Pedaling Prince Mix: Motor Tapes - Shore

[Pedaling Prince]

How did a feedback of the bass sound turn into a lecture of analog vs digital?

Sorry; maybe got a little carried away. I've been expecting someone to tell me I was using too much bass and, given how much I love the sound, I may have jumped on that a little hard...

If you are after a natural sound and limit your working / mixing because less is more then I think you should have recorded the tracks in the first place.
Like that vocal s-limiting. Have you ever listened anybody singing two inch from your ear? What that microphone capture isn't natural in the first place at all.

Which is why I don't say I use NO processing; I use MINIMUM POSSIBLE processing. In other words, I recognize that a dry recording of vocals in a studio doesn't sound natural so it WILL need at least a subtle reverb to bring out a sense of presence, and GENTLE compression helps carry it in the mix as well.

What if the lead voc track would have been edited already with a s-limiter? Would you miss those sibilances? Would you try to bring the s back with some transient plugin?

Actually, sibilance is one of those places where gentle processing is sometimes required. In my mixes I have both tamed and boosted sibilance with EQ when necessary (more often tamed than boosted). However, I have found that vocals recorded with good quality mics tend not to have any significant problems in this area unless the artist themselves has some peculiarity in the quality of their sibilants that doesn't translate well to recording. Of course, therein lies the rub; not every vocal you get is necessarily recorded with studio quality mics. Heck, the tribute version of "Who I Am" that I sung I used the mic built into this iMac (it's a impressive mic for a built-in, hardly a $1000.00 condenser but it's surprisingly serviceable ). So if I hear a problem I will, of course, deal with.

Speak Softly's vocals, for example (they have three songs on the site). The vocalist was WAY too close to the mic; proximity effect rendered her voice muddy and lifeless. She was one of the rare exceptions I had to use SIGNIFICANT EQ to balance the tone of her vocals. I still tried not to push it any further than I had to but I had to make a pretty deep cut in the low midrange, as I recall.

Oh, that reminds me. Regarding what you said earlier? If the singer IS 2" from the mic they're probably too close; might want to put a pop screen in front of them to encourage them to back up a notch or three...

Same thing with any instrument. Have you ever listened a snare drum in the same place where you would put your microphone?

Not the exact same location but the same distance, yes. No, I'm not talking about the close snare mic; I'm talking about the OVERHEADS. It is the OVERHEADS, NOT the close mics, that carry most of the overall sound of the drum kit, and THEY are generally set up at a much more natural distance from the drums. Those close mics are only meant as ENHANCEMENT, to allow you to push forward the loudness of a particular drum in the kit that you might want to feature a little more prominently than it appeared in the overheads. When COMBINED with the overheads (and, in some cases, room mics as well) all the signals WORKING TOGETHER are what create that natural drum sound.

The best examples of this in action on this site are any drums recorded in Telefunken mic demos; those drum recordings were consistently marvelous to work with, sometimes even with CHOICES of close, overhead and room mics to choose from to suit your taste.

If the recording in the first place is unnatural it doesn't become natural with using as little processing as possible.

Actually, if you place your microphones right, and your mics are of sufficient quality, they can, in fact, sound remarkably natural, particularly when combined as a whole. Again, the Telefunken mic demos are generally the best demonstration of this principle in action.

Maybe you can mix this again? I think the feedback and your mix evolving is the best part of this forum.

Actually, so do I, which is why I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I had to discard most of the mix projects that produced these mixes because of limited storage space. Truth be told, the reason I was doing these mixes originally was to put together a CD of unique music which I mixed myself to give it my personal touch; the CD was intended to give to my loved ones at Christmas. It was only later that I decided to post some of my mixes here.

However, when I'm working shorter working hours (right now I'm on a 48 hour work week) I wouldn't be totally opposed to taking another crack at it from scratch...

Regardless, though, I still appreciate feedback. Even if I can't implement it in these mixes I can keep the tips in mind for the next mixes I do. And for the next mixes I'm going to keep the mix project and do just that.