Kassiopeia Not-So-Weekly — 10/19/2025
It’s been a few weeks since my last post — it’s been a busy couple of months.
For one thing… I got married! 🎉
That definitely took priority for a bit, but besides that, we’ve been slowly grinding away at the mix for the album. I didn’t quite have an update worth a whole post until now, but things have started to move again.
🎚️ Mixing
We decided to focus on a single track first to really dial in the mix. Once that’s sounding right, we’ll apply the same baseline across the rest of the album — getting them about 90% there — and then polish each song individually.
We picked “An Improper Sendoff” as the first to tackle since it’s one of the more dynamic tracks on the record. Plus, the early mix already had a vibe we really liked, so it was a natural place to start.
Most of the work has been happening on Saturdays during our normal sessions, then we spend the week listening to each iteration with fresh ears. We wanted both of us present for the major mix decisions. For guitars and vocals, though, we did a lot of our own editing separately — leaning into each of our strengths.
Back in August, before the official mixing began, I spent a whole Saturday reamping guitars. I broke them into four categories:
MainLeadHeavyRoom
The Main track was always on, and the others were blended in for different sections as needed.
🎸 Guitar Recording Setup
All tones were mic’d with a Sennheiser e835 and a Shure SM57, both aimed straight on but just outside the center cone to roll off some of the higher fizz.
Power came from a Seymour Duncan PowerStage 170, running into a homemade 2x12 cab with a Creamback and a Vintage 30 (honestly, I’m not 100% sure which is which — I just went with “the left one” 😅).
Main Guitar Tone
This tone came from a combo of my Ibanez TS808 as a boost and a Boss Heavy Metal pedal set around medium gain.
I originally planned to use the Heavy Metal as a secondary boost, but it this qualilty that really made to tone crunchy from the single coils on my MIJ Fender Telecaster.
That Tele ended up being my main guitar for about 90% of the album.
Lead Guitar Tone
This was basically the main tone with the distortion cranked and an MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe for delay (tap-tempo’d per song).
I switched to this setting full-time during lead sections in the upper octaves and mostly used the e835 mic’d track for these takes.
Heavy Guitar Tone
This one was built from a Tube Screamer → Empress Heavy chain.
The Empress actually gave me more usable gain, so I used it for the chuggy breakdowns — often with a little bell boost around 3 kHz in parallel to make it cut harder.
In a few spots with really dense palm-muted riffs, I even swapped out the main tone entirely for this one.
I opted for the SM57 on these cause it had a little more intense attack.
Room Tone
This was a fun surprise. I was gonna mic the room for my other takes but ended up using both of my mic inputers for the close mic option. I dropped Ableton’s Hybrid Reverb on a parallel track and started scrolling through impulse responses — landed on the “St. Saviour Jerusalem” IR, which gave this short slap-back ambience that just worked.
It was originally supposed to be for sections when a guitar is playing alone, so it fills up the sound stage a little better, but I ended up leaving it as always on.
It added this live quality and it made the stop/start moments ring naturally.
🎸 Bass Guitar
The bass tone came from a Guitar Rig 6 preset I’ve used for a while. I bounced the track and made a parallel layer for the high-end detail, which ended up being another always-on parallel.
Originally, I wrote all the guitar parts in MIDI, so there’s also a subtle sine sub layer in certain spots — just enough to add warmth. specially when theres a little more of a legato flow.
The concept was a modern split tone:
- Highs: distorted for texture
- Lows: clean for punch and clarity
🎤 Vocals & Drums
Zane and I each built our own mixes, then kind of Frankensteined them together — taking the best parts from both for the drum and vocal balance.
Zane did all the vocal editing and mixing himself.
Funny moment: when you’re working fast in a DAW and stop playback right in the middle of a take, sometimes a random vocal echo loops forever because of a delay tail. I tried to sample one of those moments to reuse… but couldn’t find a spot that made sense. 😄
🔊 Mix Testing
Once we consolidated our ideas on An Improper Sendoff, we took a week off from the studio to listen everywhere:
- Living room sound system
- TVs
- Cell Phone speakers
- Multiple pairs of headphones and earbuds
We started by balancing drums → guitars → bass, then added synths and vocals the following week. Each session was smaller tweaks until we finally said, “Okay, this is it.”
Our theory with the inclusion of synths was mostly that it would be following a chord or melody and mixed in so it just kind of glends in with the rest of the song. Not too obvious but adds some support. there were a couple places we decided to let it shaine for some more ambience too.
This past week, we started editing “Apex” using the refined mix settings.
I thought this stage would go faster — but we spent the whole session tweaking transitions, breakdowns, and small details to make everything hit right.
Next week, we’ll probably move on to “Scintillation of the Source.”
It might not get as much polish yet, but you never know!
🎃 Album Anticipation
The original goal was a Halloween 2025 release…
but with two weeks left, it’s looking more like early to mid-November instead.
Still, the finish line is in sight — and it’s sounding massive.
Check back here soon for more updates!
— Richard