Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Recording the Kalimba:
Mixing Down

Let's say that you have recorded two tracks as suggested last week: one for the kalimba as heard through a microphone, the other routed from the pickup through an effects processor and into your computer. Your final product will be a stereo mixed WAV file, but we aren't there yet. First, we have to MIX DOWN.

We could take 10 or 20 tracks, each with a different instrument, each instrument located (i.e., "panned") somewhere in the stereo field. Then we add up all of these tracks, each panned in some way, and each track modulated in volume in some way, as a LEFT channel and a RIGHT channel. This is the stereo mix.

OK, there are whole books written about mixing, and I didn't write any of them. But for now, just know that you need to mix your project down, song by song, into a stereo mix and - be creative .

You will probably save this as a WAV format file - that is the standard for CDs. And you will probably mix it down to 16 bits, 44.1 kHz sampling rate.

Then what? ...more next week!

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