Project 2: Reverse engineer our reference mix of Sledgehammer and/or In Your Eyes
Task 1: Reverse engineer and match our reference mixes
Now the real fun begins! Launch Google Chrome and load up our Sledgehammer or In Your Eyes online mix tools. Depending on your internet bandwidth and geographic location, it may take upwards of a couple minutes to load the audio files on the above web tool. Please be patient and wait until the audio files are completely downloaded and loaded. You're downloading the equivalent of 10 song-length MP3s - one for each fader channel in the interface.
Note: Our tool is NOT optimized for mobile devices like iPads and tablets. Please complete this project using a laptop or desktop computer.
If you are listening on a good system, and if you have been listening to the YouTube versions of Sledgehammer and In Your Eyes, you'll likely notice that the online mix has many signatures of MP3 compression - dullness and transient blurring in particular. Just know that this is not a short coming of your production skills but is a necessary side-effect of our online workflow. Recording studios always try to operate at higher resolution than the release format, using MP3s only at the last stage: when the mix is released for download. In order for us to hear the contributing multitrack stems, we've had to compress all of them to MP3s, with a slight sonic penalty. If you are hearing this, CONGRATS. It means your critical listening chops have risen to the challenge!
Reverse engineering our mix
- To get started, consider creating a perceived space graph for the reference mixes for either In Your Eyes or Sledgehammer. Here's the template if you need the link again.
- Start by choosing a stem that you feel most confident in in terms of it's placement left to right and balance level in the mix. Click play and advance the track to a point in the song where that track is playing.
- Mute the two leftmost tracks (Mix L & Mix R), and slowly bring up the fader on the track you are starting with. Place the fader where you think it should be and adjust the panning setting for that track to place the sound approximately where you hear the sound.
- While that track is up, unmute the Mix L and Mix R tracks, and mute the track you were working on to compare if your balance and panning settings are close to what you heard in the reference mix. If it's close, move on to another track and repeat the process. If not, go back and listen to the reference and try a different set of settings.
Repeat the above process (or improvise your own preferred process!) and try to reverse engineer the exact panning and balance settings that we used to create the reference mix in either Sledgehammer or In Your Eyes.
This is a challenging project. Feel free to take frequent breaks to clear your ears and mind. Also, when you think you have the mix matched, take a break and come back again a few minutes later to check your work. We'll share the actual settings for our our reference mixes at the beginning of the next module.
Once you’ve finished your mix:
- Write up a couple paragraphs detailing your personal process of recreating our mixes. What challenges did you face? What did you learn? How close do you think you came to recreating the reference mix?
- Copy the URL of your recreated mix.
- Share the URL of your mix and what you’ve learned to your PWYM crew, and then to our Module 4 Project Share space. Feel free to also add a screenshot of your mix settings so that we can see your solutions at a glance.
Task 2: Create your own creative mix of Sledgehammer or In Your Eyes
Now that you’ve synthesized your critical listening skills working hard to match our mixes, use the same tool to create your own creative static mix with balance and pan settings that YOU like. As you do so, keep track of your personal process and the creative, musical decisions you make in the mix process.
As with Task 1:
- Write up a couple paragraphs detailing the process and decision making behind your creative mix. What challenges did you face? What did you learn?
- Copy the URL of your creativemix.
- Share the URL of your mix and what you’ve learned to your PWYM crew, and then to our Module 4 Project Share space. Feel free to also add a screenshot of your mix settings so that we can see your solutions at a glance.
- Lastly, be sure to make some time to listen to and provide feedback on the mixes of your fellow classmates!