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Siren - Pauli
#1
wow.. that's a lot of tracks! and judging by all the apparent edits, there were quite a few more before they summed the double tracks and bounced them!

thankfully, all the necessary edits were done prior to the mix so I didn't fiddle with anything at all Smile. instead of riding the well performed vocals, I used a very small amount of parallel compression to keep any of the quietest notes from dipping out.

for the guitars, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm hearing some wrong/ugly notes in the chords, so I nixed them by notching the principal frequency and the following 2 harmonics, which I never would have thought to do had I not seen Mr. Senior use it elsewhere. I spread the acoustics and electrics out a bit and left any tracks recorded in stereo in the center where it was possible, and put a bit of transient processing on the acoustics to help make them punchier and funkier.

to get the kick and the bass jiving I did the normal eq work, high passing, cutting the kick at 125ish, yadda yadda, but I also felt like the kick and bass were ringing too long, so I put a gate before the compressors to trim them to an appropriate length for more punch. more punch = more funk for me Smile

so I was going for something like lady gaga and annie lennox recording with daft punk, and used tracks by those folks as references. thoughts?


.mp3    Siren.mp3 --  (Download: 13.48 MB)


I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#2
You have a lot of compression goin on, must admit it sounds smaller than I thought it would in headphones. Is it your 2 bus file or is it limited ? If limited you maybe hit that too hard and thus took the punch out of it.

Will give it a listen on my speakers tomorrow.

For the gtr minor/major its still there. Easiest way is mutin the track. My memory tells me its a F major chord bein the bad guy, so were talkin 440, 880 and so on if you want to notch it out. Most tune to 440.

Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
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#3
hmmm, the limiting is making it "pump" on my speakers, which is intentional, but I didn't cross reference it to make sure it sounded good on other speakers or whatnot. I'm gonna check that out right now.

and I think we're talking about different chords, because the notes that I notched out were ugly, resonant things on the acoustics. While I'm cross checking my speakers I'll give it a listen, because I don't remember the chord you're talkin about.

thanks for listening anyway... I felt like this one came together a little too easily.

(29-01-2014, 02:13 AM)Voelund Wrote: You have a lot of compression goin on, must admit it sounds smaller than I thought it would in headphones. Is it your 2 bus file or is it limited ? If limited you maybe hit that too hard and thus took the punch out of it.

Will give it a listen on my speakers tomorrow.

For the gtr minor/major its still there. Easiest way is mutin the track. My memory tells me its a F major chord bein the bad guy, so were talkin 440, 880 and so on if you want to notch it out. Most tune to 440.

I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#4
Try listenin elgtr 2 and 3 solo. The second chord they play sounds awful. The note makin the diffrence is an A if I remember correctly. It can be notched out, but easiest us just mute elgtr 2.
Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
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#5
hmmm, so I checked it on a few different speakers in a couple different rooms, and it sounds the way I intended it to. maybe I took the pumping effect a little to the extreme? that's sort of a modern sound for a guy who grew up listening to led zeppelin and the beatles, so I have to reference pretty hard to try and get it right, and even then it's clear that not everyone is hearing it the same way I am Tongue

as far as sounding small, do you think I should pan things further out? I tried that but every time I hit the mono button half the tracks disappeared -_- probably because a ton of these tracks are stereo. is mono compatibility a necessary casualty for a nice, wide stereo image in a tune like this, or is there a way I can compromise?
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#6
(29-01-2014, 02:42 AM)Voelund Wrote: Try listenin elgtr 2 and 3 solo. The second chord they play sounds awful. The note makin the diffrence is an A if I remember correctly. It can be notched out, but easiest us just mute elgtr 2.

yeah, I hear the chord you're talking about now. I kinda liked the dissonance that chord was creating, sorta like a funky F7#9 hendrix chord, but I'll trim the A out in my re-work and we'll see how it sounds Big Grin
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#7
(29-01-2014, 02:44 AM)pauli Wrote: as far as sounding small, do you think I should pan things further out? I tried that but every time I hit the mono button half the tracks disappeared -_- probably because a ton of these tracks are stereo. is mono compatibility a necessary casualty for a nice, wide stereo image in a tune like this, or is there a way I can compromise?

