Mixing and Tidying Up.

I wanted more control over the drum sound from Cubase's Groove Agent One plug-in. I discovered that if the Groove Agent One plug-in is created via VST Instruments option on the Devices menu, then up to 16 stereo output channels can be assigned to it. I assigned and configured 5 outputs as follows:

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. Toms
4. Other Percussion (e.g. hand claps)
5. Cymbals

 I could then apply techniques such as using parallel compression and eq shaping to each individual drum track to get a big drum sound. The 5 channels also meant I could adjust and get a good balance between the kick, snare and cymbals. I routed these 5 stereo outputs from Groove Agent to a 'Drum' group channel. This meant I could easily adjust the overall drum level within my mix using a single group channel slider in the mixer.

I applied compression to the vocals and bass synthesiser. I eq'ed the string/pad synthesiser sounds to boost the high frequencies to help make these synthesiser sounds stand out in the mix.

I mixed the track by moving all of the faders to the bottom of the screen. I set the drum group faders to a reference level (approx -6dB). I then gradually brought up all of the other faders in sequence (bass, synthesisrs, rhythm guitars, vocals and solo guitar) while ensuring I maintained a balanced sound.

Finally I mixed the whole song down to a 24bit 44.1Khz wav file ready for mastering.

This un-mastered mixdown is shown below: