01-07-2016, 09:38 PM (This post was last modified: 02-07-2016, 03:52 PM by jakobole.)
Difficulties : The bleed from drums in the piano-mic made it hard to get the piano up-front without the harshness of the drums. A gentle multiband-comp (Nova)+ eq notch and a bit of time-nudging made it manageable. I also time-aligned the snare and kick-mic-in to the OH's. I thought the kick-beater track had too much bleed, and only brought troubles to the party, so I left it out. A bit of mastering-limiter applied, but it only sucks a dB here and there - I don't want any compression artifacts at all on this kind of music.
Comments are always welcome
A lovely smooth sound jakobole. Very enjoyable listening with headphones. The only thing for me would be a little extra energy in the snare, maybe to match the impact of the kick. Sounds a bit pushed back for me. Purely subjective though, very much a taste thing. Great Vibe.
02-07-2016, 03:58 PM (This post was last modified: 02-07-2016, 03:58 PM by jakobole.)
Thanks for the feedback Dangerous. I actually think you're right on the snare (and money ) so I updated the first post. I also turned up the bass-solo a bit since it was drowning also. (Turning down the piano in the solo's, sadly, won't work because of the bleed- It'll change the whole balance of mix on that spot.)
I'm feeling that the piano image seems to dance around a bit in the stereo field. I think what I'm hearing is mainly that one piano mic is covering the high and one the low, and they're panned oppositely, so the sound kind of moves around depending on where the player is. Makes you feel like you're sitting AT the piano.
I'm not going to call it a bad thing, more just that I noticed it. I like when multi-miking yields interesting interactions in the stereo field. My personal preference for an acoustic combo jazz piece like this is that the instruments remain fairly stable in the stereo image, and to me, it feels like the piano is a little *too* wobbly. How much automation have you put in? It might be an issue of phasing wonkiness, I would be wanting to try out little gain envelope automation tweaks and just listening for something closer to what I wanted to hear.
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I also found a bit of a fuzzy around 1:42.3 - Noodling around with it a bit I think it's the 4.5k - 10.5kish range - doing a spot gain reduction on that seemed to help it a bit. Just kind of makes a funky *futz* as it plays. Listening for the next minute or so I didn't notice any others jumping out at me, so it may not be indicative of anything.
I was looking hard at that spot because I was also noticing some small elements in the sound - sounds like a person vocalizing, and I can see some waves in the spectrogram that look like vocalizations, that pop up thru the song. I Haven't downloaded this multi so I don't know if that's something lurking in the original tracks. It also sounded like something that could be a weird compression artifact, so I'd want to know where that might be coming from.
You made me a *little* nervous saying you used a "limiter" as opposed to compression, and looking at some of the waveforms they had some funky shapes that *looked* like they had some limiter squashiness, and looking at the spectrogram I'm seeing some vertical lines right on the cymbal hits that *resemble* some compression artifacts that I have struggled with in some of my projects(in my case I found that I needed a few more ms of attack time with the plugins I'm using).
That all being said, I wouldn't feel comfortable stating that anything I'm mentioning *is* a compression artifact, just more that the combination of things I was noticing made me curious.
What I do feel comfortable saying is that it *sounds* fantastic, and thats what counts, my "quibbles" are extremely tiny nitpicks, only some of which are based on the sound...the stuff I'm *seeing* may just be me seeing what I'm *thinking* might be there. You've done a great mix, and I appreciate your sharing it. Keep up the good sounds!
Piano / stereo : Well yes, it is dancing around a bit - I guess a bit of M/S processing or plain narrowing could help to make it more focused. OTOTH, I like that it sort of "embraces" the band
No automation used on the piano - the bleed from the other instruments makes it impossible without ruining the "image"
Regarding the 1:42.3 thing : I hear it, but I think it's part of what makes a live and dynamic performance. Sometimes we need to let stuff be, and not suck the life out of it. It's a fine line
Regarding the "vocal" : It's the piano player humming along.
Regarding limiter : The only time it's actually doing anything is during the drumsolo - and when, it's around 3dB's with a 2ms release-time. If you had a look at the waveforms on the tracks, these peaks are already there, since he's banging pretty hard, hehe. And I'm pretty satisfied if you can only hear the limiter because you saw them. Seeing is believing
Thanks again - it's really usefull to get the feedback from another set of ears (and brains) I'll see if either doing some M/S processing or width-adjustment on the piano will do some good to the mix.
My very humble thoughts as a mixing newbie trying to figure this out, and as an old rocker. Overall I thought the mix was very good. The only thing that I could suggest would be to bring out the bass (especially) and drums a little more relative to the piano. They seemed to be less dominant than I heard in the mixes of trios I used as references. Having said that, Ryan likely has much more experience mixing than I do, giving his opinion much more weight.
) so I updated the first post. I also turned up the bass-solo a bit since it was drowning also. (Turning down the piano in the solo's, sadly, won't work because of the bleed- It'll change the whole balance of mix on that spot.)