Reply from a non expert, also in this department :-)

What I do all the time with stereo tracks is narrowing them. Like Mike suggests narrowin OH and havin room track bein full stereo.
That way i can place a stereo synth in the stereo field, still bein a bit wide but also hearable in mono.

Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
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#8
(28-01-2014, 04:53 PM)pauli Wrote: wow.. thoughts?

whoah, stop the bus!

i got sore ears as soon as i hit play. i've since pulled it down for closer inspection. the mid channel isn't so bad as the sides here, the latter are as brittle as hell though. it's also probable that the mp3 encoding has additionally been up to some mischief and much of this aspect will depend on your brickwall ceiling level - don't run it at 0dB but ease up to say -0.5 or even -1dB. why aren't you encoding to 320kbps, out of interest?

i did a quick Dynamic Range check....it's 8. the interesting part was the peaks, it's claiming -8dB(uh????) with RMS of -18dB which is totally weird. before you get excited, the algorithm for this thing is understandably controversial, but for a quick and dirty seat-of-the-pants job it serves it's purpose without having to power up the DAW...and doing that is no point for any lossy format anyway. something needs fixing....other than this, i can't help much over here, sorry.

i'll catch you later.
i wish you good hunting meanwhile Wink

Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!
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#9
(29-01-2014, 01:27 PM)Voelund Wrote:
(29-01-2014, 02:44 AM)pauli Wrote: as far as sounding small, do you think I should pan things further out? I tried that but every time I hit the mono button half the tracks disappeared -_- probably because a ton of these tracks are stereo. is mono compatibility a necessary casualty for a nice, wide stereo image in a tune like this, or is there a way I can compromise?

Reply from a non expert, also in this department :-)

What I do all the time with stereo tracks is narrowing them. Like Mike suggests narrowin OH and havin room track bein full stereo.
That way i can place a stereo synth in the stereo field, still bein a bit wide but also hearable in mono.

hi chaps! just a quick one.

that's good advice. i'd only add some bits to that for now........

....it depends on the instrument and the associated FX...the mix, the number of elements, what role/importance the instrument has, and so on and so forth. no simple answer. it depends Smile

i'd keep pads in stereo and spread them wide - but that's not a rule that can't be broken. pads often employ FX to their mono samples to make them sound stereo. some of these FX will work in mono, it just depends really.

downmixing a stereo track to mono can change it's sonic properties simply because of cancellation.

you can also try splitting the stereo in two mono parts, panning where you want them for best fit, and treating each differently with compression, level, and especially EQ. cut one at 1k, boost the other at 1k, etc etc. or feed one into a delay with some phasing....go wild Smile Smile Smile

and of course, be alive to the "less is more" thang. the mute and delete buttons are invaluable allies. if it's getting in your way, and not fitting your vision and goals for the mix, take it out.

however, the more tracks you have to work with, the less you want stereo. a stereo file doubles the frequency masking issues and this clutters up the mix like nothing on earth. feed all this stereo into your reverb emulators and you have a disaster on your hands.

as a final point, not that there ever is one.....there should be times when you want the instrument in stereo for a spell, or in mono in the song. this is a creative decision, as well as a practical necessity to keep your mix under control regarding it's spectral range. hope this helps.

but read my previous post here, yeah?
cheers!
Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!
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#10
hmmm, I might have to check the encoder that I'm using, because I set it to encode at 320kbps, but I'm hearing the brittle side issue you're talking about on the export that I didn't notice in the DAW. I actually don't have any reverbs or anything like that going on here... all of the effects in the mix are printed on the tracks, and since over half the tracks have stereo effects printed on them, I opted not to pan those because there are phase cancellation gremlins EVERYWHERE on this tune, so I went for very minimal additional processing. I EQd the snot out of the guitars, did the normal high/low cut cleanup stuff and referenced it against the dance-y pop stuff that's all the rage right now, but I'm clearly trying to achieve a sound that's not my style.

Of course, I should be able to do that should a client request a loud and proud dance-pop track with ridiculously high RMS, but I think I'm going to re-work this one in a mixing style more my own. Maybe be a little more fearless with the panning, too!

thanks for the input, dudes. better mix coming your way.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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