Here's my contribution. I used Ramblin' Man by the Allman Brothers as a general reference for the period sound. It's the guitar tone that got me thinking about that song. Wow, that acoustic guitar was awful. Must have been an alignment problem on the multitrack. I had to dig deep to find any high end on any of the tracks. I just gave up on the piano. Vocals were great. I gated everything to kill all that noise, and modulated a high shelf EQ on the acoustic guitar to make a poor man's noise reduction Smile Notch filters at 60, 120, and 300 Hz killed the AC noise.
Just updated this. Squeezed a little more air out of the dull tracks and finished some automation my lazy butt should have done the first time around. I'm still too lazy to fix the sloppy drummer's out-of-time snare hits Finally got the piano to sound more like a piano and less like a toy.
Updated again. I just can't leave this track alone Switched acoustic guitar noise reduction strategy by using ReaFir (stock Reaper plugin). Tightened up low end. Changed snare tone. I'm super happy with it now. It sounds to me like a real commercial recording in my car and on other systems around the house. I may go back and pull a little reverb out of the lead guitar and vocals. Maybe someone with fresh ears can tell me if I should.
For me, this is a favorite of the tunes offered here.
I like the guitar sound you set up in the intro. I think you did a good job of getting this in the vein of your reference. This is actually a pretty good mix.
I would make a couple of comments, though. First, I think the snare may be a tad high but only a little. There's also something about the delay/reverb setup you have that's making it a little hard to listen do. When I sum it to mono my ears relax a bit more. I think some of that is EQ (mids poking out too much) but also partly transients jumping out a smidge to much(compression settings). Some of it seems to be the delay interval causing a little phasing. The color of the guitar changes when I go to mono, so that's an indicator there.
(12-01-2016, 02:51 AM)azwayne Wrote: For me, this is a favorite of the tunes offered here.
I like the guitar sound you set up in the intro. I think you did a good job of getting this in the vein of your reference. This is actually a pretty good mix.
I would make a couple of comments, though. First, I think the snare may be a tad high but only a little. There's also something about the delay/reverb setup you have that's making it a little hard to listen do. When I sum it to mono my ears relax a bit more. I think some of that is EQ (mids poking out too much) but also partly transients jumping out a smidge to much(compression settings). Some of it seems to be the delay interval causing a little phasing. The color of the guitar changes when I go to mono, so that's an indicator there.
Thank you for your well-though-out critique. For your effort, I uploaded a new version that addresses some of your observations. First, the twin guitars had been panned slightly left and right with delay on the opposite end to create a bigger sound, but it was a bit much, so I toned that down a bit. Also, I had the LP filter on the stock Reaper reverb plugin turned down to about 6k, but those filters are nearly useless because they put a huge bump in front of whatever you're cutting. I got off my lazy butt and patched in real EQ, and those guitars cleared right up.
The biggest change was that I completely reworked the bass tone, because my first attempt just sucked. It's so much tighter now. Added a little more kick and now the bottom end feels much better to me.
Your comment on the snare must be from later in the song. All the tracks seemed to get brighter and louder as the song progressed (that tape must have been used a bunch), and I addressed most of it, but failed to drop the level of the overheads as the song went on. I have since done that and now the snare doesn't creep up in level like before.
Finally got the piano to sound more like a piano and less like a toy.
