That's entertainment......and it was.

[The_Metallurgist]

so, i've gone for depth and space and had a play around with placement between the men and women. i took The Cliff Adam's Singers as my main reference regarding space and timbre; they used to be on the radio for a half hour slot after the top 20 charts in the UK on a Sunday evening for decades. much of it was rather sickly for my taste, but occasionally they'd throw out a number which appealed to my wild and diverse nature.

while they were mainly men, with only 3 to 4 women and had an accordion in accompaniment (not a fan of the instrument, sadly), the reference does give a feeling of space, especially regarding placement of the accordion in relation to the singers and the listener. i suspect they used a ribbon....and i've tended to lean a little towards a warmer presentation than was evident in the tracking from the condenser mikes.

i've asked a question about the multi concerning the room size, because there's a clear sonic signature in the recordings which is contrary to the larger illusion of space i was after in my mix. that signature haunted me somewhat, and it can be ambiguous to the listener if one ambiance is mixed in with another, even distracting, though perhaps more at a subconscious level for those not familiar with critical listening. i chose to avoid reverbs which gave early reflections, in an effort to minimise conflicts. there's some proximity messages in the mikes with spectral build up in the low-mids, thankfully it wasn't too difficult to EQ without having to resort to fistfuls of adjustment - that makes a refreshing change in this forum!!

one major irritation from my perspective as a listener, was the final 't' on entertainment. because of the nature of the recording, the singers don't end at the same time. indeed, the Altos didn't finish at the same time as the Sopranos either (it was fixable), but those teeees were such a shame. i managed to lessen the problem, but it couldn't be fixed in the mix in it's entirety (unless there's a genius out there who knows.....then please share the trick!!) - the problem was the main stereo track which i had to keep running at the end; the individual mike tracks could be fixed with some tweaking.

because we had the benefit of the overdubs and a stereo track, i had a go at exploiting it. the stereo track added depth and additional density to the voices, but during the men's and womens' solos, i muted it which gave me a clear left and right channel placement which the stereo track tended to 'confuse' (but as i said, was great for density).

i kept the piano mono simply because the lower register would hang on one side of headphones (depending on approach)....but i mixed it with some width. the mono presentation also assisted in the illusion of depth. i noticed the pianist was right-hand biased, with the lower register notes not as prevalent as they should have been in the tracking, though it's an easy fix. i loved the energy and obvious enthusiasm of the musician....came across in super bundles.

i am crucially concerned with the depth perspective between the piano and the singers, and relative to the listener. this depth-thing does depend on the playback device....smaller devices tend to offer more depth....larger less so because of the treble content from the 'instruments' themselves (the direct sound) compared with the treble in the reverb. tweeter design/quality is a big factor too; an interesting theme. any comments? if you post, it would be handy knowing your monitoring situation.

the multi made a refreshing change to the general over-compressed, distorted, sibilant, pitch-corrected, printed automation-type material easily found in the library, and brought with it some interesting challenges of the good sort. Amen to that!

nice one Mange, thanks for it's availability and for sharing your work. do please pass on our gratitude to the musicians and especially the conductor.

[mange]

The final T, I havn´t checked but I think I just deleted the last one on my mix.

Your depth, works great here. Piano on stage in front of the choir. Especially good placement when he is a bit lighter on the keys.
Maybe it sounds a bit empty on audience... what I mean is I would have turned down the room reverb a little bit but it do sound like a natural room to me. I´m pretty sure I too chose a reverb without ER for the same reason as you.

Interesting choices with automation I think. Turned out well to my ears.

I have answered your questions regarding room and some more in Mikes primer thread.

Ha, I loved your ident.

[Dangerous]

I feel a beautiful sense of space, depth and clarity throughout. Listening with headphones it's clear the piano is at the front with the baritone, tenor and soprano voicing moving towards the rear. I guess this would be emphasised listening with monitors in front. Really enjoyed the controlled liveliness of the performance.
Dave.

[The_Metallurgist]

thanks for the listen and sharing your thoughts....and especially your room information in the main FAQ, super!

