Hey all so over the last week or two I was involved in a large group project to record an Indie artist. I won't go into too much details on the recording session or it's setup I just wanted to run you through the choices I made to achieve the sound that I wanted. I was after a dreamy vocal driven, half acoustic half electro indie pop track. It's something I've never really mixed before but I had a lot of fun doing working through it. Let me show you how it all went down.
My main focus for this track was the vocals. To achieve the vibe I was going for I added a channel strip and the main sound I wanted out of it was a big dreamy reverb. The vocals are definitely stand out the most over everything else in the track and the reverb fits her voice really well. I also added some slight delay to add a bit more of a tail to her vocals which really added to the dreamy feel I was going for. Below is the processing that went into the vocals
I also spent a lot of my time cutting out breaths throughout the track not only to clean it up but to give it more of a processed feel, I didn't want the vocals to sound like they were too raw or homey otherwise it wouldn't match the electro vibe I was going for either. It still fit the acoustic part however which worked out very well for me. There was also a section near the end where the rap breakdown got really personal so i ended up ducking every other element to really focus on the vocals and the message of the song.
The other instrumentation I had in the track was a acoustic drum kit and guitar along with a large combination of synths. Some of these synths include a piano track, a more synthy style piano to accompany, risers, a synth kick and a plucking pad at the intro of the song and half way through. These synths were designs by other members of the team and pick and chose the ones that really fit the vibe I was going for. Most of them contained preset amount of reverb which added greatly to the overall fell of the track by adding some more background cloudiness. As for the acoustic elements I added a large amount of reverb to the drums and guitar which helped them match the tone of the overall track. Stylistically the choices I made throughout the mix were to focus on making the vocals really dreamy and still maintain clarity which I feel I achieved. The other synths and acoustic elements I chose complemented this style perfectly and helped reinforce those vocals. All this was the general process I went through to achieve my cloudy Indie pop style. Thank you for reading!
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