Mixing is one of the most crucial stages of recording. This is where your sound starts to finalise, where you choose how loud sounds are, where to bring sound in and out, and what direction the sound will go (panning). Originally I planned to mix The Alphabet in 7.4.1 (Dolby Atmos). I did some research on Dolby Atmos and thought it was a great idea. This decision was made in week 5, just over the halfway mark. At this point I was already making the sound for The Alphabet and thought that I would have enough time to mix in Dolby Atmos, as the weeks went on the sound was still evolving and growing and not nearing the mix stage and the longer it went on the less time I’d have to mix in Dolby Atmos.
I decided to scrap mixing in Dolby Atmos due to time restraints, it is something I’d be very interested to revisit as I really enjoyed researching about it and also what Dolby Atmos is capable of. I have also never mixed in surround sound, let alone something like Dolby Atmos. So I think choosing to scrap Dolby Atmos was a smart idea.
Once I scrapped mixing in Dolby Atmos I decided to mix in 5.1 Surround Sound.
(5.1 Surround Diagram)
5.1 surround sound is one of the most common and accessible types of surround sound you will find, being used in professional workspaces, and being used in home sound systems. I decided to use 5.1 as it was my first time mixing in surround sound and it would be a good starting place as it is basic enough for me to learn and mix in a short amount of time. I ended up mixing in the performance lab at LCC. I mixed over two 3-hour sessions. I did plan to mix in the composition room originally but it was booked up consistently.
The sound art technicians and I patched the performance lab sound system to be configuarted to 5.1. I wrote down this patch to remember it so I could patch it myself and teach myself how to use the room. Here is the document I wrote the patch down in. I attempted to use pro tools to mix in 5.1 but after lots of technical difficulties and help from the technicians, we decided logic would be the best. Considering I only had about 6 hours over 2 days to mix, I don’t have a lot of time to troubleshoot. Logic luckily is very simple with mixing in surround sound, so it was a relief.
I started experimenting with how I would pan my sound, in The Alphabet there are specific sounds that are intentionally placed in certain places, these sounds are the sounds from the girl and the figure that you hear in the middle of the piece. The gasps from both the girl, the figure, and the scream of the figure dying. These are panned to a specific place so the sound of these objects is consistently coming from the same place. It shows that there is intention in where these sounds are coming from and works well.
Mixing in 5.1 was a very informative experience, the first session was spent with me experimenting with the 5.1 set-up and what it is capable of, and during the second session I started auto-panning sounds around the speakers and automating the mix. I made a big mistake once I bounced my mix. I did not realise that I had to bounce a 5.1 mix differently from a normal mix. The other mistake I made was instead of sending my original stems to 5 different buses I panned and mixed them all individually, which is also incorrect. This mixed with not having any time left booked to mix or correct my changes left me to submit my stereo mix instead. Even though it is unfortunate that I could not submit my 5.1 mix, it was still a very informative experience and will take what I learnt from this experience and push on with it in the future.
My stereo mix was mixed on my monitors in my flat and was mixed in Ableton 11 live. This mix is what I’ve been working on since I started the proper score after my demo, I have played it through the composition room, the performance lab, and the small sound room and made changes where I needed to. I feel very confident in its quality. I have also shown people my work and gotten some great feedback, It was mentioned that when she wakes up from the dream to try and distance the sound from the rest of the piece. I did attempt to do this but also still keep a bit of that dreamlike quality as I find the ending even more of a nightmare than the actual dream.
I was also told that the scream could be changed and eq to sound like she is trying to scream but cannot. I found this idea great and quite scary but with the attempts, I made by eq and effects I could not get it to sound how I would like it to. So I left the original scream in.