The Challenges of Mixing and Mastering My First Album

Curating my discography involves mixing and mastering each and every track, allowing the audience to enjoy them in the best possible quality. At the time of writing, I only have two works that satisfy the standards for an independent project: the “Montaje Democrático (Demos)” album and the Electrocueca single. 

The next logical step was to look back and revisit my first album, but I had to face a major challenge: more than half of the tracks had no multitrack recordings, and the “masters” (let’s just call them original files, since they never went through a proper mixing process) were distorted MP3 files where you couldn’t distinguish the individual instruments.

Despite this, I had one advantage: almost all the instrumentals were created with Walk Band, and I still had the application’s soundfonts. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that if I recreated each instrumental in extreme detail, paying attention to the timing differences millisecond by millisecond, I could have all the elements separated by track and mix the demos for the first time. The only rule was not to add any additional elements or remove any of them.

As of today, the tracks that still need to be restored can be counted on one hand, but they are precisely the most difficult ones. It’s hard to get the exact percussion hits right, so I have to go hit by hit, comparing them.

I'm absolutely delighted with how the finished product turned out. Everything sounds more balanced and spacious, without losing that simple, childlike production style. My younger self would have loved to hear his tracks like this: absolute creative freedom, but with a sound quality that the Walk Band export couldn't provide.

Follow me if you want to know how this all ends.