Gamma-ut: Epiphaneia/Neon Sun MC18 mix notes

Mixed in Ableton Live 9 using mainly Live's own FX but with some third-party stuff and a fair amount of automation on effects and levels. DMG QuickEQ and the CableGuys FilterShaper and VolumeShaper got the most use overall out of the third-party plugins. QuickEQ was used for where I needed Linkwitz-Riley crossovers to do split band processing – they are bit easier to set up than in Live's EQ8 –and a couple of other places.

By the time I got to the end, I was having trouble getting the short-term LUFS below -12 let alone -16 with peaks at -1dBFS. I resolved to take off some compression only to find there wasn't much there in the first place. There is a bus compressor (Compassion) but it's doing 1dB gain reduction at most and is set up to slightly expand below threshold so that it can open up the track between beats a little (it's a preset that attempts to mimic the Neve Portico, which seems to have a slightly sigmoid response curve). The final file is delivered at -16LUFS long term.

There is also a Live Compressor on the drum bus doing parallel compression, again quite lightly even though it's set up to be parallel. However, there is more aggressive compression on a "room mic" send that feeds the output from a drum-room reverb setting on LIve's Reverb plugin into a compressor doing 14:1. That's mixed quite low into the final stereo bus.

I added a number of effects to the tracks, starting with the radio burst at the time and to add some variation to the Arp, ChorusVox, and Guitar tracks primarily. I also added a fair amount of micro-automation to these tracks basically to emulate the action of a swell pedal (mapping mod wheel on a MIDI controller to the gain of a utility feeding into the effects chain for each one), to emphasise guitar plucks and parts of "Neon Sun" and the like.

There are three main reverb sends – all using Live Reverb set differently. One very short for basic ambience, one a kind of medium plate and the last a hall program. There is also a send for a Simple Delay synced to dotted eighths.

The Radio_bip track has a limiter, Live's Dynamic Tube, EQ8 with notches all over the place and a Resonator effect feeding into a Ping Pong Delay with MUtility at the end of the plugin chain, which is automated to pan the effect during the track. The resonator and delay are automated so the voice is separated from the radio-dial noise as the song gets underway.

The kick doesn't have a huge amount of processing, although it gets a Live Compressor, EQ8 and Dynamic Tube with the bias raised a bit mainly to take out some of the very low frequencies. There is a deep wide cut at 300Hz as it seemed quite boomy.

I used a little bit of expansion on the closed hats and high-passed them quite a long way up. So did the open hats which also got a little saturation from the Live Saturator plus a Frequency Shifter running with a random LFO on the frequency but only 30% wet.

The snare I high-passed around 200Hz but also duped it within a Live Rack and used a bandpass in the mids plus some filtered Overdrive. That went into a Live Compressor at 2.2:1 and attack at 10ms or so. DMG PitchFunk is used after that to add some delay with the wet/dry controlled by an LFO.

Loop1 has an Compressor running in expander mode (1:1.85, pretty deep threshold) to open it up a bit followed by a Live Limiter with a low ceiling to stop the peaks going out of control. That feeds into an EQ8 with the scaling automated so that most of the track, the lows and high mids get reduced a lot but so that it can be brought forward during the intro and drum break. Loop2 gets similar processing - minus the much of the automation because it only appears briefly.

Crash_bip just gets a Limiter and an EQ8 to take out the worst of the low-end rumble.

High String gets Reviver to try to smooth out the frequency peaks a little - mainly 2nd-order harmonics. That goes into an AIR Phaser and a Diffuser Delay and finally a Stereo Widener.

The Main_Guitar track gets a lot of attention. It uses the Ableton/Softube Amp and Cabinet. The amp is set to Heavy with Bass and Mids dialled down and with some automation on Gain and Presence - mainly for sections where most of the voices are all playing at the same time. The EQ8 has a bunch of mid-range notches to take out nastiness. A Rack is used to send the signal to the far left and slightly right. 

The far left has Audio Damage Discord3 in granular mode on it for pitch shifting and the feedback from this this is automated to generate a number of the "Star Trek IV robowhale-spaceship" effects heard as the song plays. There is a little slapback delay on the main guitar. FilterShaper is used on the unshifted guitar signal to give the rhythm a bit more shape. LVC ClipShifter helps knock some of the tops off the peaks, particularly when the feedback kicks in on Discord3. This track finishes with a pitch-down effect.

The Bass also gets some additional rhythmic movement from VolumeShaper, using a band split to have a slower pulse on the low end and to emphasis the chops on the high end. A compressor set to a fairly high ratio and low threshold (but on a fairly high sidechain frequency) is also meant to help bring out the higher-end peaks. 

The Arpeggio gets a fair amount of treatment, running through a Live Phaser and then into a Rack to allow the Frohmage filter to be used as a peaking filter. That's followed by a Saturator, a fairly aggressive bit of EQing to take out the low end and accentuate the high mids. MUtility is used to stereo pan it.

The Chorus_Vox track gets a Compressor used in expander mode to bring out the syllables a bit and is EQed heavily to bring out the high  mids. Panstation does some auto panning before going into a Rack that splits the audio with one chain going into a Frequency Shifter to give the grainy background vox effect before being high-passed and sent to a Ping Pong Delay so that they seem to move around separately to the main panning effect and to generate the smearing echo towards the peak of the track. A bit of VolumeShaper pumps the sound slightly around the beat. The final stage is a Limiter to catch peaks when the echoes and voice intersect.

The reverse_bip track gets a Limiter and some EQ on it, mainly with a very gentle high-pass and a notche around 7kHz.

And that's about it.