22-05-2014, 08:04 AM
Observations about this project:
These tracks appear to have been recorded as individual instruments. The set also appears to have been cleaned at least a little before we got it. There are faint hints of gating and the like. Only tracks that required cleaning were kick, snare, and toms. These are also not the full raw tracks. Notice that there's an overdub on the guitar line with effects.
Also, the backing VOX are not two mono tracks, they are in fact the left/right image of an assembled backing track which contains a close double of the lead line. (Solo these tracks and then invert one. The lead double completely--100%--cancels. Only possible if it is an identical signal. The backing voices, though, do not. Based on the tone, it seems that the same singer did all the backing tracks as well. I didn't want these quite as wide so I soft panned them to about half instead of hard panning.
One thing to note about these backing tracks. Pull up the raw tracks, hard pan, them then listen through headphones to the first chorus, particulary the words, "pick up the pieces". Here's an example of when impression goes wrong. You'll hear the compressor kick in during the middle of the plossives so that there is a sudden and quite uncomfortable volume drop that, because the tracks are not *exactly* in sync, ricochettes from one ear to the other. For the rest of the track it seems fine but because of that plossive, it becomes audible there. If the compressor's attack time had been a might faster or a might slower, it
would probably not have been a problem but then might not have been right for the rest of it. There are a few different ways to deal with this but for me, since I had to apply more compression anyway, I just made sure that this didn't make it through without being beaten back a bit so that what was left would get masked over well enough.
About the mix:
I had problems getting things to sit still in the mix. I was trying to use bare minimum compression since the tracks sounded pretty good on there own but wasn't getting anywhere that way. It seemed that whatever I brought up to the level where it could be heard wanted to just take over. There was also so much mid tone buildup that it started to get muddy. Everything seemed to be wanting to fight for the same space. Took a while to get that figured out without doing more harm than good. Things seem okay now but I'm still not satisfied with the blend and not sure what to do about it. Each instrument had differences in articulation, tone, and style, note length, and sustain and that made it hard for me to figure out how to get things to mix together well. I can't fix it by compressing it a great deal because that will just ruin the feel of the tune so I'm a little unsure of how to approach this problem. There's some nice stuff in the piano line but because of the sustain on it, you have to keep it down enough that the nice parts basically disappear into the mix.
A particular problem for me was the tone of that electric guitar. It seemed out of character with the rest of the parts. So to address this, I went ahead and coppied the track, EQ'd it for the upper mid band and compressed it. I used that copy as an EQ fader for the guitar line to brighten the rhythm and then brought it down a few points when the lead came in to get back that subdued tone.
I used really no pan effects and only small volume adjustments as the song progressed and only applied light reverb.
Anyway, here's my mix.
Enjoy!
These tracks appear to have been recorded as individual instruments. The set also appears to have been cleaned at least a little before we got it. There are faint hints of gating and the like. Only tracks that required cleaning were kick, snare, and toms. These are also not the full raw tracks. Notice that there's an overdub on the guitar line with effects.
Also, the backing VOX are not two mono tracks, they are in fact the left/right image of an assembled backing track which contains a close double of the lead line. (Solo these tracks and then invert one. The lead double completely--100%--cancels. Only possible if it is an identical signal. The backing voices, though, do not. Based on the tone, it seems that the same singer did all the backing tracks as well. I didn't want these quite as wide so I soft panned them to about half instead of hard panning.
One thing to note about these backing tracks. Pull up the raw tracks, hard pan, them then listen through headphones to the first chorus, particulary the words, "pick up the pieces". Here's an example of when impression goes wrong. You'll hear the compressor kick in during the middle of the plossives so that there is a sudden and quite uncomfortable volume drop that, because the tracks are not *exactly* in sync, ricochettes from one ear to the other. For the rest of the track it seems fine but because of that plossive, it becomes audible there. If the compressor's attack time had been a might faster or a might slower, it
would probably not have been a problem but then might not have been right for the rest of it. There are a few different ways to deal with this but for me, since I had to apply more compression anyway, I just made sure that this didn't make it through without being beaten back a bit so that what was left would get masked over well enough.
About the mix:
I had problems getting things to sit still in the mix. I was trying to use bare minimum compression since the tracks sounded pretty good on there own but wasn't getting anywhere that way. It seemed that whatever I brought up to the level where it could be heard wanted to just take over. There was also so much mid tone buildup that it started to get muddy. Everything seemed to be wanting to fight for the same space. Took a while to get that figured out without doing more harm than good. Things seem okay now but I'm still not satisfied with the blend and not sure what to do about it. Each instrument had differences in articulation, tone, and style, note length, and sustain and that made it hard for me to figure out how to get things to mix together well. I can't fix it by compressing it a great deal because that will just ruin the feel of the tune so I'm a little unsure of how to approach this problem. There's some nice stuff in the piano line but because of the sustain on it, you have to keep it down enough that the nice parts basically disappear into the mix.
A particular problem for me was the tone of that electric guitar. It seemed out of character with the rest of the parts. So to address this, I went ahead and coppied the track, EQ'd it for the upper mid band and compressed it. I used that copy as an EQ fader for the guitar line to brighten the rhythm and then brought it down a few points when the lead came in to get back that subdued tone.
I used really no pan effects and only small volume adjustments as the song progressed and only applied light reverb.
Anyway, here's my mix.
Enjoy!
Old West Audio