Recording: completing 'It's Not Happening'

It’s seems forever since we started working through It’s Not Happening. And now, we’re at the end. So, I’m excited to go through finishing it off, and showing you how it came out.

Now, one of the benefits of light audio recording is keeping things efficient and simple, and that’s an ethos that goes from gear and tracking, right down to finishing the track.

It’s Not Happening: rig run down

By the time you’ve everything tracked, all there is to do is listening to finalize the mix.

Finishing It’s Not Happening

Step one – editing and micro mixing

As has been noted elsewhere, BandLab can’t handle that many tracks. That’s why each post about recording refers to creating a new project for the section you’re recording.

Ideally, you wouldn’t do this: you’d record everything in one project so you can mix the whole lot holistically. But, to keep costs down, this is what we’re working with.

However, in light audio recording, when each section is tracked, they need to be mixed and edited by section, so each section can then be exported into a new project for the complete mix.

So, the sections for It’s Not Happening comprise:

I should do a separate post about micro mixing, because I appear to have brought the term to music production myself, and each section has a different approach.

But, in the interest of providing an overview of how it’s approached, it follows these steps for each section:

Timing
Balance
Levels
Export as a wav file

Yeah: I should definitely start a series of post about this. Let me just add that to my content calendar.

Step two – create a new project

Just like we usually do.

Now, we import the tracks that we exported from each section into the new project. We import them in the order they were recorded. It’ll look like this.

Step three – complete mixing

With all sections imported as their own tracks, we can start mixing for the final product.

Firstly, we bring the levels of each track to zero, with the digital fader in BandLab.

Then, we increase the volume of the drums until it’s at that not-quite-peaking spot.

Does it sound OK to you? OK, good!

Now, you need to work your way down through each track, increasing the level of each one until you’re happy with how the sounds are balanced.

Step four – add some compression

Compression is the only effect I add.

To be honest, it’s the only one I can – BandLab’s playback starts to lag if I add anything else.

If you’re super-new to producing music, here’s a decent explainer video of what audio compression is and does.

But… we are light audio recordists! We have no time for dwelling on science and numbers and listening carefully! We Google go-to compression settings for each track and bung them in a cheat sheet! Apologies in advance – I’d like to subscribe you to the blog in exchange for it.

Step five – take a break

Finally, save your progress, exit the Mix Editor, and leave it for a day or two.

Then, go back to it, and adjust the levels again, because it’ll sound completely different!

Step six – mastering

As with mastering Alroight Bab, BandLab will master your song to CD quality, for free, in a few clicks.

There’s nothing further to add.

It’s Not Happening: conclusion

Pros	Cons
It’s getting better: I definitely feel this is a higher quality recording than Alroight Bab	Leakage: I need to be more mindful of the volume of headphones when recording into the mic, especially with percussion
Gear: the new odds and ends are working out well	BandLab: I don’t want to rag on it too much – it’s free – but, not being able to mix everything holistically is annoying

To conclude, this is how the final cut sounds.

And there we have it. Another song recorded lightly, in terms of cost, space, and processes.

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