Build A Track Entirely In Absynth Pt 7 – Mixing

In this new episode of our “Build A Full Track Entirely In Absynth” series we are finally ready for mixing and moving our ideas into a real song!

For this week I’ve bounced all the sound down to audio and did some first mixing, the arrangement is now 99% done and we are starting to hear a song inside all the craziness.
This video is going to focus more on this mixing aspect, because I wanted to explain the full process of making a song.

The Beauty Of Audio
There are 2 big advantages of working with audio when you are mixing, one of them is that you can align everything perfectly, and make sure all the transients match up.
It is way easier to see what is going on and you can shift sounds very precisely to get exactly the right groove.

The other advantage would be that you don’t have any inconsistency or weird midi stuff going on, the audio is right there and it’s always going to sound the same.
You also eliminate problems with delayed automation and crashing plugins.

An additional good thing about working with audio is that you can get creative in a totally new way by stretching audio, reversing it, drawing inside the waveform, etc.

The Art Of Mixing
I always like to do a quick mix first where I get everything sort of into place, I make sure my levels are all working together and this is also the part where I do some rough EQ-ing and compressing.
After that it’s time for the more fancy stuff, applying reverbs and using some subtle effects like a chorus or a delay unit.
At this point I also keep an eye on my stereo image, making sure every sound has its place inside the mix.

Of course there is a lot more to all these mixing concepts, and it’s something that you can keep learning and improving for the rest of your life, I just hope that I can get you a few ideas and explain some of the basics.

Now What?
Now it’s time for you to start your own song, and maybe it’s not a bad idea to work in just one or two synthesizers!
For me it really helped keeping my focus because I didn’t switch different plugins all the time which causes a lot of distraction.
It was still a big challenge though, and it took me a lot of time to get the first arrangement down, but I found some cool new ideas in return!

Absynth is an awesome synthesizer for a project like this because you can really do anything you want with it and it was also very friendly on my CPU which really impressed me!

Check back next week where we are going to finish this project and I will setup a download in the ADSR store with the sounds that I made for this song.
That way it will be easier for you to rebuild the song or, even better, start your own song!

Take care!
Jor