Using Automation on Nick Greeley and the Operators

This is a new song mixed by me, automation and all, and recorded by Telefunken at their studios (and on their microphones).

I spent more time on this song than usual. Alot of the time was spent in automation – getting the volume levels right of each track at each second. Alot of time, too, was spent in editing. See, once I did the rough mix of the song, I found it to be a little boring and mundane. So then I noticed alot of song changes that seemed to build excitement. I thought of some things that I heard of from Manny Marroquin about how he mixed “Locked out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars. During that session, he described how he mixed segments of the song together as one piece, and did something different on another portion. It was mentioned that he would tie the pieces together with themes, and similarities. This was my inspiration.

What I did was cut certain tracks up by section. I made copies of the horns, guitars, and lead vocals, and spliced the audio from one section to another. Then I applied different sound and automation of effects to the different segments. Some sections have more of one kind of effect vs another section.

This made the song more interesting, to me. However the song became more complicated, which is why I spent so much time in the automation phase. I hope you enjoy this song called “Hold On Me” by Nick Greeley and the Operators: