• Session 2 (29/10/24): Using a new plug-in I bought called ‘Mixwave: Mike Stringer Edition’, I started to write each section on the guitar. I tried to keep most sections simple and effective – from the planning stage I read a lot about Rick Rubin so I used his approach at keeping everything simple and intentional. I had a very simple recording to work with here from this point with each section’s parts written and recorded on my 8 string Ibanez electric guitar and my 5 string Ibanez bass guitar.

• Session 4 (7/11/24): The basis of the entire track was finished now and I was happy with the way it was a mix between 2000’s nu-metal verses & big choruses and more modern, heavier sections like the main riff intro and the breakdown/bridge of the track. From here I added 3 ambience layers for certain parts of the song to flesh it out a bit more and feel more modern like the producer/musician Mike Shinoda would have added – these were Splice samples. I then added impacts like bass drops and risers to have the transition between sections flow better and/or have a harder hit when they begin – a mix of Splice samples and sounds I made on my own. The final touches were adding more of the original stems to the song instead of just the vocals so I added the Bass synth and Acoustic Guitar tracks to my song and had them be layers for the intro and bridge sections.

• Session 5 (14/11/24): Listened with Fraser and Sam in studio 1 with my first draft of the song to get their opinions. They agreed with me that it was quite a long track, but it all works well together and fits the genres I was attempting to mix. They also mentioned that despite its length, it doesn’t feel like it drags – each section has elements that helped keep them engaged + if any part was reduced or removed it would hinder the song overall.

• Session 6 (21/11/24): Messed around with adding some more samples from splice to the Main riff section in the intro and after the 1^st chorus – e.g. Siren noises in the background for more of a chaotic feel, DJ record scratches throughout these riffs to add that 2000’s nu-metal feel as a lot of bands at that time used sounds like that such as Slipknot and Limp Bizkit. Although I did like how over-the-top and chaotic both of these ideas were, I decided to scrap them and keep them as they were.

• Session 7 (28/11/24): I got a hard drive so that I could bounce all of my stems individually as wav files and bring them into college so I could start properly mixing them in the college – I had many separate parts of the song with all the guitar layers, synths, vocals parts, ambience etc. I bounced the drums as all their individual parts as well so I could mix them as if I recorded them live and could then get their own sound levels etc. I created a Pro-tools session, placed all the markers for different sections and began to separate all the stems into colour coded groups and routed folders: Drums, Bass, Guitars, Vocals, Risers/Impact, and Ambience - This helps to keep everything neat and kept together with their corresponding groups.

• Session 11 (23/1/25): Spent the day helping others record their ISP tracks and general studio work to help others. Helped Ryan with fixing some timing issues with his track, then helped Cole in the studio to try and come up with some electric guitar work for his project,

• Session 12 (6/2/25): Set up microphones around a full drum kit in studio 1 to record samples for my track to possibly replace or layer existing sounds from the MIDI drums. Microphones used were an Audix D6 for the kick, Audix i5 for a top snare, two SE-2A’s for overheads (left and right) for more depth, and a Sennheiser 421 for recording the floor tom. Got some one shots and also some rolls on the floor tom.

• Session 13 (13/2/25): Transferred my samples/recordings to my computer in the class to see what I wanted to keep from the previous session. After mixing each component individually by EQ’ing them and adding reverb, I had some of the samples to discard like the kick drum just was taking away from the drums when it was layered OR replacing the MIDI kick. I had a few great one shots and rolls on the floor tom that I layered with the existing MIDI sample and panned it leaning to the right – layering this made it much more full, rich and bassy. I also decided to use a few of the different recordings of the snare to layer with the MIDI one for different parts of the song.

I used the Audix i5’s snare recording and layered it in with the verses and prechorus’s which had more of a dark feel to it which fits the kind of 90’s nu-metal creepiness of these sections. Then I actually used the capture from both of the Overhead microphones (SE-2A’s) to layer in during the main riff, chorus and breakdown sections of my track. This really added some punch and more of a spacey sound during these big dramatic portions.

• Session 14 (27/2/25): This is the final day before where I’ve to submit my finished recording. I synced up the floor tom and snare samples a little more accurately and applied effects like distortion, studio reverb and 7-band EQ’s to help balance the real recordings better with the MIDI drumkit. I then fixed some automation issues that I had applied to the vocals at certain parts to be a little more synced up to the BPM of the track and be nicer on the ear. I basically just spent the day just tying up any possible earaches I had with the balance of the song level-wise but overall, I’ve ended up with something I’m really happy with.

• Session 15 (27/3/25): Me and my lecturer had a critical one-to-one listen back to my track and it went well but we did agree on some amendments I could make to further benefit my ISP: Use hard-knee compression & gain to make the drums (MIDI and real recording) sound bigger in the mix, turn off the limiter on the master channel and there was a vocal hiccup I wanted to fix personally in the first verse (sounded distorted/autotuned).

• Session 16 (24/4/25): I began the editing from the previous client feedback session. Turned the drums up by a few dB’s & added some extra ghost hits for the real recorded snares during the verse sections to help the song stay interesting/add variation. Then I turned down the chorus vocals as after some time away from the song I thought they were sticking out a bit too much compared to the instrumental. Fixed the verse vocal hiccup by using fades and cutting up the section where the strange noise happens – I listened to the original stem of the vocal and the noise happens there too, so it was baked into the audio which meant I couldn’t do much but improvise by ducking the volume when the noise happened. Limiter also removed from the master track as it was making a wobbling/ducking effect happen to the entire song.

• Session 17 (1/5/25): The final mix had to be submitted by the 8^th of May and I realised the master channel was peaking way too high when I was looking for around –6dBFS to allow for headroom. To combat this, I added Fabfilter Pro C2 with a soft knee, fast attack/release to the Guitar group to help bring down the overall peak levels without taking any harmonic value away. Then, I also added this same Fabfilter plug-in to the drum group as they were very loud. For the drums I applied compression with a hard knee and fast attack/release to the entire drum group to bring down some of the waveforms that were way too high like the snares. The Dyn3 compressor/limiter plug-in was next which I used on the main MIDI snare channel to bring down some of the peaks by adding a high ratio and fast attack/release.

• Session 18 (2/5/25): I used the Dyn3 compressor/limiter to now bring down the level of the bass group by adding a middle-hard knee, low ratio, fast attack and release – while this brought the levels down high it did help to balance the sound so I then added about 14dB of gain. The song was sitting at a much better stage now so I added a Prolimiter to the master channel to bring the level to –5.1 dBFS for mastering by bringing down the ceiling on the limiter and not touching the threshold.

I handed in my final mix and bounced it to a new Pro Tools session for me to begin mastering. I added these plugins: Fabfilter Pro C2 compression, Pultec EQH2 EQ, Fabfilter ProQ2 EQ, Fabfilter Saturn Saturation, Pro Multiband Dynamics Compressor, Prolimiter. Then bounced this initial master and had a critical listen in studio 1 with some of my peers and we all really loved the way it sounded balanced but still hard hitting especially the low frequencies since there’s low tuned 8 string guitar and a lot of bass in the song.

Here is the reasoning for why I used each plugin:

• Fabfilter Pro C2 – Helped the overall song sound more glued together. I used a fast release, set the attack halfway, and had the threshold around –30dB. This all helped the song to feel more concise and finished.
• Pultec EQH2 – I used this plugin as well as regular EQ to boost some lows to be richer and the highs to be more balanced with the changes made to the low frequencies.
• Fabfilter ProQ2 – This plugin was used to get a more even balance of spread across the whole dynamic frequency range. Ducked some frequencies around 40Hz & 2.5kHz. Boosted around 350Hz & 20kHz.
• Fabfilter Saturn – I added a 6-band preset and boosted each band until it was hindering the overall sound of the track. It helped give some harmonic value to the song a bit more that might have been taken away through the other plugins.
• Pro Multiband Dynamics Compressor – This was used to sharpen each frequency range. It helped add some dynamic clarity and balance over the frequency spectrum.

Project Excerpt - Before + After