The final T, I havn´t checked but I think I just deleted the last one on my mix.

i tried that at the time, but i kept missing it, lol. there's an earlier teee in the song where 'entertainment' has a different pitch but that shouldn't affect the teee. i could try copy/pasting the teee into the end of the song for a hack. perhaps on a rainy day

Your depth, works great here. Piano on stage in front of the choir. Especially good placement when he is a bit lighter on the keys.
Maybe it sounds a bit empty on audience... what I mean is I would have turned down the room reverb a little bit but it do sound like a natural room to me. I´m pretty sure I too chose a reverb without ER for the same reason as you.

i spent a lot of time on the ambiance trying out different LPF, HPF, shelves, RT60, etc, even different emu's (i settled on 2x EMT140's and 1x EMT250 but that's only part of the story). One thing i found was that taking out the reverb [tail] tended to bring in the room signature captured by the mikes much more than i liked. so, this is what i ended up with....more of a compromise really. i fully get what you mean by the missing audience, they make great acoustic absorbers. but that raises a subjective question as to whether the space is fully occupied and absorbent, for example. i chose to let the reference be my guide on that. however, the reference was highly reverberant....more than i finally decided on in my mix in the end...the ref was just a bit too wet for my taste. in the Real World, the customer is king.

.......if you get the chance, youtube "cliff adams sing something simple" and you'll see what i mean; some have posted broadcasts from the day (the last broadcast was in 2001).

Interesting choices with automation I think. Turned out well to my ears.

thanks. the Bass boys gave a really nice texture at certain moments in the song. how much this particular part of the automation comes out depends on the speakers....my small boxes don't describe the contrasts as well as the bigger woofers, which is understandable (SPL does its thing too). and in some respects tweeter designs describe the depth differently for the mix overall. but i found the Bass really wanted to step forwards, and by quite a large extent with any gain in their amplitude; it was fun exploring the boundaries.

I have answered your questions regarding room and some more in Mikes primer thread.

you are a star, cheers for that. very informative. no idea why Mike left it out of your original post, perhaps he was worried about the competition! you've knocked him off the top spot now.....

Ha, I loved your ident.

it's the best bit, eh?

thanks again.
laters,,

[The_Metallurgist]

I feel a beautiful sense of space, depth and clarity throughout. Listening with headphones it's clear the piano is at the front with the baritone, tenor and soprano voicing moving towards the rear. I guess this would be emphasised listening with monitors in front.
Dave.

thanks for dropping by and indeed also for the guidance on the depth aspect i was concerned about in my opening. it's those psychoacoustic triggers that give the illusion that have had me fretting during the mixing process; managing the trebles between the 'instruments', along with their respective amplitudes, was quite daunting!

Really enjoyed the controlled liveliness of the performance.

i'd like to pass that credit on to the performers and the recording engineer, if i may. if it's not captured effectively in quality tracking, we mixing engineers are lost.

cheers
laters,,

[The_Metallurgist]

.

.
A proposed solution to the last Teeeee problem in the song

this worked for me in the way i've got the project running in my DAW, your journey might be a little bit different, but the principles should be transferable:

the soprano's have the best diction and i found their teeee's at the close of the song the ones to focus on. with the other tracks, simply fade where the teees commence until they are out of the way without encroaching on the word "entertainment". the problem this might cause is a loss of ambiance, but that can be addressed with reverb automation. an issue you may experience, depending on how you've panned the sopranos (and how your reverb aux is set), is that the teeee might come with a channel bias. this too can be easily overcome with some thought.

trying to fade the problem out of the way on all tracks i found to be as distracting as the delays because it introduces pronunciation and word clarity issues, the diction thing. we generally expect clarity in a choir. if i was pedantic, i'd have felt the urge to add some teeees elsewhere in the song where the energy subsides and the tees tend to get lost somewhat. but i thought about it.

so, we can fix it in the mix

i looked at the m/s tracking to begin with, thinking i could simply copy/paste an earlier teee. then it dawned on me that the piano would have come with it too? a true "duh" moment!

i've not bothered to print the revision as you can use your imagination, or better still, try it yourselves.

another issue i had in the tracking was the clarity of the breathers and how well the microphones were tending to overemphasise this (Rode NT5's are sensitive to this tendency because of their small diaphragm, they also encourage sibilance). i chose to mute them all in this instance rather than fuss about with managing key moments and drawing automation. this also kept them out of the reverbs which would otherwise have helped pull attention away from the performance. too many breathers can be irritating (i actually found them quite distracting, annoying even, in the early part of mixing), but too few can be wrong; it needs a careful balance. the devil, as they say, is in the detail.

[mange]

Wow, you went all in. I did your duh moment as well, I think it was on one of the other songs. It went well though when i treated the m/s pair, the spaced pair and the piano track as a drumgroup. I just had to replace a slightly longer part than I first intended.
I remember I edited the overdubs as much as possible for score flippin, lipsmacks, breaths, inital timings and ends. But there is only so much to do when there are multiple voices per take.

Thanks for sharing your mix. It´s very fun to hear all mixes of my recording.

[Digitaldruglord]

The vocal production here is excellent.