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Tears In The Rain - Olli H
#1
Here's my soft version of this nice song.

It was not easy at all.

My first thought was to go towards J.J. Cale, but as there was no shaker in this song, I decided to take as a reference Chat Atkins and Mark Knopfler playing together.


.mp3    2014-07-10-tears-olli-h.mp3 --  (Download: 7.19 MB)


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#2
Most of the mix qualities I'm hearing are very nice... nice ambiance and the tone of the electric guitars is very nice. Once every couple bars or so, the spectral balance of the mix has a whole gets a bit "lumpy," where the nylons and the electrics are competing for the same spectral real estate... to my ears it's not an EQ issue, I think it might be that the narrowed dynamic range of the individual instruments makes them a little unyielding to one another... I wonder if slower attack times or easing up on the ratio of any compressors involved would give the instruments a little more transient and a little less tonal "body," allowing them to weave in and out of one another more smoothly?

Your Chet Atkins w/ Knopfler reference is a brilliant choice... I like that you name a reference when you post your mixes, I think I should do that too.

You're right though... this one is tricky... but not HALF as tricky as An Nasc Nua, which I might be attempting to mix for the rest of my life....
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#3
Although I have never heard the word "lumpy", I'm sure you're just right about it. Smile But sometimes it's just wise to finish the song within reasonable timelimit, and then go to the next one. That doesn't mean I didn't try to do my best. But if I find that "lumpy" spot that I can't swallow, then I'll certainly open this project again.

It would be very interesting to hear other's references. To pick up a totally weird and new reference: that's an area where there's huge possibilities to learn something new. And wrongly chosen reference can spoil your mix altogether. And it also makes commenting more precise if one knows other's original intentions.

I always start to listen my references after I have done my first "real" version. I quite often may know beforehand what I'm going to use as a reference, but still I try to do the best version without listening it. So that I could learn better to follow my own instinct. And then it's nice to get the professional feedback from the CD.

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#4
By a lump, I mean a little short term buildup where too many instruments are occupying the same frequency... very small balance problems that occur here and there. Some multi-tracks have real challenges with lumps and this is definitely one of them.

most mix engineers I've met suggest getting the tracks balanced the best you can before you reference unless you get stuck on something really tricky, like an unfamiliar instrument, or a lead vocal that "just doesn't sound right." my personal approach after the normal tedious track cleanup and multing is to attack the mix with all the faders on, tweaking until I get something vaguely musical and looking for tracks where I can't get a static fader setting... then I delete all of the effects, pull all the faders down and get the best balance I can. And then I reference and find out I did the whole thing all wrong and start over again. And again. and again... and again...
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#5
hi,

sounds good. my only concern is that why would you pan the electric gtr lead to the left. should it not be the focus of the song. however its your call obviously.

regards,
Blue Bus.
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#6
Thanks for listening.
In this song there's quite much duetto playing, and I wanted guitars to have static position. I'm not sure why, but yesterday I just had that feeling. Maybe I wanted to preserve the conversational charcter. Main solo guitars are still quite near the centrum. But in the intro I felt that it was finger picking guitar and electric guitar that were talking to each other.




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