# Mix Breakdown Video Series - New Video For Film Score



## Gerhard Westphalen (May 14, 2018)

I'm releasing the first part of this new series I'm trying out. Hopefully you can learn something from my work. Any feedback (like if I should do more of these) would be greatly appreciated. 

I'll try to post the remaining 7 parts daily.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 15, 2018)

Second part is now up


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## R. Soul (May 15, 2018)

Great mix Gerhard. A huge improvement on the rough mix.
I'm surprised such a sparse song has so many tracks though. 

I don't mix live bands really, so I'm curious... how long did this mix take you to do?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 15, 2018)

R. Soul said:


> Great mix Gerhard. A huge improvement on the rough mix.
> I'm surprised such a sparse song has so many tracks though.
> 
> I don't mix live bands really, so I'm curious... how long did this mix take you to do?



I don't think there were too many tracks. If you exclude the 3 passes of guitar solos, the sound design, and orchestra tracks, it's a pretty normal layout.

It probably took a couple of days of working a few hours each day. In total, probably somewhere 6 - 12 hours.


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## gsilbers (May 15, 2018)

very cool!


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## AllanH (May 15, 2018)

Gerhard, thank you for posting. What an incredible difference between the tmp mix and your final.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 17, 2018)

For anyone interested, I've posted up to the third video


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 21, 2018)

All of the 8 parts are now posted and I also created a playlist. If anyone is interested, I'll do another series where I go through some feature scores I've mixed.


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## SimonCharlesHanna (May 21, 2018)

you're very easy to listen to Gerhard  Good luck with the series!!


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## AllanH (May 21, 2018)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> All of the 8 parts are now posted and I also created a playlist. If anyone is interested, I'll do another series where I go through some feature scores I've mixed.



Thank you Gerhard - this was very interesting. This must have taken hours to put together. Your mix looks "so easy" when just viewing the videos, but it's clear that lots of thoughts went into each step. I'm impressed how all the work came together and substantially improved the mix.

I'd be very interested in hearing your explanation of an orchestral mix/master.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 21, 2018)

AllanH said:


> Thank you Gerhard - this was very interesting. This must have taken hours to put together. Your mix looks "so easy" when just viewing the videos, but it's clear that lots of thoughts went into each step. I'm impressed how all the work came together and substantially improved the mix.
> 
> I'd be very interested in hearing your explanation of an orchestral mix/master.


Well it is easy  

IMO it's all about taste and knowing what direction you want to take things. Once you have that, putting it all together is pretty quick and then just a bit of fine tuning to finish it off.

I originally planned to do this more for scores but had just recently finished this song so figured I'd start with it. The score I'm planning to look at next is a very interesting score so keep an eye out for it!


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## OleJoergensen (May 22, 2018)

Thank you for sharing. It was interesting. You result sounds good!


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## AllanH (May 26, 2018)

Hi Gerhard - I was re-watching your series and was wondering: Can share your thoughts regarding using different reverbs for different instruments? 

It sounds fantastic, so it obviously works.

As a side note; thanks for the into to the Seventh Heaven "Bricasti" VST. I'm looking at that.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 26, 2018)

AllanH said:


> Hi Gerhard - I was re-watching your series and was wondering: Can share your thoughts regarding using different reverbs for different instruments?
> 
> It sounds fantastic, so it obviously works.
> 
> As a side note; thanks for the into to the Seventh Heaven "Bricasti" VST. I'm looking at that.


Unless I want a very characteristic sound-design-y reverb (like one of those long BigSky sort of sounds on a guitar) then I chose my reverbs based on the song and overall sound rather than on the instrument. I'll normally use some sort of room to get a bit of distance and make everything sit together and then I'll add some sort of longer reverb. In this song I probably used more different reverbs than I normally do. I think this was probably because there were a lot of elements so I wanted some to sit more in the background with longer reverbs. With vocals I always use 3 reverbs just so I can have some more control and be able to dial it in where I want it to sit.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 31, 2018)

I've just posted my new Mix Breakdown for a score from a documentary. It gets a little dry towards the middle but I think there are a couple of good bits at the end.


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## AllanH (May 31, 2018)

That was very interesting; thank you. I thought it was especially neat that you took many of the tracks and essentially just put a limiter on for safety. Sometimes doing very little is the best. To me, it seems like it would be a difficult score to mix as it (imo) wasn't especially melodic but rather somewhat "erratic" when heard without the documentary.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 31, 2018)

AllanH said:


> That was very interesting; thank you. I thought it was especially neat that you took many of the tracks and essentially just put a limiter on for safety. Sometimes doing very little is the best. To me, it seems like it would be a difficult score to mix as it (imo) wasn't especially melodic but rather somewhat "erratic" when heard without the documentary.


Actually, I think this one was a lot easier than most since Ian used pretty much only Spitfire libraries and they already sound great on their own. Most of my time was spent on the solo instruments. On some projects I'll get samples from all sorts of different libraries plus a dozen musicians tracked separately to be used in the orchestra (like a full wind section but all tracked separately in a small room). Then it becomes a big challenge to get it to all work together.


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## JaikumarS (Jun 1, 2018)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> All of the 8 parts are now posted and I also created a playlist. If anyone is interested, I'll do another series where I go through some feature scores I've mixed.



Thank you Gerhard


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