24-06-2014, 09:09 PM
when A&R walk in and demand a 'Vocal up' mix for radio, what can you do? lol
thanks Olli and Niel for taking the time here, appreciated. the vocal was difficult. do you ever try out quick ideas without paying too much attention to the structure in the DAW with the intention of tidying up if it works? well, i never got round to tidying it up....and it got worse with time. i had Aux's all over the place and stacked inserts galore, sidechains and more automation than i could shake a stick at - it was ugly. i worked this project over a 3-week period, and i think i ended up with over 100 tracks to try and remember what was doing what.
i used the Cubase plug "Pitch Correct", quick and dirty for the formant tweaks.
now, these drums.....
...i ditched the OH's. for some reason the phasing issues were really bad. listening to the other mixes herein, it's quite marked. i found it irritating, so tried to dig the cymbals and hat out of the single room mic. this had issues....pulling out the instruments caused abundant fatigue (i wasn't surprised), so major compromise was in order. the snare too was tricky; the room mic tracking actually wanders in it's timing with the other drum tracks which was alarming (fixable, with unlimited time constraints). anyway, it was a lot of faffing about and quite a tough price to pay. can't "fix it in the mix"?
i will flag up the outro here. the original tracking was problematic from the arrangement, such that a significant part of the vocal was wiped out irrespective of processing. i changed it, making sure the instruments finished [unnaturally] dry while the vocal was fed into a big reverb which faded out. i liked the contrast and the subtle ambiguity. oh, and the clarity!
final note...i've since been into the project and fiddled around a bit with the vocal, but to be honest it's going to be a lot of work to tidy it all up and get a new balance going, and even then it's possible i might not be able to get back to the original idea. learning point? i should know better by now
Cheers!
thanks Olli and Niel for taking the time here, appreciated. the vocal was difficult. do you ever try out quick ideas without paying too much attention to the structure in the DAW with the intention of tidying up if it works? well, i never got round to tidying it up....and it got worse with time. i had Aux's all over the place and stacked inserts galore, sidechains and more automation than i could shake a stick at - it was ugly. i worked this project over a 3-week period, and i think i ended up with over 100 tracks to try and remember what was doing what.
i used the Cubase plug "Pitch Correct", quick and dirty for the formant tweaks.
now, these drums.....
...i ditched the OH's. for some reason the phasing issues were really bad. listening to the other mixes herein, it's quite marked. i found it irritating, so tried to dig the cymbals and hat out of the single room mic. this had issues....pulling out the instruments caused abundant fatigue (i wasn't surprised), so major compromise was in order. the snare too was tricky; the room mic tracking actually wanders in it's timing with the other drum tracks which was alarming (fixable, with unlimited time constraints). anyway, it was a lot of faffing about and quite a tough price to pay. can't "fix it in the mix"?
i will flag up the outro here. the original tracking was problematic from the arrangement, such that a significant part of the vocal was wiped out irrespective of processing. i changed it, making sure the instruments finished [unnaturally] dry while the vocal was fed into a big reverb which faded out. i liked the contrast and the subtle ambiguity. oh, and the clarity!
final note...i've since been into the project and fiddled around a bit with the vocal, but to be honest it's going to be a lot of work to tidy it all up and get a new balance going, and even then it's possible i might not be able to get back to the original idea. learning point? i should know better by now
Cheers!
Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!