Editing and mixing stage

On the last recording session, I recorded one of the original song 'What If' by the band Bascon. After the recording, the first thing I do is to check the timing of each track to make sure they are all in time. As the band is not using a click during the recording, there is some of the parts that are not in time and I did some flexing on the time to get them all in time.

After flexing the instruments, I re-recorded the vocal so that he will be singing in time.

After the each of the tracks are in time, I put a gain on each of the tracks to balance out the sound.

Then I start to edit the tracks with each instruments one by one:

Drums:
For the drum, I add a noise gate to each of the instruments to filter out the bleeding. I also put EQ on each of the tracks to get the sound that are more suitable to this song. As I am not satisfied with the sound of the drum that I recorded, I decided to replace the sound of the kick drum, snare, crash and toms using MIDI.

Noise gate and EQ on the left overhead

Kick drum is replaced by MIDI

After I am satisfied with the sound, I put all the drum tracks to a aux channel using a bus, and add a compressor and reverb to it.

Electric Bass:

As I am using DI to record the bass, there is no bleeding issue. I first use a bass amp designer plugin to make the bass sound more crunchy, and then I EQ it to make it more bassy. Finally I add some reverb to it.

EQ of the Bass track

Bass amp designer

Electric guitar:

As for electric guitar, I put a noise gate on it first to remove any bleeding. I put EQ on it to give it more body and presence in the song. In addition, I also add a UAD Studer A800 multichannel tape recorder to the track so that it is warmer and has a more solid low end to the sound.

EQ for Electric guitar

UAD Studer A800  plugin

Piano and synths

For the piano track, I decided to use a MIDI keyboard to record the track so that I can have more control of the notes and sound as there are often slight mistakes when the piano player is recording. From the recorded MIDI track, I duplicated it and change the duplicated tracks to synths sound. I only slightly adjusted the pedaling and some mistakes of the notes in the track, and put a slight EQ on the track so that the piano sound is more rounded. Reverb is also added to it and a UAD Neve 1073 Legacy preamp is used on the track to give the piano sound more clarity. As for the synth sound, I only add a slight reverb to it.

Reverb and EQ setting on the piano

UAD Neve 1073 Legacy preamp

Vocal and harmonies

The vocalist was quite impressive during the recording session. But I realised that what he was singing originally was clashing with the chords of the instruments near the end of the song. So I had him overdubbed the song again. Overall, there was only a bit  of pitch flexing that needs to be done as he was quite accurate with his singing. Same as the other tracks, I use a noise gate first to filter out the unwanted background noises first. And then I add a UAD Teletronix LA-A@ Legacy compressor to it with medium compressor preset. I also put a UAD Pultec EQP-1A Legacy plugin to increase the clarity of the vocal. On top of that, A UAD UA 1176LN Legacy preamp is added on top of it to smoothen out the voice of the vocal. Finally, I added a slight delay and reverb to the track to make the vocals sounds bigger.
As for the harmonies, the vocalist recorded it on the spot during the overdubbing session. On the track, I put on an ensemble plugin and set it to rich modulation preset to add more voices on the harmony. I then added reverb to it tops the harmony backwards so that it would not clashes with the main vocal.

UAD plugins

Delay and reverb strings on the vocal track

After all that is done, I do panning for some of the tracks. For the harmonies, I doubled the track and panned. them slightly left and right, and them bus them on a single aux track so that they still remain tight together. The left and right overhead I panned them to 3 and 9 o clock respectively, and electric guitar I doubled it to panned it left and right too to widened up the sounds. As for the synths, I doubled it also to panned it hard left and right for the same reason. The other tracks such as vocals, bass and piano remains at the centre.

Panning and volume of each track

Finally, I added automation to the tracks to balance out the sound during different section of the songs.

Panning of different tracks

Automation

This is the final mix for the song:

My reference track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS9o1FAszdk
Logic files: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PWZf_rw3fZDtVwC8nCCBeEummYwa3YAE