13-03-2015, 06:00 PM
(This post was last modified: 13-03-2015, 06:01 PM by The_Metallurgist.)
i've got to take my hat off to Patrick, for his energy and seemingly endless enthusiasm.....and always interesting compositions, i hasten to add.
i've made a lot of personal artistic decisions here....and none were done in order to [try to] satisfy the Artist but instead to give myself the opportunity of creative freedom of expression....and then to try and get it to work in the mix!
first snag for me was the length of the song. i struggled with the duration, to be honest. so, while not ideal, i cut out v3 and c3 and hacked c2 with the material and time i had available. i like the little play with suspense "I see her in.................Blue". this was as close to a middle-8 as i was going to get.
the lead guitar was the little girl, in my vision....dreamy, wandering mind and playful spirit. i messed around with it's ambiance a lot, dropping it back in the chorus (dreamy), and pulling it forward in the verses, for example. removing the chorusing and mixing down to mono gave me scope to make the necessary changes throughout the song to give me the flexibility i needed....enabling attention between verses and choruses and especially in working the outro. gotta keep the audience engaged....
i was concerned with the LV during the outro, so made the BV's contribute a lot more to the climax of the song. it was a damage limitation exercise on the one hand, but i think it forced me to work the concept and make the song very individual during the close in the way the BV's were working in tandem with the LV. i did tweak the LV in places for pitch where it really concerned me, but resisted doing so for the whole song. at higher SPL's, the sibilance starts to climb out, as one would expect. i hit it as hard as i dared on the basis that this isn't a song where the levels get cranked and i also wanted to keep the presence in the vocal as much as possible by retaining the HF's where needed - air. yeah, it's a compromise and i do acknowledge there's scope for further reduction. the nasal character is the outcome of the mike and can't be fixed in the mix. that was a shame.
the delays and additional vocal arrangement tweaks were implemented based on a gut feel that the song was missing something. there was a lot of space and time in the lyrics during the verses which almost had me losing interest. so, the repeats were added as a means of emphasising the key features/charm/innocence etc, of the youngster. these repeats had delays, and the delays were messed around with to change their delivery and add some sonic interest at a subtle level i.e. their amplitudes were backed right off and their timbres modified towards a warmer bias. it was an experiment.....don't judge it, eh chaps.
the delays on the eguitar outro sounded cliche, so this was re-worked to give a bit of originality and closure. the vocal clip was dropped in with that in mind and it also seals the name of the song for the audience. The Beatles used the opening lines of all their songs to hammer the song titles.
the organ was dropped in (thanks for the MIDI) so i could lose the eguitar for a verse in an effort to keep the song fresh and interesting....and perhaps a little less predictable; i think i muted the Rhodes here too. one could argue about the patch's merit in the song and it's vibe, but i liked the contrast and it's dynamic polyphony. the toy piano was originally running twice, but as i'd deleted it with v3 it only got this exposure and kept the organ company.
the second eguitar was deleted entirely, along with a keyboard track which i felt offered little in the way of sonic interest/relevance beyond what was left. the outcome offered more space to focus on the vocal arrangement, especially during the outro. i wanted the vocals to be the main feature of this song more than anything else....the instruments were there merely to support the lyric and were thus mixed accordingly.
there was a sonic collision between the kick's low end and the bass. if i was fussing, i'd have dropped a sample over the kick for some better harmonics and overtones to help differentiate it. not today. the cymbals had a horrific frequency response akin to white noise which was highly problematic throughout the mix with their susceptibility in provoking the onset of fatigue (i went though hell trying to sort them out, actually), and were especially troublesome during the outro where they were exposed in the arrangement. it was soooo bad that nothing would touch them so i took the initiative to duck them. yeah, i was desperate by now.
drums were switched to a RH kit out of respect for the audience and their needs and expectations.
