> Step by step

4. Arranging, mixing and effects

1

It’s time to take a step back and consider our arrangement. Zoom out to take in all of the various bits that make up your track. Let’s collect the like tracks together – drums all at the top, followed by arpeggiator tracks, followed by pads and then the lead. Unmute any muted tracks.

2

Move your clips about, copy them, paste them and loop them until you have a nice build-up of the various parts. Here, we’ve got a slow build, a respite, and then a climactic end section with our lead in place. We’ve also added another slightly busier hi-hat clip at bar 57.

3

It’s a pretty good arrangement, and our sounds are suitably retro. The snare might need a touch of 1980-era processing, though. Solo and loop the track. Let’s grab an instance of Acon Digital’s CM Verb and put it directly on our snare’s track. The Medium Hall preset will suit our needs rather nicely.

4

You probably know what’s coming next! Yep, we’re going to strap a gate plugin across the reverb. We’ll use Unfiltered Audio’s G8 CM. The various parameters need to be set carefully to avoid stuttering, paying careful attention to both the Threshold level and the Hold time for a perfect gated ‘verb sound.

5

Let’s start working on our mix. We’ll begin by setting up the loop markers to cycle the busiest parts of the track. We’ll then pull all of our faders down to nil.

Bring the levels in one at a time starting with the kick drum, snare and arpeggiator tracks. Give yourself plenty of headroom.

6

Once you’ve got your relative levels set close to where you’d like ’em, go ahead and start tweaking the pan positions of the drum tracks. Just a bit, don’t get crazy! You can, of course, go much further than we have here, so don’t be afraid to experiment with more instruments and effects.