9949777114?ref=mf#/album.php?aid=133102&id=9949777114