Pedaling Prince Mix: Street Noise - Revelations

[The_Metallurgist]

I was actually looking to clean up the recording and make use of its full studio quality. Problem is I found the tracks themselves lacked much content in the high end, probably owning to the limitations of magnetic recording.

Do you have any specific suggestions how I might tease out a little more high frequency content without pushing it too far?

hi John, many thanks for the reply and clarification, and indeed also for the bike link which brought back a flood of excellent memories!

i have difficulty, i must admit, with the original samples. the lack of any high frequency material makes me suspect they were severely degraded prior to transcribing to digital, and most certainly are not of their original recorded quality. even at 7IPS (not a studio-quality speed!!), there should be more than sufficient spectral balance here, with content up to the 16kHz range. the fact there's nothing much above 4kHz suggests to me the tape has degraded over time for whatever reasons - the distortions evident in some of the material would support this too. so, basically you/we are not working with the "full studio quality recordings" as perhaps perceived, but ones that are sonically degraded with the resultant hugely unnatural spectral frequency imbalances.

so, on that basis, mixing this material without trying to gain back the harmonics while addressing the spectral imbalances, is pretty much a lost cause i'd say; it's not mixing as i'd define it, nor has it any reference to mastering? most people here have failed to understand the material before them and have obliviously gone ahead mixing what they think is traditionally recorded audio or the era. it's not, sadly. and this means what they've produced is not even close to what it should be sonically because of the lack of harmonics and the implications this has on tonality and delivery. i'd courteously suggest that any feedback given should take this into account if it's going to be valid, informative or even educational.

my mix, when compared to yours, appears much, much brighter. if you switch from yours to mine it's a bit of a shock. however, if you give the brain a chance to adjust, within a short space of time it will sound quite fine. there's psycho-acoustic reasons why this is so, but that's beyond this scope.

regarding EQ, i'd say that it's the instrument, the quality of the recording, and what else is going on around it which will dictate my action. however, given the crippled samples here(!), sometimes there needs to be a brutal approach, of the sort that might give you nightmares. for example, in order for me to get rid of the disgusting boom and flab on the bass guitar (no bass guitar in any genre or era has ever sounded as bad as this), i hit it with distortion. this caused wonderful harmonics which i could then shape with EQ to achieve my vision of how i wanted it to sound in the mix [after considering everything else instrumentally in this equation too].

note the low end of the lead guitars which is especially coloured also and rather boomy as a consequence, owing to the frequency imbalances? i'd suggest if any of the original musicians heard what we are hearing, they'd be less than amused, and rightly so.

reverb, to me, is about the creation of space around the instrument, so i can imagine where it is relative to me and all the other musicians in the performance to such an extent that i can envision the size of the room in terms of width, depth and height (and it's construction materials!!) and where the instrument is relative to it. every instrument demands it's own individual specific application of ambiance of some sort because of it's specific location in the overall space - this needs to be communicated to your audience or confusion reigns. our brains understand space on a subconscious level, and anything that sounds unnatural or confusing will get its attention. in a mix, we don't want our audience to be distracted from the actual song, so critical vigilance needs to be exercised on the specific selection of artificial ambiance. reverb can also be used for EQ purposes, so too compression.

incidentally, if i feel an instrument will benefit from a 15dB gain shelving filter at 2.5kHz, i wont think it's out of hand if the outcome suits my vision for the mix. numbers aren't important, it's all about creating emotion and nobody will give a monkeys how you did it.

thanks for taking the time in giving me feedback, by the way! appreciated. but you will perhaps understand why my mix is brighter and has a more generous spectral range given the scenario?

hope this helps, hit me back if you think i can be of help, you are more than welcome ;)

keep up the good work
cheers
BigDave