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Preach Right Here - HB Mix
#1
Fell in love with the "drone" on this song....very hypnotic...guitars, dulcimers and vocal harmonies all droning in G major....so that's the direction I took...fairly bright....banging away in G like there's no tomorrow

Ended up pulling a late-nighter finishing up around 3am with a rough static mix. Listened again in the morning...dialed it back a bit...was getting too hypnotic...added automation/FX etc...final balance (or 10)...good to go.

Haven't listened to other mixes yet...didn't want to change my mind...will jump back in and do some reviews later

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New version Mix_02 uploaded below


.mp3    Preach Right Here_HB_Mix_01.mp3 --  (Download: 10.42 MB)


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#2
Nice clean and punchy mix.. it's the biggest challenge with these tracks

on the critique side:
shakers are kinda loud
coffee grinders are loud as well

nice work

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#3
(07-06-2014, 07:54 PM)Marc Gosselin Wrote: Nice clean and punchy mix.. it's the biggest challenge with these tracks

on the critique side:
shakers are kinda loud
coffee grinders are loud as well

nice work

Thanks for your feedback and comments
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#4
Hello Hb Guitar,

love the intro, which sounds very taled, shaker is a bit too loud, and voice a bit too upfront though.

The transition sounds good, could maybe be a bit louder to give a sense of dynamic, and the voice could be a bit louder compared to the intro I think.

Overall good balance and punch, good job !
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#5
(18-06-2014, 12:38 AM)Kal Wrote: Hello Hb Guitar,

love the intro, which sounds very taled, shaker is a bit too loud, and voice a bit too upfront though.

The transition sounds good, could maybe be a bit louder to give a sense of dynamic, and the voice could be a bit louder compared to the intro I think.

Overall good balance and punch, good job !
Hey Kal...Thx for your comments.

In the intro i wanted the voice to be intimate yet soft..couldn't get the timbre as i wanted so it does sound a bit loud i agree. Also agree that the transition could be more dynamic.

Shakers ....i quite like them loud..a bit of contrast...i pulled an all nighter when I started the mix, and they kind of reminded me of rattle snakes at the time....kinda dangerous...added to the atmosphere....obviously not everyone's cup of tea lol
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#6
Hey HB, nice and clean and the degree of separation of instruments is really nice. The vocal sound is also good, but for much of the mix it's losing a lot of it's definition to electricguitar1, which would make it kinda tough to understand the lyrics if you hadn't heard them before... very forgivably easy oversight, though. I do it all the time, in fact, and probably always do it on a guitar heavy mix.

Some of my comments may be subjective, so take them as such if you disagree, though there are a few purely technical things that stand out enough to warrant a mention: Electric 1 is really... really... REALLY out of tune, and unless you have a good polyphonic tuning corrector, your options for dealing with it are limited. My advice? Leave it muted for most of the song... there's plenty of drone on that G coming from the rest of the instruments to maintain that effect. Unfortunately, the tuning is out of whack with itself, so for the parts where you let this part play, try and use a pitch shifter to tune that all important G, and try to keep it in places where few pitched instruments are playing... it won't sound so out of place and you'll be able to tweak the pitch of the Lead Vocal in context... nobody'll notice Smile. In this particular case, that guitar is also quite a bit too aggressive from 2k to 5k in your mix, which is where our ears naturally listen for speech intelligibility, so it draws a lot of focus away from the vocal and toward the dodgy intonation.

You mentioned that you intentionally mixed this one pretty bright, which isn't necessarily inappropriate for the genre, but this song I think does better when it's a little darker. An unintended side effect here is that the acoustic guitars, dulcimer and cymbals are all brighter than the lead vocal, which from my perspective would make it hard to play the song at higher volumes without the brightness getting too uncomfortable. To me it sounds like you added brightness rather than subtracted darkness... it's easy for a mix to get harsh in that manner, especially when that same G note is banging away throughout the entire song. Perhaps a little less brightness would also enhance the hypnotic effect you mentioned Smile

Good work though, dude. Sounds like you managed the plosives on the lead vocal pretty well, and your reverb/delay choices are a lot more consistent with the genre/era than my version. If you want to do a revision, start by giving the vocal more room for air from 2k to 5k and I think your other ideas will fall right into place.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#7
I like the 2nd chorus quite a bit going into the instrumental part. sounds nice and big. The intro i share with the otehrs a little bit, those shakers hit me quite hard in the face.

