Good Time - orthogonalrecords

[orthogonalrecords]

Hi all,

I am finally back with another mix.

This is my version of "Good Time".
I hope you can give my some feedback and opinions.

Best regards,
Markus

[thedon]

I like your mix ,maybe have a play around with the reverb on the electric guitar that starts in the intro as giving my ears the impression of being in a different room to the rest of the band !

[orthogonalrecords]

Thanks for your feedback.
I will have a look at that specific room and maybe come back with another version.

[azwayne]

I like the delay on that electric though it may be justa *tad* long (like a millisecond or two.)

I agree with the reverb/tone comment. You tried to give the guitar a doubled sound and then blend the delay with the primary signal, sounds like, but the choice of reverb is different from what you did for the rest of the band so it sticks out a bit much. If one of the instruments is in an empty rectangular warehouse with a lot of concrete and metal walls and the another is in a church with fairly irregular surfaces and lots of exposed woodwork (beams, ceilings, pews, etc), they're not gonna blend well because they're just never gonna sound like they're supposed to go together. One is going to have a lot of slapback and echoes with very little difusion and a high RT60 and the other is going to have almost no echoes, near 100% difusion and a fairly short RT60. How do you make these fit together?

When using a reverb processor, unless it is your explicit intent to use a contrasting setup (and this is done a lot from what I understand, sometimes using multiple processors on the same instrument), generally, if you pick a preset that's, say, "concert hall" then the rest of your reverb needs to be based around that same preset. (IE, the base effect should have a certain room size, a certain RT60, and a certain difusion.) Consider though that "concert hall" is probably not appropriate for a rock band or hip-hop but would work well for a brass ensemble or mariachi band. Pick something appropriate to the genre of the tune but always remember that breaking the rules can work out well if you know what you're doing. You can then adjust the amount of reverb on an instrument by varying the send levels and leave the overall return fader more or less static. Then if you want to play with spatial positioning using predelay and so on, you can replicate this reverb return for each specific instrument/position and change things up at the specific instance of the plugin as desired. Note though that all of these are still the same room size/type so they will still all blend very well together.

Hope this helps.

[orthogonalrecords]

Thank you very much for your in depth comment azwayne.

I tried to change the mix according to your suggestions, though I didn't do everything with one single type of room but rather tried to change the settings in order for the signals to blend better. I practically never use any presets but dial in the effects to my own taste. Here I used the Lexicon LXP Hall on vox, chamber on guitars and the Eventide Ultrareverb room (1) on drums.

To my best knowledge and also according to the hands-on mixing course that I attended last week, it is completely common to use different rooms on different elements of a mix (as you also pointed out). Of course I agree that one has to make sure that they all blend well. I also agree that they didn't in my first mix.

I also changed some other things like the ducking-delay on the vox, the delay on the solo-guitar and the chorus on the rythm guitars. Hope it's better now.

[azwayne]

It's funny we had this discussion since last night my ipod hit Seether's "No Jesus Christ" and there comes that lead guitar at about 1:10 with that bridge between the first and second verse (and again after the second verse, an octave up). It's the pefect example of reverb for effect rather than for blend.

In terms of that specific issue, I think the second version works much better. There are still things on this mix that could probably use a few touches (but I'm not really focused now so won't attempt to comment), though it sounds pretty good as it is. It is a different take than I've heard on most and that alone makes it rather interesting.

[orthogonalrecords]

Thanks for your help, azwayne.

Of course, there are always several things to improve.
Anyway, I also learned in the last couple of months that one mix will always only be a snapshot.
As I am quite happy with the result for now, I am gonna move on to another song.

Best regards,
Markus