the 16bit WAV is here, for those who value quality over convenience. the link will live for a minimum of 4 weeks; if it's dead and you'd like the wav, feel free to PM me.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1565...urgist.wav
thanks for listening..
i've made a lot of personal artistic decisions here....and none were done in order to [try to] satisfy the Artist but instead to give myself the opportunity of creative freedom of expression....and then to try and get it to work in the mix!
first snag for me was the length of the song. i struggled with the duration, to be honest. so, while not ideal, i cut out v3 and c3 and hacked c2 with the material and time i had available. i like the little play with suspense "I see her in.................Blue". this was as close to a middle-8 as i was going to get.
the lead guitar was the little girl, in my vision....dreamy, wandering mind and playful spirit. i messed around with it's ambiance a lot, dropping it back in the chorus (dreamy), and pulling it forward in the verses, for example. removing the chorusing and mixing down to mono gave me scope to make the necessary changes throughout the song to give me the flexibility i needed....enabling attention between verses and choruses and especially in working the outro. gotta keep the audience engaged....
i was concerned with the LV during the outro, so made the BV's contribute a lot more to the climax of the song. it was a damage limitation exercise on the one hand, but i think it forced me to work the concept and make the song very individual during the close in the way the BV's were working in tandem with the LV. i did tweak the LV in places for pitch where it really concerned me, but resisted doing so for the whole song. at higher SPL's, the sibilance starts to climb out, as one would expect. i hit it as hard as i dared on the basis that this isn't a song where the levels get cranked and i also wanted to keep the presence in the vocal as much as possible by retaining the HF's where needed - air. yeah, it's a compromise and i do acknowledge there's scope for further reduction. the nasal character is the outcome of the mike and can't be fixed in the mix. that was a shame.
the delays and additional vocal arrangement tweaks were implemented based on a gut feel that the song was missing something. there was a lot of space and time in the lyrics during the verses which almost had me losing interest. so, the repeats were added as a means of emphasising the key features/charm/innocence etc, of the youngster. these repeats had delays, and the delays were messed around with to change their delivery and add some sonic interest at a subtle level i.e. their amplitudes were backed right off and their timbres modified towards a warmer bias. it was an experiment.....don't judge it, eh chaps.
the delays on the eguitar outro sounded cliche, so this was re-worked to give a bit of originality and closure. the vocal clip was dropped in with that in mind and it also seals the name of the song for the audience. The Beatles used the opening lines of all their songs to hammer the song titles.
the organ was dropped in (thanks for the MIDI) so i could lose the eguitar for a verse in an effort to keep the song fresh and interesting....and perhaps a little less predictable; i think i muted the Rhodes here too. one could argue about the patch's merit in the song and it's vibe, but i liked the contrast and it's dynamic polyphony. the toy piano was originally running twice, but as i'd deleted it with v3 it only got this exposure and kept the organ company.
the second eguitar was deleted entirely, along with a keyboard track which i felt offered little in the way of sonic interest/relevance beyond what was left. the outcome offered more space to focus on the vocal arrangement, especially during the outro. i wanted the vocals to be the main feature of this song more than anything else....the instruments were there merely to support the lyric and were thus mixed accordingly.
there was a sonic collision between the kick's low end and the bass. if i was fussing, i'd have dropped a sample over the kick for some better harmonics and overtones to help differentiate it. not today. the cymbals had a horrific frequency response akin to white noise which was highly problematic throughout the mix with their susceptibility in provoking the onset of fatigue (i went though hell trying to sort them out, actually), and were especially troublesome during the outro where they were exposed in the arrangement. it was soooo bad that nothing would touch them so i took the initiative to duck them. yeah, i was desperate by now.
drums were switched to a RH kit out of respect for the audience and their needs and expectations.
the 16bit WAV is here, for those who value quality over convenience. the link will live for a minimum of 4 weeks; if it's dead and you'd like the wav, feel free to PM me.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1565...urgist.wav
thanks for listening..
Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!