Might bring out the vocal a little bit. A bit of EQ on the high end might help in that regard as well.

Overll I like this mix a lot.
"Anything too dumb to be spoken should be sung" Know your bones - aKing
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#8
(18-07-2014, 09:02 AM)Nep5 Wrote: I like the 2nd chorus quite a bit going into the instrumental part. sounds nice and big. The intro i share with the otehrs a little bit, those shakers hit me quite hard in the face.

Might bring out the vocal a little bit. A bit of EQ on the high end might help in that regard as well.

Overll I like this mix a lot.

Hi Nep5, thanks for your feedback and comments......I think the time has come for a remix....will address shakers. Agree about Vox too. Cheers
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#9
(17-07-2014, 11:21 PM)pauli Wrote: Hey HB, nice and clean and the degree of separation of instruments is really nice. The vocal sound is also good, but for much of the mix it's losing a lot of it's definition to electricguitar1, which would make it kinda tough to understand the lyrics if you hadn't heard them before... very forgivably easy oversight, though. I do it all the time, in fact, and probably always do it on a guitar heavy mix.

Some of my comments may be subjective, so take them as such if you disagree, though there are a few purely technical things that stand out enough to warrant a mention: Electric 1 is really... really... REALLY out of tune, and unless you have a good polyphonic tuning corrector, your options for dealing with it are limited. My advice? Leave it muted for most of the song... there's plenty of drone on that G coming from the rest of the instruments to maintain that effect. Unfortunately, the tuning is out of whack with itself, so for the parts where you let this part play, try and use a pitch shifter to tune that all important G, and try to keep it in places where few pitched instruments are playing... it won't sound so out of place and you'll be able to tweak the pitch of the Lead Vocal in context... nobody'll notice Smile. In this particular case, that guitar is also quite a bit too aggressive from 2k to 5k in your mix, which is where our ears naturally listen for speech intelligibility, so it draws a lot of focus away from the vocal and toward the dodgy intonation.

You mentioned that you intentionally mixed this one pretty bright, which isn't necessarily inappropriate for the genre, but this song I think does better when it's a little darker. An unintended side effect here is that the acoustic guitars, dulcimer and cymbals are all brighter than the lead vocal, which from my perspective would make it hard to play the song at higher volumes without the brightness getting too uncomfortable. To me it sounds like you added brightness rather than subtracted darkness... it's easy for a mix to get harsh in that manner, especially when that same G note is banging away throughout the entire song. Perhaps a little less brightness would also enhance the hypnotic effect you mentioned Smile

Good work though, dude. Sounds like you managed the plosives on the lead vocal pretty well, and your reverb/delay choices are a lot more consistent with the genre/era than my version. If you want to do a revision, start by giving the vocal more room for air from 2k to 5k and I think your other ideas will fall right into place.

Hey Pauli - Thanks for your feedback. I haven't listened to this mix for a while. I was sort of exhausted by it originally.

re vox - I agree. Needs to be up a smidge plus a nudge with EQ would be nice. I never really got the timbre that I was hearing in my head.

re ElecGtr1 - I never noticed (LOL)! I think instinctively i assumed the dischord in the playing style was down to an open G tuning, which can yield a lot more tonal variation if banged hard, and fitted nicely into my drone heavy mix. Bit of a feedback loop--what i heard made sense to me given what i wanted to achieve.

I think time has come for slight re-mix...having listened again with fresh ears. I've got a couple of ideas I want to try now plus address some of the comments.

Cheers buddy
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#10
Slight remix ------Mix_02

Decided the mix needed "stomp" as well as drone.

1. Vox----EQ to add bottom warmth and top air, automate slight level boost in places
2. Bass and Kick----slight bottom boost

Have left backing track pretty much as is with just a couple of small tweaks here and there.

Overall probably closer to what i had in my head originally. The extra stomp adds a darker counterbalance to brightness of guitars etc plus helps to increase dynamic of soft/loud transitions. Slightly warmer vox helps with intimacy in quiet parts plus counters brightness during choruses etc

Oh yeah....by popular demand, have killed the levels of coffee grinders/shakers


.mp3    Preach Right Here_HB_Mix_02.mp3 --  (Download: 10.42 MB)


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