Slow Down, again

[ulynch]

My first try at it anyway

Being a live-in-studio recording I thought the main challenge here was going to be bleed all over the place, but it wasn't really that bad. All the instruments were well recorded, and the space sounds nice. I did have some trouble with plosives and low frequency breath sounds in her vocal mic, but I hope I was able to minimize it enough that it's not really apparent anymore without sacrificing the quality of her voice. And oh that voice! I wanted every little breath and rasp to be present.

It took a bit of work to clean up the opening drum fill. I finally figured out there's one misplaced kick, and a missing tom hit, and I think it's much smoother now. Spill did affect the toms mics, so, since I hate gates (or don't know how to work them very well ) I spent a fair bit of time slicing them up. Awesome drummer though. Great groove.

The guitar track got multed out to isolate a half dozen licks for more processing. The bass track had a tendency to hide in places, and with so many tasty lines, I copied it, severely high-passed it, overdrive, amp sim, compressor, and blend to taste to get those lines closer to the front.

Background vocals. This is why most humans shouldn't sing while playing instruments. The guitar track is well played, but his vocal line got cut completely, and not just because it had the most spill of the three BG vox mics.

The other two did get some gentle note correction, and a line here and there got replaced by one that was a better performance. Compress, chorus on the bus, send to a reverb, and automate as needed.

Mastering chain was a soft clipper for ~2db off the snare transients, and a limiter that maxed out at less than 1db. That's it.

[azwayne]

Spill did affect the toms mics, so, since I hate gates (or don't know how to work them very well )

I think the mistake most people make with gates is trying to go full cut. That works well when the SNR is high but doesn't work when there's not enough difference because then you get this surge of inappropriate frequencies that makes it stand out really obviously. If you can get your open and close times set so that it's relatively smooth, gating is much more effective if you only try to drop back 3 or 6dB and precede the gate by the appropriate EQ to knock everything that's not tomtom. Sometimes gates work better before compression but most seem to feel that the better position is to follow your compressor (if you use one.)