Photo from the event
The night kicked off with CRAS instructor Sam Beckley laying out his tools that's he intended to use including the digital audio workstation Samplitude, the drum triggering plugin Addictive Trigger, and many others. Sam began by pulling up a dry tracking session for a rock song including drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass DI, and vocal tracks. The mixing began with the cleaning and EQing of the various guitar tracks. Each of these tracks were given a different guitar rig chain, guitar rig is a plugin that simulates amps of various styles as well as the miking technique used for each one. Each guitar got its very own amp sound and as we applied these plugins we worked on mixing them together in the stereo field. Once the guitars had been cleaned up Sam decided to work on the Bass guitar track which had been DI'd. Again an EQ was applied with a guitar rig setup to simulate a bass amp. Once the harmonic instruments were done we moved on to the fun part, the drums.
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Sam started on the drums by checking phase and timing issues and then applying simple filters and EQs. The main focus of the mix clinic was to trigger samples using a plugin that analyses the transients to place a sample in time with the original recording. Sam did this by using the plugin Addictive trigger. Within the plugin itself, 4 different samples can be applied to trigger according to the parameters that are set. Sam decided to use the super start button to get a basis of what settings to have and from there the kick was actively triggering the sample in time. To spice it up Sam went in depth with the different possibilities like combining different samples, mixing in the original sound with the sample, changing the ADSR of the trigger, fine tuning the tones of the instrument, and the track to midi function. The most impressive feature to me was the control of different type of mics that we're used to record the sample, this included a room, overhead, and source mics. Once we had set up the kick and snare to trigger different samples Sam decided it was time to move on to the vocal mix.
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Once the instrumental was relatively mixed the vocals needed to be blended in. Sam started with various options for EQ and compression, however his main focus was Samplitudes in daw pitch correction tool. Very similar to Melodyne, the amplitude pitch correction includes a graphical representation of pitch with the ability to draw in your own correction. Once the vocals were cleaned up Sam mixed in some harmonics to create a chorus effect on the main vocals. To end the night, Sam gave away a license for an XLN Addictive trigger plugin to the lucky winner John!
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