Mixing Slaves: Taming HUGE Layers for a Star Vocal Performance

The track “I’d Rather See Your Star Explode” by Slaves is a monster of a production. It’s an exercise in balancing dense instrumentation, atmospheric textures, and modern electronics with one of the most iconic voices in modern rock, Jonny Craig. When you get to peek inside a session like this, produced and mixed by the incredible Eric Ron, you realize the challenge isn’t about fixing bad sounds—it’s about tastefully managing an arsenal of perfectly crafted ones.

We got a look at the raw multitracks, and it’s a masterclass in modern rock production. Let’s break down the key elements and the mixing challenges they present.

Building an Explosive Drum Foundation

Right off the bat, the drum sounds are huge and solid. The parts are simple and effective, providing a great foundation. The real magic, however, is in the layering and processing choices.

Layering the Kick and Snare for Punch and Realism

This isn’t just a simple mic’d kit. Eric Ron built a hybrid drum sound that delivers the best of both worlds.

• The Kick: You get three tracks: a Kick In mic, a Kick Out mic, and one of Eric Ron’s own kick samples. The sample provides that modern, punchy “gunshot” attack that slices through the mix. But the real weight comes from the Kick Out mic, which is loaded with low-end thump. Blending these gives you both the aggressive transient and the deep body.
• The Snare: Similarly, it’s a blend. The Snare Top mic provides the realistic pitch and body of the drum itself. But to get that high-production crack and impact, it’s reinforced with a powerful snare sample that Eric created. This combination ensures the snare is fat, impactful, and never gets lost.

The Power of a Single, “Nasty” Room Mic

Some sessions overwhelm you with options—multiple close rooms, far rooms, overhead rooms, etc. Here, Eric Ron keeps it simple and incredibly effective with a single room mic track. But this track is pure attitude. It sounds heavily processed, likely with some aggressive <a href=”https=”https://nailthemix.com/audio-compressor”>compression, giving it a “nasty” and explosive character.

When you blend this room mic into the main drum shell mix, it does two things: it adds a sense of length and decay, making the kit sound bigger, and it injects a massive amount of energy and glue. The drum kit sounds great without it, but the room mic makes it feel more alive and explosive. This is a perfect example of a deliberate production choice where one perfectly sculpted track does more than five generic ones.

Crafting the Perfect Blended Bass Tone

The bass tone in this track is a prime example of modern, multi-layered bass. You’re given three distinct tracks that work together to create one massive sound: DI, Amp, and Distortion.

1. DI: This is your clean, fundamental low-end. It provides the solid foundation and sub-frequencies.
2. Amp: This track brings in the mid-range definition and character, helping the bass be heard on smaller speakers and cut through the dense guitars.
3. Distortion: Here’s the “meat grinder.” This track adds the aggressive grit, harmonics, and attack that helps the bass lock in with the heavy guitars and punchy drums.

The key takeaway here is how interdependent these three tracks are. If you mute any one of them, the entire bass sound falls apart. It’s a perfect sonic sculpture where each layer serves a specific purpose, creating a bass tone that is both heavy and clear.

Managing a Wall of Guitars and Effects

The guitars in this song range from huge, crushing rhythms to intricate, atmospheric layers. The challenge here is creating clarity and space.

Huge Rhythms and Atmospheric Textures

The main rhythm guitars are massive. Your job as a mixer isn’t to create that size, but to control it. The goal is to keep them feeling huge without letting them swallow the bass, drums, and—most importantly—the vocals. This often involves careful EQ strategies to carve out space for other elements to poke through.

Beyond the rhythms, the session is filled with textural guitars: clean tapping parts, atmospheric pads, and effected leads. These are the details that give the song its depth.

Production vs. Pre-Mixing: Working with Printed Effects

A crucial insight from this session is that many of the guitar effects—delays, reverbs, modulations—are printed directly onto the audio tracks. A novice might see this as limiting, but it’s a deliberate production choice. Eric Ron and the band dialed in these specific sounds to be an integral part of the song’s DNA. This isn’t “pre-mixing”; it’s production. Your task isn’t to reinvent the wheel but to take these masterfully produced sounds and find their perfect place in the mix.

The Ultimate Priority: Jonny Craig’s Vocals

No matter how cool the trap hats or synths are, the main event in a Slaves track is Jonny Craig’s voice. He has one of the most recognizable and dynamic voices in rock, and it has to be the front-and-center focus of the mix.

The session is full of intricate vocal arrangements—leads, overdubs, filtered vocal effects, and brilliant harmonies, including a classy upper octave that adds a ton of emotion. The biggest mixing challenge of this entire song is to make sure every single one of these amazing production elements serves the vocal. It’s easy to get distracted by cool-sounding synth loops or trap kicks and turn them up too loud, but that will inevitably bury the most important part of the song. The goal is to build a stage for the vocal to soar, using all the other elements to support it, not compete with it. If you want to take a crack at mixing these incredible vocal layers yourself, you can learn more about Erik Ron’s vocal production method here.

The Final Challenge: A Masterclass in Balance

This session is the opposite of a “fix it in the mix” situation. Every single track is recorded and produced to a world-class standard. The challenge isn’t about repair; it’s about balance. You have to weave together powerful drums, multi-layered bass, a wall of guitars, and a treasure trove of synths, samples, and effects, all while keeping the star vocal performance right in the listener’s face.

Studying a session like this is one thing, but getting your hands on it is another. Imagine being able to solo the “meat grinder” bass track, re-balance the kick drum layers, or automate the effects to create your own version of this massive mix. At Nail The Mix, you get to do just that. We provide you with the actual multitracks from huge artists like Slaves, and then you get to watch the original producer mix the song from scratch, explaining every single move. It’s the ultimate way to move beyond presets and learn how chart-topping records are really made.

Ready to mix a masterpiece? Get the “I’d Rather See Your Star Explode” multitracks and Eric Ron’s full mixing masterclass now.