Pedaling Prince Mix: Carlos Gonzalez - A Place for Us

[Pedaling Prince]

Between work and the fact that this monster of a project had more than 60 tracks to wrangle it actually took me a full week to get this one done. But it was worth it. I think this may be one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever found on this site. I loved the music so much that I created a separate mix with only the non-verbal backing vocals; it was the perfect inspiration to help me picture a cathartic scene for a character in one of my screenplays.

I look forward to listening to everyone else's mixes here but for now it's late, I've been working on this thing for hours to get it finished tonight and I need some sleep. But, in the meantime, if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions I'm open; the mix is brand new so I still have the project.

[Andreas Tyranopoulos]

Hello Pedaling Prince. Very nice work here! I like very much your drums, vocals and guitars! The only thing I could tell you is that as I am listening to it I miss the energy on the chorus and that's because your guitars and especially the synth lead are very low leveled. I think that an automation volume upwards for guitars and synth on the chorus could make it sound more powerful and big! Also try to play with the volume of your drums at each part of the song in order to give them a groove and make them more interesting!

[EKN]

Hi John,
First of all, kudos for the great effort you put into this mix. I think most of us have been having a hard time dealing with this gigantic multitrack
It sounds really good to my ears, and somewhat different from the other mixes I've listened to until now. I think this difference comes mostly from the interesting sound you achieved with the drums, that kind of very short slapback delay that make them sound almost doubled.
I also like the sound you got from the backing vocals, smooth like butter and with a good depth in the mix. Any hint about your processing ?

A few quibbles :
- the backing vocal following the lead (named BV2) is quite loud and almost overtakes the lead in some parts (0:28 for example), which somewhat changes the main melody. Maybe it was a conscious choice of yours, in which case don't change a thing !
- the low end is kind of lacking definition. Is it due to the EQ on the kick ? On the bass ? Or some low-end resonance in the OH track ? I can't really point out the culprit here, but I know I spent quite some time dealing with this myself !
- I don't really care for the chorused bass sound, but that's just personal taste, not really an issue (unless it's related to the lack of definition in previous point ?)

Apart from those points, very nice overall balance. Great achievement considering the difficulty of this one !
Hope that helps.

[Pedaling Prince]

Thanks for the input, guys!

I miss the energy on the chorus and that's because your guitars and especially the synth lead are very low leveled. I think that an automation volume upwards for guitars and synth on the chorus could make it sound more powerful and big!

Actually, when I went into the mix I found that the guitars and synth are playing only during the choruses, except for one short section of the synth which leads into the second chorus. So I automated the synth level to fade in and create a buildup on that second chorus then just brought up the level of the guitars.

Also try to play with the volume of your drums at each part of the song in order to give them a groove and make them more interesting!

Hm... there are 20 blanking drum tracks here... I think they're interesting enough the way they are. Besides, on a more serious note, I've never much liked the sound of automated drum levels; I prefer drums to maintain a consistent level through a song. That is, of course, personal taste, but nevertheless I decided to leave them alone for my remix here.

I . . . like the sound you got from the backing vocals, smooth like butter and with a good depth in the mix. Any hint about your processing ?

Hipass Filter at 76 Hz
Compression: Threshold 23.5 dB, Ratio 4.8:1, Attack 10 ms, 4 dB Gain
EQ: -3 @ 80 Hz, +1.5 @ 6200 Hz, +3 @ 12 kHz

Reverb to taste.

the backing vocal following the lead (named BV2) is quite loud and almost overtakes the lead in some parts (0:28 for example), which somewhat changes the main melody. Maybe it was a conscious choice of yours, in which case don't change a thing !

It was a conscious choice. Anyone who's been following my mixes knows that I tend to push backing vocals louder than most people here; I always find that backing vocals don't sound natural if they're significantly lower than the main vocal, so I prefer to keep them closer in level to the lead.

the low end is kind of lacking definition. Is it due to the EQ on the kick ? On the bass ? Or some low-end resonance in the OH track ? I can't really point out the culprit here, but I know I spent quite some time dealing with this myself !

On listening to the OH just now I found the kick drum was terribly resonant, moreso than I realized when I did this mix the first time. On this attempt I applied a hipass at 200 Hz on the OH drum track in an attempt to eliminate that; let me know if that helps.

I don't really care for the chorused bass sound, but that's just personal taste, not really an issue (unless it's related to the lack of definition in previous point ?)

Could be, but I don't think so. I actually found the chorused sound brought out more of the higher frequencies in the bass, particularly the sharp "snap" of the strings done for effect during the choruses, a sound I just love, which is why I decided to go that route with it.

So, gentlemen, you'll find a new mix attached here incorporating your suggestions. What do you think?

P.S.: Just listening to it after posting it here. Since applying that hipass to the overheads the snare has more crispness now, something I've been trying to achieve with this mix. I was thinking about getting more heavy handed with the EQ on the snare mics but I prefer not to do that. Thing is, I have a tendency to adjust drum sounds with the close mics; most of the time I avoid putting any kind of processing on an OH at all, unless there's some specific deficiency in the OH recording that needs addressing. Therein lies the rub here; the OH here sounds fine on its own so it didn't occur to me until you brought it to my attention that all that low frequency energy in the OH might be a problem in the context of the whole mix. Seems all I had to do was filter off some of that low frequency on the OH track and voila! There's the sound I was looking for!

Gotta get out of the habit of relying so much on adjusting close drum tracks...

[juanjose1967]

Hello, John! I like the second mix better. I think you created a great guitar sound here.

There's something in the low frequencies during the busiest part of the song that I don't like. I've listened to it three times and I can't figure out what it is. I would try to EQ the bass and kick so they don't interfere with each other. But again, I'm telling you what I would do to find out what it is; but I'm not sure if that's the problem or not.

