Here is some information on the mixing/producing of Earned It by The Weeknd, produced by Stephan Moccio and mixed by Dave Reitzas.
"If you had told me 3 weeks ago that I would be mixing a track by The Weeknd for Fifty Shades of Grey, I would have said “Yeah, right…me?”
Just so happens that about 4 months ago, Stephan Moccio got my name from David Foster to see if I would mix the NHL theme he did for Canadian hockey.
Did the gig for him and totally kicked ass.
Three weeks ago, Stephan called me and said he had a couple of songs that needed to be mixed right away and could I do it. Of course I said yes.
As soon as he sent me the demos, I knew that this was going to be a fun experience that would allow me to use all of my mixing tricks.
Because they were on an extremely tight deadline, I only had one day to mix The Weeknd song. (a couple of days later, I mixed another song for the movie by Skylar Grey).
Did a lot of my pre-mix homework by learning as much as I could about both Artists; studied the demos-to make sure I didn’t lose the vibe; and gathered a bunch of my samples and sound FX that I thought would work in the song.
For “Earned It”, I started mixing with the drums, bass, and vocals only. Used some samples to augment the drums, re-amped the original snare feeding it into an Aurotone speaker to my real upside-down Ludwig snare in the live room; did a few cymbal overdubs; and added transitions using reverse sounds. Also used hardware SPL Transient Designer on some kicks and snares, and I had a pair of Distressors that I used sparingly for parallel compression.
Vocals went through NTI EQ3’s and DBX 902 De-Essers; no compression- just fader rides in and out of the box. PCM 42’s for delays, and Spatializer for that ‘in your face’ sound. FX were a combination of Bricasti, AMS, and Eventide. BGVs had combinations of Waves RVox and console EQ. I was working on the mix later in the day without the lead vocal in, but I had up some of the vocal FX and delays. When the song was ending and I just had up the distorted vocal effect, it became crystal clear that that’s the way the song had to end. It was an unintentional happy accident to have only the distorted vocals during the fade.
Then I spent time working on the piano (live), bass (live), guitar (live), and wurlitzer (sample). Didn’t use that much compression on anything, but automated some of the EQ and levels ITB, and did some cutting and pasting of some parts to make the bridge drive hard. 95% of the dynamics in my mixing comes from me pushing the faders on the SSL.
Strings were the most fun. Had to keep it big and warm; so finding the right FX, EQ, and balance between the marcato, pizzicato, and tremolo strings took some experimenting. I used a combination of the Bricasti M7, DSP 4000, TC M5000, and AMS reverbs. For EQ’s, it was MAAG EQ4’s and Izotope Ozone 6 plugs.
Plus some SSL 9K console EQ. The whole time I was mixing the song, my mantra was “This is a ‘f@#king’ song..Make it SEXY”! I only wished it was a longer song.
Lots of other small things going on in the mix, but that’s pretty much the basics above. Hats off to Stephan Moccio for a fantastic production, and to his engineer Jay Paul Bicknell for some great recording!
Again, thanks everyone for the kind words and I appreciate that you like the song and the mix.
janainaart
areudirty
dededos
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
