Shake

On the song ‘Shake,’ I started with using some plugins to remove the background noise that was in the video that was used for the song. Next I focused on the drums since they are the main backbone of the song. In order to get them as punchy as I could I did some parallel bus compression on all elements of the drums. I also added some multiband compression to the snare to drastically decrease the lows and bring out the highs to give it more bite. I also sidechained the kick to the bass with compression to help separate the kick and bass and to also add a pumping feel within the lower frequencies. 

Next, I worked on the synths since they occupy a lot of space in the mix and also compete with the vocals frequently. I added a couple of filtering plugins to the synth to give it some more motion within it’s wide frequency range. I also added a Pro Q-3 plugin to most of the instrumental tracks with the lead vocal tracks sidechained to it to allow for some compression of the frequencies competing with the vocals. I also added a Pro-Q3 on the synths with the horn section sidechained and boosted some high range frequencies to help with it competing with the synths. 

For the lead vocal, the artist wanted the song to be very up-tempo and dance inspired, so I opted for having an extremely aggresive Autontune placed on it.

I also felt the vocals needed a lot of bite and punch, so I added a Slate Digital mic pre coupled with their LA2A and some saturation to make them stand out more. The vocals still felt like they were lacking edge, so I made a bus for the Lead vocal with some light distortion mixed in to give it more grit. I also gave the vocals an eighth note delay return to make the song sound more trance-like.