20-05-2014, 04:51 PM
You're most satisfied with the third mix, so my comments are based entirely on that version 
which I think is quite good.
In no particular order:
Ok, so first of all, the piano sounds great. I'm not sure why but I found the piano tone to be pretty unwieldy and it would appear others have as well, because this is the best piano sound I've heard on this multi-track.
During the string interlude, I feel like the oh-whoa-oh-ohs could be a good deal louder. Allowing the strings to take center stage there is an excellent idea but IMHO the vocals are an important part of the drama in that section, as well, and they're pretty washed out by the strings. Oddly enough, there are a few parts where those same vocal groups are chewing into the lead vocal a bit... I had that difficulty too, and used a sidechain compression strategy on the bus of each set of backing vocal tracks to duck their level a couple dB whenever the lead vocal was playing.
Obviously I freakin' love the reverb. I have to admit to being rather overtimid with reverb on such a dense arrangement initially, but on the whole you've pulled it off without sacrificing any clarity or definition whatsoever, which is very impressive, especially considering the verbs you've chosen are rather thick and diffuse. It's a great sound but difficult to manage as well as you have given the number of tracks at play. I do feel, however, that the reverb on the drum tracks is lacking in brightness, particularly the snare drum. I imagine you probably rolled off the high end on the close mic'd snare drum tracks for kit 1, given the enormous hi-hat bleed, which was my first instinct as well. Generally in a pop song you'll want a very present snare... a good way to try dealing with this is to trigger a multiband compressor on the snare drum with the hi-hat, compressing only the high frequencies, with a very fast attack and very fast release time. If you boost the highs on the snare sample a good deal and feed it slightly into the same reverb, it'll fill any teeny holes the compressor might make. Just an opinion though... perhaps you wanted a less present kit sound, in which case, disregard this... I think it sounds great, but that it's just a little odd for the genre.
On the point of reverb, I have one more quibble... I think you should look into the sibilance on the lead vocals. Normally sibilance doesn't bother me much but in cases where reverb levels are much higher than normal, it can become a bit of an issue. For my part, I'd recommend doing a normal de-essing on the main vocal track, and savagely de-ess the offending frequencies on the reverb... or just pinpoint them and notch them out. If you keep the bandwidth on the de-esser narrow enough, that generally doesn't have any negative side effects like it would on the main track, in my experience.
Again, I think this is a great effort, and I thank you for all of your feedback on my version thus far. Great job.
which I think is quite good.In no particular order:
Ok, so first of all, the piano sounds great. I'm not sure why but I found the piano tone to be pretty unwieldy and it would appear others have as well, because this is the best piano sound I've heard on this multi-track.
During the string interlude, I feel like the oh-whoa-oh-ohs could be a good deal louder. Allowing the strings to take center stage there is an excellent idea but IMHO the vocals are an important part of the drama in that section, as well, and they're pretty washed out by the strings. Oddly enough, there are a few parts where those same vocal groups are chewing into the lead vocal a bit... I had that difficulty too, and used a sidechain compression strategy on the bus of each set of backing vocal tracks to duck their level a couple dB whenever the lead vocal was playing.
Obviously I freakin' love the reverb. I have to admit to being rather overtimid with reverb on such a dense arrangement initially, but on the whole you've pulled it off without sacrificing any clarity or definition whatsoever, which is very impressive, especially considering the verbs you've chosen are rather thick and diffuse. It's a great sound but difficult to manage as well as you have given the number of tracks at play. I do feel, however, that the reverb on the drum tracks is lacking in brightness, particularly the snare drum. I imagine you probably rolled off the high end on the close mic'd snare drum tracks for kit 1, given the enormous hi-hat bleed, which was my first instinct as well. Generally in a pop song you'll want a very present snare... a good way to try dealing with this is to trigger a multiband compressor on the snare drum with the hi-hat, compressing only the high frequencies, with a very fast attack and very fast release time. If you boost the highs on the snare sample a good deal and feed it slightly into the same reverb, it'll fill any teeny holes the compressor might make. Just an opinion though... perhaps you wanted a less present kit sound, in which case, disregard this... I think it sounds great, but that it's just a little odd for the genre.
On the point of reverb, I have one more quibble... I think you should look into the sibilance on the lead vocals. Normally sibilance doesn't bother me much but in cases where reverb levels are much higher than normal, it can become a bit of an issue. For my part, I'd recommend doing a normal de-essing on the main vocal track, and savagely de-ess the offending frequencies on the reverb... or just pinpoint them and notch them out. If you keep the bandwidth on the de-esser narrow enough, that generally doesn't have any negative side effects like it would on the main track, in my experience.
Again, I think this is a great effort, and I thank you for all of your feedback on my version thus far. Great job.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!