The Final Mix of Didn’t Feel Safe

Today I added to my wall of sound, threw in another sample, improved the drum part, and completed the final mix of Didn’t Feel Safe.

Adding To My Wall Of Sound

Given that I’d done six complete vocal takes of the song, and each of the 3 choruses repeat at least once, I’d sung the chorus 21 separate times during my final recording session. This meant I had plenty of unique takes to use to quadruple-track the Chorus vocals.

I copied a bunch of chorus takes around on the timeline to create new tracks that quadrupled the already-double anthemic chorus, and panned them half way left and right to create a wash of vocal sound across the whole sound field from Left to Right. Eat your heart out Phil Spector.

In combination with the octave doubling, this Wall of Sound^TM adds even more contrast between the lonely Verse vocals and the anthemic Chorus.

The Science Show

I also threw in a sample of host Robyn Williams introducing The Science Show to add to the background narrative texture. Believe it or not, the show is still on the air 40 years later. Robyn sounds a little different now, so I searched for an old episode to sample where he sounded more like what I remember from childhood. The oldest episode I could find with him introducing the show without extraneous background music or other sounds that could conflict with my mix was from 27 September 2008.

I EQ’d the sample by cutting high and low frequencies to recreate the low-fi AM Radio nature of the sound, and hit it with a ton of reverb to reflect the sound echoing down the hall.

Needs More Cowbell

I also improved the drum part by:

Adding a build-up on the snare and a drum fill going into the Chorus
Shifting the ride in the Chorus from the hi hat to the ride cymbal for greater contrast
Adding an extra hi hat slur in the Chorus for more contrast
Dropping the drums out before Verse 2
Panning the instruments from the audience’s point of view
Realising that the Chorus needs more cowbell, so I added one

The Final Mix

With everything pretty much complete, all that was left was to mix and master the track. I’ve been mixing progressively as I went, so there wasn’t a whole lot to do for the final mix. Most of the work involved applying EQ and Compression to each instrument in the drum kit.

I also used volume automation to back off the synthesiser and electric guitars in the verses, adjusted a few volume and EQ settings on various instruments, and added a global fade in and fade out.

For mastering, I dropped final Channel EQ, Multipressor and Adaptive Limiter plugins on the Output track, and checked there was no clipping in the signal chain and that all instruments sat nicely in the final mix.

I listened to the final track on my studio monitor speakers, two different sets of headphones, and my MacBook Pro speakers to make sure it sounds good on both high and low fi speakers.

Album Artwork

For the sake of completeness, I also created some artwork using a stock photo from ShutterStock in the usual 3000 x 3000 pixel digital music distribution album artwork format: