Murshidi by Khiyo -Mix Analysis-

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since I posted last.

I would like to take this opportunity to post an analysis of one of a song 'Murshidi' from Khiyo's debut album.

You can check the song at below links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHTYjxGk9ek

https://soundcloud.com/khiyoband/khiyo-murshidi-kachhe-nao-na-dekha-dao-na 

I'm sure some of you will find it interesting to see what is inside the mix!

First, let me explain the basic set up of my mixing session.
As you can see, my choice of DAW in this session was Avid Pro Tools 10.
I bus things (drums, bass, E.Gtr, violin, vocals etc), then there are 'Music’ bus, 'Vox’ bus then those 2 goes into the final 'Mix' bus. Depend on the project, some times I don't have those separate bus for music and vox.

When I receive files from the client and if it's a rock/guitar oriented material, I usually process each audio using either Slate Digital VTM or PSP Vintage Warmer in Audio Suite. Nothing major alteration are made at this stage, very basic tone and gain control is the aim. I've learnt this from a great Japanese engineer Yoshiro Kuzumaki. For this song, I chose VTM, tape speed and other setting changes depend on the sound source.

The first slot for most of the channels were Slate Digital VCC. For this song I chose Brit 4K with moderate drive. It could well been US A setting but I just felt right with Brit 4K. The effect of this plugin is very subtle, at least to me!

Drums and percussion:
The kick was slightly too soft and too much sustain so first thing I did was to shorten the decay using Native Instrument 'Transient Master', the rest of chain was Dyn 3 compressor, bit of saturation from Nomad Factory SC-226, HPF and some low-mid cut with EQ 3 and ddmf 'No Limits' for the final peak control before it leaves to the drum bus.

For the snare, there was a fair amount of ride/hat bleed so I went with Dyn 3 Expander to reduce those ride/hat. There is Massey Tape Head and Klanghelm SDRR to add some harmonics. HOFA IQ-EQ in dynamic EQ mode to control some of the low-mid peak.

Nothing special for the Hat track, HPF and gentle compression using Avid Channel Strip.

Floor Tom, gentle compression with Massey CT4 to enhance the sustain, then EQ 3 for minor clean up.

Over head, SDRR into McDSP 6030 'SST '76' then EQ 3 for minor clean up.

At the Drum bus, 6030 is waiting in 'U 670' mode doing very gentle compression.
Drum reverb were only used on snare and floor tom channels. PSP EasyVerb was picked on this song,  it's my favorite drum reverb/ambient plugin.

Tabla was recorded with 2 mics, one for baya and one for daya. Usually I would prefer to work with stereo daya but in this case I went with brainworx bx stereomaker to make a mono channel into stereo. After that, gentle chorus was used to give a slight movement. Those 2 channels were bus to Tabla bus. 6030 OPTO-C was used to tame some of the peaks.

This was my first time dealing with Khomok. This file arrived at very final stage of the mixing. The file was in mono. It sounded very nice on it's own but at this stage where everything else was already mixed nicely, I had to make it much smaller sound to avoid conflict with other instruments. HPF, moderate compression and this time, I've used the classic 34ms stereo short delay, one side muted to make it wide stereo track. Of course there is a bit of mono compatibility issue on this kind of stereo technique but I went ahead with it. Aiming to go even wider than those guitars.
Khomok was routed straight into Music Bus.
In case if you are interested, this is Khomok.

Bass:
There were 2 electric bass tracks, amp and DI. Only VCC on amp track, VCC and Klanghelm IVGI on DI track to add some grit, then those 2 goes into Bass bus. Klanghelm DC8C for moderate compression, Tape Head to add some thickness on low-end, SDRR to add some upper harmonics, EQ 3 for minor cut around 420Hz, then 'No Limits' for controlling some peaks.
From this Bass bus, I sent to another 2 AUX channels in Pre-Fader. One for the bass solo section at 2:11 to add further upper harmonics and grit using PSA-1, another one to enhance the low-end using Waves Renaissance Bass set around 75Hz and mixed-in at very low level.

Electric guitars:
All the electric guitar parts were recorded by Dave Mountain at his studio The Attic Sounds. Dave is a very skilled and knowledge guy, those are absolutely great sounding guitars! Also he kindly pre-mixed all the blend of multiple mics, thanks Dave! As a result, not too many processing going on at individual guitar tracks. At the E.Gtr bus, SDRR for adding some harmonics to control the tone, maag EQ 4 for some Air band, bx saturator for further harmonics and thickness, and one band EQ 3 for HPF.

Violin:
Violin was also recorded by Dave, came in 2 mono tracks, probably 2 different mic-ing position but both sounded quite close mic-ed.
I tried spreading them wide apart with pan pot, delaying one side etc but I ended up bussing to a mono Violin bus then bx stereomaker to make it stereo. The stereo expansion knob was automated according to different sections of the song.
Parallel processing was set up from here to add some movement on the violin. I originally had some hand written panning automation as an auto pan plugin, but fortunately one of my Melda Production's bundle became available in AAX format around summer time so I just tried for this post and it works very well!

E.Gtr and Violin were sent to Valhalla Room and Super Tap. V Room was set to 0.85s, Super Tap was 8th note on left, quarter note on right with no feedback though, this song wasn't done to the click (apart from the first few bars) so I had to tap and guess to get the natural delay timing. Super Tap was also sent to V Room to help blend the delay sound into the sound field.

Lead vocal:
For the lead vocal, 6030 OPTO-C doing a fair amount (6-8dB) of compression, EQ 3 for minor cuts, IQ-EQ in dynamic mode to control some high-mid peak, mild DeEsser then Trim plugin doing the fader ride. Those plugin order varies and it's different every project. I often have Trim (or clip gain) early on in the mixing to control the dynamics of the vocal then EQ, compressor/DeEsser and so on. The vocal was also recorded by Dave.
The spatial effects used on Sohini's vocal were Valhalla Vintage Verb, Nomad Factory ECHOES, Waves Doubler. Each of Send level were automated to give some movement during the song.

Side-chain ducking:
There is one extra thing going on, Dyn 3 Expander/Gate with polarity flipped, side-chain key in from the lead vocal and output to 'Mix' bus. E.Gtr and Violin were sent to this Expander/Gate by small amount. What happens is that when the vocal is happening, E.Gtr and Violin ducks down in level by whatever the amount you sent. I've learnt this technique from one of Mike Senior's book!

'Music' bus only had VCC bus plugin, 'Vox' bus had VCC bus and HPF, then at the final 'Mix' bus I had VCC bus and VTM in 15ips. 
 
Another thing to note, this song and the next song in the album were meant to be connected with a long reverb tail so there is a fair amount of reverb send going on for the final 30 sec. It had to be the same reverb I used for the next song's intro (Koi Jao Rey). In this case, 2C Audio B2 was used and the reverb time was set to 17.2 seconds.

As you might have noticed, I’ve used Massey Tape Head, Klanghelm SDRR, Nomad Factory SC-226 quite heavily on this project. I like to play around with saturation, subtle tone shaping using those plugins. SDRR is a fun processor. I’m still learning how to use it and every time there are some new discoveries in those plugins!
I like using Digi stock compressor, expander/Gate and EQ as well.
And I do use a lot of automation.

Special thanks to Khiyo for allowing me to post this analysis and
hopefully I'll do another one very soon!
You can purchase the album from here.

Thanks for looking!
YS Sound Production