This session has been thoroughly cleaned. The kick, snare, and tom tracks are edited. The overheads need no cleaning—they’re supposed to contain all instruments. The tambourine was overdubbed, so no cleaning required. The bass was recorded direct—no cleaning required. There was only one section where the electric guitar didn’t play (not shown), where it was cleaned. The lead vocal, recorded in a large hall with stereo mics to capture reverb, was only gently cleaned. Chorus vocals have been cleaned, but not too stringently in order to maintain their live sound.
In last moth’s column [“Cleaning a Mix,” January 2014] we began cleaning our tracks in anticipation of actual mixing. We started by cutting the “bleed” among the various drum set mics to clarify the sound and reduce potential phase cancellation. But drums aren’t the only candidates for cleaning—anything recorded via microphone while another instrument or voice was sounding could have bleed issues.
Let’s go down the list of instruments.
