It was great to work on a classic R&B song, and with Ahmad’s great voice, it was a treat getting to mix one of his debut solo songs. Ahmad Kennedy is from R&B group Meant2B, and has collaborated with artists such as Baby Bash and J-Kwon. This song features a lot of background vocals, so it was a challenge spreading everything out to make sure that each instrument and voice is heard clearly. By listening to the before track, you can tell that many instruments are competing for the same low-end space, so lots of EQ work needed to be done.

So my biggest challenge was to retain the deep, rich bass, while also getting rid of the muddiness in the middle/low-end. I really like the wide stereo spread that came out of with this mix. If you listen to this song with a good set of speakers, or on headphones, you’ll see what I mean. We spent a lot of time getting the mix just right, much longer than my usual songs, but it was incredibly worth it, the song came out great!

This was a wonderful break from my previous work. Mary Jane Marcus is a singer/songwriter and pianist, and I was lucky enough to mix one of her songs. Mary Jane’s songs were recorded by Cookie Marenco, a grammy-nominated engineer, producer, and composer. It was such an honor to work on a song she had recorded!

Mary Jane gave me another song of hers that Cookie had mixed, wanting this track, We Call Him Dad, to sound similar in mixing style. Cookie is well known for being analog only, which can be hard to replicate, since I am all digital.

Some basic EQ was done to the piano, along with EQ, Reverb, and compression on the vocals. I spent a lot of time on the vocals, just trying to match the sound of analog gear with my digital plugins. Mary Jane had this to say about the final result:

Brandon did a great job of working with us until we got just what we wanted. He was able to turn our mix into a beautiful song, and did a great job of replicating our favorite sound from another track onto this track. Highly recommended.

I’m very satisfied with the mix. This is definitely up there with my favorite mixes so far.

My latest mixing project comes from Bazzy, a rapper from Atlanta. Bazzy was awesome to work with, and “Lost Without You” is a great song. The song was recorded great and already sounded good, so I was able to really dive deep into the mix and be nice and thorough. Bazzy had some issues with a previous mix, of the song, noting that the final version had pops and cracks in the final master. Definitely something I can take care of!

The track consisted of an instrumental, and then plenty of vocal tracks. I did some EQing on the vocals and used some compression to let them sit in the mix better, and shine through. I finished it up with a nice mastering limiter to give it the last little boost it needed.

My latest mix comes from Tungsten Carbide, an industrial/DnB artist near San Francisco, CA. Tungsten was a pleasure to work with, and was particular in what he wanted, requesting the following things:

1) Make the bass line more prominent
2) Increase/maintain the punch of the drums
3) Remove some of the low end mud
4) Keep the vocals intelligible

It’s a bit tricky mixing songs that use primarily electronic instruments, since they tend to be louder than acoustic ones, and it seems like they try to ‘compete’ with each other. Selective EQing was something I used to give room for all the different instruments to be heard, and also to remove the muddiness on the low end.

Tungsten had a few words to say about my mixing as well:

Brandon has great prices, quick turnaround time, and does good work in general. I have at least some basic knowledge and practice in mixing as well as college degrees in EE/signal processing, yet he was able to make a lot of improvements that had eluded me. He was also very good about offering a couple of A/B versions of the mix to bring out different instruments, as well as providing both a stereo mixdown and separate vocal/instrumental stems so that I can go back later and do separate “dance” and “radio” edits.

My latest mixing project comes from Kid Norm, a rapper from Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. I was very excited to work on something from this genre, especially because he wanted me to use AutoTune, which is something that I hadn’t done yet, and really wanted to practice. Here’s two of his songs that I mixed, No1 Like Me, and Work Out.

He also wanted some cool vocal effects on some parts, so all in all I had a lot of fun doing this mix, because it’s something I had never really done before. I used AutoTune to add some robotic effects, and also for some pitch correction on the hooks. I added some light reverb to the vocals as well, to make the vocals sound a bit warmer. I also did some selective EQing to bring out the individual parts and to make the whole mix come together.