PLUGIN #5 THE MIXING BOWL
All together, we now have the different sonic ingredients for our glorious
cake of sound. But before we serve it up to the people, we need to mix it,
taste it, add different flavors or spices, and then bake it, decorate it and
spruce it up. Nobody takes all the ingredients, throws them in a bowl and
dumps them on a plate in front of customers with a smile and expect them to
pay for it. Mixing is the process of baking and polishing the sonic ingredients
together into one cohesive product. While there are many different ways
to do this, I’ve chosen an all-in-one solution that is hard to beat, and that is
Harrison Mixbus. This software is its own full-featured DAW, with a mixing
section carefully crafted after the response of Harrison’s most well-loved
analog consoles. I simply cannot get enough of this sound, and it makes my
mixes jump forward with a presence that is hard to beat. I took all of the
above tracks and mixed them together with a simple drum track, applying
Mixbus’s built in EQ and saturation to each track. Have a listen:
UNMIXED
MIXED
Listen to how each track has its place in the mix. By EQing each track and
varying the volume levels, each guitar part had its own space. The drums are
fuller and punchier, and the delayed guitar almost sounds like a harp. I hope
readers enjoyed our little foray into the world of plugins, until next time!
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TONE TALK //
Five Plugins No Guitarist Should Be Without