Mixing: Automation

Continuing from the last post, it's time to add more dimension to the song. For this post, I'll be touching on automation which essentially gives a song more colour and takes the listener to a journey. 

What Do I Want To Listen At Certain Parts?

Before I start automating, I like to listen to the song multiple times and sort out what do I want to hear at certain parts. This ensures that I get a clearer picture with a plan by my side in which I wrote down on a notebook. 

Intro:

For the intro, I want to hear the strings a lot more, so I'm going to start by pressing 'A' to enter automation mode which looks like this:

To automate that particular region, I simply double click the yellow line and a yellow dot should appear. I created 2 dots altogether, with one at the start of the region and one at the end. I then selected those two dots and bring up the yellow line to a suitable level.

I also wanted to hear the piano a little more so I did the same to it but I did not increase it as much as the strings because the strings are the main focus for the intro.

So here's how the intro sounds like after a little bit of automation.

Verse: 

As I've mentioned a few posts earlier, the vocals can get really soft on the lower notes so for these soft parts I decided to automate them by creating four dots, with two dots on each side of that particular region. I then selected the two inner dots of each side and raised them up.

So I did the same thing to the lead vocals for the entire song, raising up the soft and low notes. I also realised that the strings are kind of getting in the way of the vocals so brought them down a tad bit for that region.

Here's the result of bringing some parts of the vocals up and bringing the strings down a bit. They were clashing with each other before and it sounded like they were competing for space.

Chorus:

As for the chorus, I've kept the strings at a lower level to avoid clashing with the vocals. There was also this sound effect at the end of the chorus right after the vocals finished singing that I wanted to bring up to fill in that space of silence in the vocals. 

Here's how the chorus, second verse and second chorus sound like after some automation:

Bridge:

For the bridge, I did not bring the strings down because it was a relatively more intense part of the song. There was this piano arpeggio throughout the bridge that I really like so I brought it up where the lead vocals are silent to fill up that space. 

The video below demonstrates how the bridge and final chorus sound like after automation. 

Outro:

There are no vocals at all for the outro so its a good opportunity to bring some of the instruments up, so I brought up the strings and the piano for the outro to make the outro less thin and hollow.

So this is essentially what I've done so far, as I'm writing this I'm still constantly listening to the song over and over again to decide what it needs. I thank you so much for your time as I know I went a little overboard this week by posting three blogs in a row but I really wanted to share my learning progress and separate it into different blog posts.