Big fan of this track.
Seen the Albini references in other mix responses and the Scott Walker one too.
Been a fan of both for a long time. Tilt is my favorite album by far from Scott Walker. Godspeed You B E ended up recording with Albini, if you have not heard them, I strongly suggest you do. But I know you have already, I'm sure.
Would love to get involved with Cotton Drifting as a mixer.
Grizzly Bear come to mind, Iggy Pop too.
Big shout out to EARTH mix, Dave mix too.
Original mix was good also by Gingham and Co.
Peace.
James, London
First of all thanks for submitting a mix and I'm glad to hear you like the song.
Second; Jesus this must have taken you a while! It caught me very off guard, your edited arrangement had many surprises in wait. The drums exploding in the first part... Damn that was intense. I like how you muted the kick drum in the build up in the second part. I love how the acoustic guitar sounds, what did you do to it? Hell, I almost even like how my voice sounds... Almost. Also, did you add bass to it in certain parts? Or is there something like a bass extender or whatever it's called?
My main criticism would be that there is too much reverb for my taste. I generally like relatively dry sounds or short, powerful room ambience like the hall mics I recorded for this song. There are times I like real spacey reverb but this song is not one of them. I liked the delayed reverb or gated or whatever it is on the yell though, that was pretty cool. I think my other criticism is the drum sound; it feels a little too mid-heavy, like 1000hz or something, and too loud overall. I'm still not sure how appropriate it is for me to criticize mixes of my own song since I'm biased, but here it is anyway :]. Maybe someone else will chime in with a less tainted opinion.
Overall man, this is a super interesting take on the song. I haven't listened to GodspeedYouBE so I might have to check them out sometime. I don't usually listen to purely instrumental music but I like Explosions in the Sky so who knows.
22-04-2019, 01:13 PM (This post was last modified: 22-04-2019, 08:10 PM by James Cullis.)
Cheers Gingham for the positive feedback.
Yeah, like the direction your going in, good song.
Glad you like the arrangement. Over 5 mins seemed a bit long. Some of the drumming made me edit those parts out, due to them being a tad sloppy. I'm a drummer, so those parts had to go.
Maybe Hendrix and Are you Experienced surfaced from a deep recess of my mind while mixing the drums, wanted that impact but not too overpowering, they had to fit into an already established static mix of the vocals and guitars. The drums were automated from stereo to mono in sections, with a 458 ms and a longer 3.5 Reverb covering the snare. Not a lot of compression really across the drums, mainly on the drum bus. The Acoustic had a 0.35 Reverb and a bit of minimal Delay for width. Both Electric guitars were sent through amps for more high end and blended in and automated through the track. A Reverb/Delay/Comp Guitar Wurst aux was set up for the swells, also automated.
The bass was actually the left guitar duplicated and lowered through an octave pedal and then an amp, a high cut filter. The song was missing a bass track, was this intentional? I thought it needed it actually. The track is not mastered and has a bit of average loudness and headroom left.
I have done a revision of the mix to your tastes. Less processing on the vocals, drums turned down and a few other bits and bobs. See what you reckon.
Peace.
James, London
Well my earlier criticism be damned! I feel like it just took out some of the character of it being your mix. It's so different from mine that I guess I have a harder time accepting it.
I'm strangely a fan of sloppy things. I tend to buy into the common need to seem perfect around other people so being able to leave mess ups and mistakes in songs is like a really stupid "FU" to it, I guess. I'm also heavily inspired by Phil Elverum and the whole K Records scene. The music I've heard from them has so much feel almost BECAUSE of the sloppiness of it. A lot of it is so damn grungy and distorted and done in one or two takes.
What you did with the guitars is very interesting and payed off wonderfully. The added high end is great. There intentionally wasn't a bass track because... well, I guess I thought I could pull enough from the kick drum and existing guitars, I'm really not sure haha! Having that extra low end in your mix really makes a difference.
Totally agree with the sloppy thing.
Music with no personality has no soul.
I will check out your suggestions. Had a blast mixing this track.
Keep up the good work.
Go Chiefs/Royals ha ha
