08-02-2024, 07:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 16-02-2024, 09:13 PM by Rob Cummings (Hot Milk Studio).)
Hi there folks,
I had some time this week to work on this lovely soul tune from Kat Wright and her smokin' band.
I found that there was a lot of cleanup and tiny edits to do on the various signals. Keeping in mind of course that this was a live performance, this meant that everything had to stay put more or less because of the bleed. The vocal track was quite tricky IMO, and there were quite a few plosives to eliminate with Izotope RX. I also did some time shifting on the vocal track (-7.16 ms), so that the snare bleed would be more appealing. I did not do any tuning although the final ooh section has some slightly iffy intonation. But the bleed made any tuning efforts sound weird IMO.
Anyways, I did put a lot of work into riding clip gains and also multiple EQ notches on the various tracks (esp. snare, brass and vocals) but this is all too much to get into here.
In terms of hardware, I added some Vermona spring reverb to the snare drum and ran the entire drum bus through the Tegeler Audio Magnetismus 2. The 2-Bus is running through the Tegeler Audio EQP-1 passive EQ and then into the VCA compressor section of the Crème, just barely tapping the needle. And an assortment of plugins here and there for various purposes, I can explain more if anyone is interested.
Hope you enjoy this as much as I did while working on it!
Rob
Hot Milk Studio (Berlin)
www.hotmilkstudio.de
MIX 2
*****
I had a fresh listen and noticed that the horns (especially the saxes) still had an upper midrange rasp that was rather grating to the ears. To control the upper midrange of the horns, I used a dynamic EQ on the baritone and tenor saxes.
In general, my main bus processing through the Tegeler EQP-1 was a bit too top heavy, so I reduced the 16kHz boost and broadened the width as well as cutting a bit more at 20k. I also increased the 30Hz cut a little to scrape away some of the lower mids. A fun song to mix, but not easy, especially with all of the bleed and vocal plosives and the mics being a bit raspy in general.
MIX 3:
******
I found the mix 2 was an improvement but still too 'bitey' and pinched in some of the upper midranges. To my ears the horns and the snare had too much 'pinch'. I tried to rectify this by darkenening 20k downwards 2-bus on the Tegeler EQP-1 as well as using more pronounced dynamic EQ on the upper midranges of the horn channels and the snare bus. I also used a darker compressor setting on these busses. Interesting song to work on, quite a few challenges IMO.
I had some time this week to work on this lovely soul tune from Kat Wright and her smokin' band.
I found that there was a lot of cleanup and tiny edits to do on the various signals. Keeping in mind of course that this was a live performance, this meant that everything had to stay put more or less because of the bleed. The vocal track was quite tricky IMO, and there were quite a few plosives to eliminate with Izotope RX. I also did some time shifting on the vocal track (-7.16 ms), so that the snare bleed would be more appealing. I did not do any tuning although the final ooh section has some slightly iffy intonation. But the bleed made any tuning efforts sound weird IMO.
Anyways, I did put a lot of work into riding clip gains and also multiple EQ notches on the various tracks (esp. snare, brass and vocals) but this is all too much to get into here.
In terms of hardware, I added some Vermona spring reverb to the snare drum and ran the entire drum bus through the Tegeler Audio Magnetismus 2. The 2-Bus is running through the Tegeler Audio EQP-1 passive EQ and then into the VCA compressor section of the Crème, just barely tapping the needle. And an assortment of plugins here and there for various purposes, I can explain more if anyone is interested.
Hope you enjoy this as much as I did while working on it!
Rob
Hot Milk Studio (Berlin)
www.hotmilkstudio.de
MIX 2
*****
I had a fresh listen and noticed that the horns (especially the saxes) still had an upper midrange rasp that was rather grating to the ears. To control the upper midrange of the horns, I used a dynamic EQ on the baritone and tenor saxes.
In general, my main bus processing through the Tegeler EQP-1 was a bit too top heavy, so I reduced the 16kHz boost and broadened the width as well as cutting a bit more at 20k. I also increased the 30Hz cut a little to scrape away some of the lower mids. A fun song to mix, but not easy, especially with all of the bleed and vocal plosives and the mics being a bit raspy in general.
MIX 3:
******
I found the mix 2 was an improvement but still too 'bitey' and pinched in some of the upper midranges. To my ears the horns and the snare had too much 'pinch'. I tried to rectify this by darkenening 20k downwards 2-bus on the Tegeler EQP-1 as well as using more pronounced dynamic EQ on the upper midranges of the horn channels and the snare bus. I also used a darker compressor setting on these busses. Interesting song to work on, quite a few challenges IMO.