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5. Arranging and mixing

1

Finishing touches time. Instantiate Alpha CM and load up the preset called Cold Pad. Play and hold a droning chord for the first 16 bars. Put the dialogue snippets over the intro pad for dramatic effect. Introduce instruments gradually, alternating verses and choruses, dropping instruments in and out. 2

It’s a bit too stark in the middle bit, so add the bass back in. Remember those single clangs we edited? Put them there, on every other backbeat and do the same for the last eight bars. It might be effective to have our pad double the choruses in the latter half of the song. 3

There’s still something missing at the end. Maybe we need something more organic – say, a guitar? Let’s record a few simple sustained notes or chords over the last 16 bars. Add drive with Valve Filter CM. Use CM-EQUA 87 to reduce lows and boost mids. Stark CM’s Rich Chords preset adds the final touch. 4

The guitar is a bit too overwhelming. We like the timbre, but it takes up too much space. We can fix that with some meticulous volume automation. We’ll create an interesting rhythm using Waveform’s automation curves, making sure the volume ‘peaks’ are in sync with our bar lines and beats. 5

Our guitar track sounds cool, but it can be even cooler with an instance of PSP’s cmDelay. Drag one in, but place it after the track’s volume fader so that it is unaffected by our automation. Call up the ‘C>L>R’ preset and activate the tempo sync. Now set the Delay Time to 1:8. 6

It may be wise to walk away for a bit to give your ears a break before performing your final mix. A good approach is to bring all the levels down, then loop various busy sections, mixing each in turn. Some engineers will stick a compressor on the master bus while they mix it.