I would also try to add more treble to the backvocals. They sound too 'sad' to me

[EKN]

Hi John,

I listened to your second mix, and to be honest, I didn't hear much difference in the low end department. I did hear a difference in overall crispness and in the guitars particularly. I matched the levels of both versions and switched from one to the other and still mostly heard a better high frequencies definition (which is cool).
I tried to solo the low frequency range (below 200Hz) and then only I could hear a little less resonance in the second version.
So I agree with Juan here, there's still something bothering me in the low end during the busy parts. I tried to reduce the stereo width in the low frequencies only and it somewhat cleaned up this range, but I can still hear a kind of low end rumble, now in the center, but still there.
I eventually scanned the low end with a high Q filter, and found 2 frequencies corresponding to the "rumble" I can hear. Those are 61Hz and 78Hz. Still can't identify where those come from, but by just substracting 2dB from those 2 freqs, with a narrow notch, I could get rid of what bothered me. Hope this will help you find out where it comes from.

[EKN]

About HP filtering the overheads, that's something I do almost systematically, particularly if the OH are in stereo. I find that they bring some low end resonance and spoil that range's definition. BTW, I do the same for the room track when one is available, since by definition those tracks add some ambiance, I try to avoid that ambiance in the low end. In my mix of this song, I HP'ed the room track @160Hz with a 24dB/octave slope.

[pauli]

About HP filtering the overheads, that's something I do almost systematically, particularly if the OH are in stereo. I find that they bring some low end resonance and spoil that range's definition. BTW, I do the same for the room track when one is available, since by definition those tracks add some ambiance, I try to avoid that ambiance in the low end. In my mix of this song, I HP'ed the room track @160Hz with a 24dB/octave slope.

I agree. The low end on the overheads is also without a doubt going to be out of time with the kick close mics, so there's serious potential for phase cancellation as well is LF resonances.

[Pedaling Prince]

OK. Based on suggestions, and things I liked in other mixes, I made a few changes here. First, I notched 2 dB out of 61 Hz on the bass guitar and 78 Hz on all the kicks (EKN's suggestion); if that doesn't solve your issue I'll try doing the opposite. I also added distortion to the Electro Hits (juanjose1967s suggestion). During the quiet interlude, I automated both the piano to bring it out the "oh-ah-oh-ohhs" to slowly fade them in (inspired by EKN's awesome effect in his mix ), plus I also punched them up for the final crescendo. I also automated the guitar levels, bringing them up quite a bit over my original mix overall and bringing them up even further, just subtly, to give the final crescendo a greater sense of power.

I also made numerous other small adjustments along the way and, unfortunately, I can't remember them all because like EKN I tend to be a perfectionist; I just spent about five hours making various tweaks to get this mix balanced the way you're hearing it now. I think I got it now. I must admit, this version has a lot more automation than the original, that's for sure, and I think it really helps.

I particularly appreciate juanjose1967's suggestion of the distortion. Distortion doesn't generally occur to me because I spend most of my time trying to avoid distortion. Unless it's overdriven electric guitar, which is always awesome. So that probably wouldn't have occurred to me if not for his suggestion. Also I appreciate the inspiration EKN's magical mix provided for that piano and background vocal automation.

[pauli]

You're most satisfied with the third mix, so my comments are based entirely on that version which I think is quite good.

In no particular order:

Ok, so first of all, the piano sounds great. I'm not sure why but I found the piano tone to be pretty unwieldy and it would appear others have as well, because this is the best piano sound I've heard on this multi-track.

During the string interlude, I feel like the oh-whoa-oh-ohs could be a good deal louder. Allowing the strings to take center stage there is an excellent idea but IMHO the vocals are an important part of the drama in that section, as well, and they're pretty washed out by the strings. Oddly enough, there are a few parts where those same vocal groups are chewing into the lead vocal a bit... I had that difficulty too, and used a sidechain compression strategy on the bus of each set of backing vocal tracks to duck their level a couple dB whenever the lead vocal was playing.

Obviously I freakin' love the reverb. I have to admit to being rather overtimid with reverb on such a dense arrangement initially, but on the whole you've pulled it off without sacrificing any clarity or definition whatsoever, which is very impressive, especially considering the verbs you've chosen are rather thick and diffuse. It's a great sound but difficult to manage as well as you have given the number of tracks at play. I do feel, however, that the reverb on the drum tracks is lacking in brightness, particularly the snare drum. I imagine you probably rolled off the high end on the close mic'd snare drum tracks for kit 1, given the enormous hi-hat bleed, which was my first instinct as well. Generally in a pop song you'll want a very present snare... a good way to try dealing with this is to trigger a multiband compressor on the snare drum with the hi-hat, compressing only the high frequencies, with a very fast attack and very fast release time. If you boost the highs on the snare sample a good deal and feed it slightly into the same reverb, it'll fill any teeny holes the compressor might make. Just an opinion though... perhaps you wanted a less present kit sound, in which case, disregard this... I think it sounds great, but that it's just a little odd for the genre.

On the point of reverb, I have one more quibble... I think you should look into the sibilance on the lead vocals. Normally sibilance doesn't bother me much but in cases where reverb levels are much higher than normal, it can become a bit of an issue. For my part, I'd recommend doing a normal de-essing on the main vocal track, and savagely de-ess the offending frequencies on the reverb... or just pinpoint them and notch them out. If you keep the bandwidth on the de-esser narrow enough, that generally doesn't have any negative side effects like it would on the main track, in my experience.

Again, I think this is a great effort, and I thank you for all of your feedback on my version thus far. Great job.