A Different Type of Mix

Just finished working on a different type of project. Our choir received the music for this year's Christmas musical. It included a CD of the music and vocals mixed much like any music CD you would get today, but there was not a CD for each of the individual parts. Working with our assistant music director, we recorded four folks, each doing one of the four parts (Soprano,Alto, Tenor, Bass). He then went in and worked with Melodyne on each part. Since this was to be used as a reference and practice CD for the choir folks who would be performing the music, each note really had to be as exact as possible. Didn't want a lot of wavering. That took some time, to say the least.
 
Then came time to mix. The first step was to place the vocal/music CD in the background, but still be able to hear the music and the other parts. Each reference part (SATB) was then placed up the middle, and made prominent. This is much different from the normal method of doing things.So we had a group of track for alto, another for bass, another for tenor and finally soprano.
 
The second group of mixes was to create a second reference that had all four parts, but done in a way that would let the user easily detect their part, as well as the other three parts. To accomplish this, the CD music was in the background, but up the center. The soprano part was panned 25% to the left, alto 25% to the right. Tenor was 75% left, bass 75% to the right. The result was a mix that you could easily distinguish what part you were listening for.  This would help the folks learn not only their part, but recognize what they were singing 'against'
 
Needless to say, this was different. In a regular mix are we separate parts but keep a close ear on the blend. Here, the separation was much more distinct. The tone correction had to be spot on, no room to waiver. It made for a very interesting past couple of weeks.

Actually it is our assistant music director that did the Melodyne part (never did learn to read bass clef, and now I'm too old to care ). And he stated it was tedious - more hours than I care to think about. I was fortunate in that I did the recording and comping. He then did the Melodyne correction, after which I did the final mix and export so that we had a CD of complete songs for each part (SATB). It was fun, but it also showed we still have a lot to learn about X3!