Preparations for the Mixing Stage

After applying my touch to Grace's song, it's time to prepare the project for the mixing stage. First and foremost, I need to breakdown the drum track into multiple MIDI tracks. To do that I created a drum kit designer track.

I then copied the original drum track and pasted it into the empty drum kit designer track. The duplicated track should automatically switch to a MIDI track. I also made sure that the channel strip settings of the original drum track are copied into the MIDI track.

I then set the track to multi output.

When I opened the mixer, I noticed a plus symbol at the bottom of the duplicated track. I just clicked it multiple times and different strips should appear in the mixer with each strip representing different parts of the drum.

I then highlighted the newly created strips, right clicked and selected create track.

There should now be empty tracks like these:

Now it's time to separate different parts of the drums into the different tracks. For example, I copied and pasted the MIDI drum track into the 'Kick' track and made sure that the track only contains the kick from the drum set by deleting the other MIDI blocks in the piano roll.

I did the same thing for the other newly created tracks and it should look like this:

The combination of all these individual tracks should sound the same as the original drum track.

Exporting and Bouncing Tracks:

The tracks are now ready to be exported. I made sure to select all the tracks that are needed to be exported.

I then selected Export ---> Tracks as Audio Files.

After making sure that everything is alright, I selected Export.

Bouncing Tracks With Sends to Auxiliary Tracks:

Exports will not work when effects are on auxiliary tracks, I have to use 'Bounce' instead. For this instance, I soloed the lead vocal track and and turn on cycle mode.

I should be able to easily noticed that the auxiliary tracks with the effects are not muted in the mixer.

From there, I just Bounce the track to PCM.

I exported all of my tracks into a new folder I created.

Before:

So this is the track that Grace gave me a couple of weeks ago that sparkled a few ideas within me.

https://soundcloud.com/grace-oh-652688506/intro-audio-1


After:

I tried my very best to do my job as Grace's producer and apply my touch to Grace's song. At the same time, I tried not to get too carried away and work towards Grace's vision of a song with light and happy vibes. I was glad that I volunteered to produce Grace's song.

That's all from me today, I thank you for your kind attention and as usual I'll gladly welcome your feedback.