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To Cheat or Not to Cheat, or is Cheating even the Question?

Hey everyone!


This past couple weeks I've gotten a chance to mix a record by Dan Wilburn for a class I'm taking here at Capital University that focuses on Pro Tools and the many production techniques you'd bring to different scenarios. In this scenario, vocals of lead singer are a bit rocky, and let's say the band wasn't overall happy with their drums all the way, so we were to utilize the awesome program known as Trigger 2 by the famous Steven Slate.


To begin I did a general mix of the instruments and found overall the organ and electric guitar really harsh. Tried to dull it down with Izotope's Vynil and that did the trick! Once I established a mix, I pulled up autotune and found a setting that surprisingly worked through the whole song. I still decided to do it the AudioSuite way and print it to the audio.


After that I put Trigger on both the kick and snare track and I must say it definitely helped. Unfortunately there was so much bleed in the tom and hi hat tracks I didn't even bother to replace it. Overall I'd say in this scenario, some could say it's cheating. The band needs to be awesome in the first place! But our jobs as engineers are to simply make it sound it's best and tools like Auto-tune and trigger 2 for the average to below average band are lifesavers. For experts and true artists, it still can be used to tighten up and already awesome take! So overall I do not agree that Autotune and Trigger 2 are the fall of man. There will always be excellent artists, good artists, ok artists, not so good artist and terrible artists. As engineers, the song is our concern, not the ethics of will the band sound this good live. Leave that to the live engineer! Haha


Will post mix soon!

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