Dark Horses

[Lammy]

Dear all.
Here some work on the beautiful song, quite draft I guess. But direction is set.
Maybe because I was ear training with a monumental Maria Rita (listen to A Festa for a refreshing experience), I got inspired by an acoustic drums interpretation. I 'm not super expert on either, maybe something in between the artificial cleanliness of Jana Kramer and the acoustic liveliness of Maria Rita. But I guess this is only wishful thinking.

Drums
- Layered (not replaced) kick and snare tracks
- A hopefully lively use of the drum ambience track
- Plate and hall reverbs to taste
Bass
- Bass has some Fatso tape emu, that may be overdone. Not sure, I have to crank the volume of the monitors up. Not possible currently.
Voices
- I've not included the dubbed out-of-phase second voice track. I'm not familiar with the technique. What LeadVoxDT means? Delayed? Anyway the track is frozen momentarily. Bear with me. Didn't do any research, just downloaded and mixed.
Guits
- I didn't do much on guitars except eq

Nearly all tracks "controlled" with various 1176 emu plugins. Summed with d-box.

Pre-master. Pre-automation. Pre-refinements.

Partly mixed on earphones late night, so don't shoot too hard at the console man ;-)

cheers

[takka360]

Hardly any bottom end here,also the snare sounds very thin and weak ,out of phase?
DT stands for double track

[Lammy]

Hardly any bottom end here,also the snare sounds very thin and weak ,out of phase?
DT stands for double track

Thanks takka, appreciated.
On the bottom end I'll hold the position momentarily, while curing the mix.
I may agree on the need of (a little bit!) more transient on kick and snare, but I don't want to get a rock mix eventually.

Ok, voice just double track. I'll see if the artistic part of me will want to layer the voice. not sure.

cheers

[mixingonamission]

Hi Lammy,

it does all sound a bit thin. have a go at changing your layered kick and snare samples to deeper timbres and rebalance using the OH track as your main mix, i feel the bass and vocals need much more levelling work, get some of those 1176 emulations working harder!

[gopener]

The mix have tons of bass and have issues for sure, some of them.
Snare is too thin and comes from all over (because of the oh)
The mix it self is muddy a lot.

The song it self is very difficult to mix, fortunately though not too many tracks!
I like a lot how you blending the vocals with guitars, you have some very good ideas!
good job

[Lammy]

thanks for the feedback, gopener, mixingonamission and takka

I've reviewed after a month also taking into account your comments on thin-ness.
I've uploaded v.02 with a master added, in the first post.
Not perfect but (I believe) quite an improvement.
As previously mentioned not easy at all.
Compared to the contest winner mix, I'd preferred to keep the acoustic sounds rather than making deep sculpting.
but indeed the 1176s now are working harder

I felt like experimenting a glueing fast decay reverb at mastering stage. It looked to be pleasantly softening the tracks. Maybe too soft or too blurred now?
cheers

[Lammy]

Now v.02 master 03 is added in first post.
Master stage only is reviewed with slightly different mb compression and eq.
It should give more air with respect to the previous master, and also more overall transient impact.
Getting very close to what what was my target.
cheers

[Lammy]

Added latest (last?) update in first post.
02.02.M01

- adjusted the vox reverb
- adjusted transients in drumset
- minor adjustments to master

cheers

[azwayne]

Be careful that when the electric guitar comes in that it doesn't obliterate the acoustic.

The bass guitar may be up a tad too much. Might want to shelve that low end about -5 dB at about 125 Hz.

I have no problem with removing the double track. This is a country type song, after all, and that is not is not out of character. It may even be better without it, in fact. (I kept it in mine since when I see a "DT" my assumption is that the artist wants it kept if it can be made to work but in this song, that's a real challenge.)

There are some balancing issues with the various guitar parts. EG3 doesn't seem to want to come forward like it should. Might want to check the levels there.

You've got a good sounding mix here. I like what I hear.

[Lammy]

Reviewed months later and took good care of the notes from the nice people from the forum.

cheers