Colour Me Red - HB Mix

[The_Metallurgist]

Hey Dave, Thanks for stopping by.

Its funny, i was trying to finalize the vocal for a possible ver 1.2 and I was thinking to myself " if i had to start this mix again, i would do it differently......cos I'm playing with fader levels when i should be probably be moving pan pots"

Then i had another thought along the lines of " but i've come this far....I'm so close to finishing...do i really want to chuck it all in the bin?"

Then i read your post....and i'm thinking " yup...i probably do"

i pulled it down yesterday and took a peep.....just some thoughts herein: take what works, ignore what you know, and laugh at the obvious.


i'd recommend starting a rough mix in mono....it will force some major EQ decisions and result in clarity and separation - which might then suggest some compression strategies in order to address some balance stability issues. compression will bring things forward but you might not want that. mono will help you make more informed decisions. by mono, i mean all instruments down the middle, then switch off one speaker. try a quick experiment with this on the rhodes vs lead guitar. panning out of masking issues doesn't work outside of the sweet spot or in a downmix situation like your supermarket PA...or in the mother-in-laws where the speakers are most likely separated by...nothing, lol. And a room will average the sound too.

regarding LCR ....there was no intention to build LCR and there is plenty panned left middle and right middle. I tend to follow a basic sound stage design of brighter panned wider and as Dave Pensado once said "keep the mud in the middle". That said...if it aint working.....it aint working

HF material panned wide needs equal spectral balance, especially if the track in question is running for a time, because of the risk of fatigue. headphone users can suffer otherwise. this same problem can also occur with LM stuff too, of course. having had a quick look at the multi, we have 2 acoustic tracks no doubt to help overcome potential issues. however, this brings other probs too.....double the spectral material in mono and masking. there might be times in the vision where they work well when panned fully wide in LR (when summed to mono, they will drop 3dB because of the laws of science), but you might decide that you only want one of them participating? bringing it somewhere closer towards the center, but allowing for Haas, and work it's treble to suit it's depth placement illusion, and fatigue can be avoided. hihats can be challenging for this reason too. each case needs to be assessed on it's own individual merits, which is why sweeping generalisations are just that, sweeping generalisations, but principles are important indeed.

Re Fx, I think i was luxuriating in a warm bath of reverb......and probably why i wanted to fiddle with pan pots so much. Once alerted to the problem, just muting the FX bus brought all the instrumentation back into focus and gave separation (although a bit dry).

cool. i mentioned the lead guitar vs rhodes? how about listening to these two instruments dry.... the lead naturally wants to sit further back in the mix cf the rhodes? perhaps use these two instruments as a placement exercise and explore things like EQ, compression, different parameter settings on different emu's (direct sound vs early reflections, vs late reflections) and see what combination of factors help create the illusion you seek in your vision, and which destroys it? loop for about 15 seconds, then mute your FX, repeat. 15 seconds is about long enough for your ears to begin to get comfortable, and that's the time to unsettle them with muting! it should help assessment as you run through different scenarios. i recommend pausing the DAW while you dial in parameter changes.....it will force you to imagine the sound you want and on resuming play again it will confirm if you've got there or not. i try to dial in EQ or compression these days WITHOUT listening. it's hell to begin with, but over time it really smarts up the critical listening skills.

by the way, i now understand the problem with the snare

So i'm thinking time for v2.0

that's the spirit!


a word of caution, or bad news depending on your perspective: there's printed automation in the multi. left unattended it will interfere with your processing all the way through the DAW.





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