iii Trio Project: Mixing "Naima"

"Naima" is the last cover we recorded with the iii Trio and it was the only cover with no drums. 4 recorded tracks were used for this mix which were the Room Mic, Bass, and the two vibraphone tracks. I didn't use the Spitfire track because even though it had a nice lo-fi, raw sound to it, it just didn't suit the track and also added extra noise to it. Because the players played "Naima" so dynamically, I didn't have to use automation, which lifted a lot off my shoulders.

Because I wasn't given any reference tracks, I went to look for some articles about mixing jazz instruments as I had no idea where to start. An article from Audio Issues titled Jazz Music Mixing Tips for Beginners (written by Emerson Maningo) was a source I relied heavily on as they had tips on EQ, Compression, Panning, and Effects for jazz instruments such as drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. With mixing the vibraphones, I had to find other sources as well as use my own ears to mix them and just made sure it suited the entire mix.

EQ

I started EQing the bass and followed the article's tips which was to:

- Cut off at 100 Hz

- Have a medium boost at 150Hz with a 1.4 Q

- Add a 6dB boost at 500Hz with a 1.0 Q (Maningo, 2011)

I was surprised to have a cut off at 100Hz as I normally thought that 100Hz and lower were important frequencies for bass instruments but after boosting the medium range (and also raising a bit of the top end), the bass sounded surprisingly nice and clear, and raw too.

With the two tracks for the vibraphones, I EQed by ear as I didn't really find any good sources and I just wanted it to suit the mix based on what I was hearing. My EQ settings for the vibes were:

- Cutting off at around 174Hz

- Boosting around 5.8kHz by 1.3dB

Really didn't know what else to boost or cut off as it sounded really clear already, even without the EQ. I also just made sure the high end didn't sound too tinny and only boosted a small amount of the high end and just made sure the tracks stood out in the mix.

Room Reverb

I created an aux track, added the Studio Reverb plugin, and used its own Jazz Club room preset to it. The reason I added a reverb plugin was because the room mic wasn't really doing much and I wanted to hear reverb in the mix. After adding the reverb, it made the whole mix sound thicker, which was what I was going for as well.

I didn't change any of the settings in the plugin and just used the levels of the sends to adjust the amount of dry and wet signals going to the instruments. I had the input of this aux track on bus 1-2 and created sends on the bass track and the 2 vibraphone tracks, which was sent to bus 1-2. They both had about the same amount of level in the sends but the vibraphones already had some sustain which also sounded reverb-y so I dropped the level bit. The amount of wet signal I applied to both tracks are shown below:

L: Bass Reverb Send R: Vibraphone Reverb Send (Applied on both vibraphone tracks)

Mixing

I then mixed the whole track after EQing and adding reverb sends to the instruments and added a master track so I could keep an eye on the overall level.

I dropped the room mic's level down to -15.1 as the reverb plugin was already doing the room mic's job and the room mic also added noise to the mix.

I had the bass in the centre of the mix and had its level on -6.5dB because the low frequencies was starting to dominate the mix.

For the vibraphones, I had both tracks panned 43% left and right and had their levels at -9.1dB, due to the high end of the tracks being really loud in the mix. I didn't want to hard pan the vibraphones as the room reverb and its own sustain gave the sound a wide space already.

The Spitfire was on mute as I didn't want to have the lo-fi noise in this mix, as explained earlier.

I didn't use compression as I felt it didn't really need it as the bass and vibraphones were very dynamic and didn't really need much controlling. I may be wrong but that's what my ears heard. I was also going to add a slight chorus effect to the vibraphones to give it a different sound but then wasn't sure if the musicians would like it so I left it. Really felt like adding more stuff but it sounded nice already and in jazz, there isn't much process that gets added so I didn't add anything else.

That was my whole mixing process with "Naima". I know it's short and is probably the shortest song I've mix but it was a really good experience, especially mixing in jazz. Keep an eye out for my next blog where I'll be talking through how I mixed their 2nd cover "Tell Me A Bedtime Story".

Bibliography

Maningo, E. (2011). Jazz Music Mixing Tips for Beginners. Retrieved from https://www.audio-issues.com/music-mixing/jazz-music-mixing-tips-for-beginners/