25-01-2015, 02:00 AM
Hey Dave.
What's very impressive to me here is the management of the depth field during the verses. There are probably a lot more reasons for this than I actively understand, but I've found the depth field on this track a real trick and many of the mixes on the forum seemed to hint at similar difficulties. There are some odd moments where the placement of instruments is a bit surprising for me, such as when the guitars enter during the verses, they come further forward than the vocal, which is a bit of an unusual choice... although given your demostrated control of depth placement on this mix, I suspect it was intentional and a subjective artistic decision.
In some mixes I find your edits, particularly during chorus sections, a bit strident and distracting. How much of this is due to my different interpretation and familiarity with the song-as-presented, it's obviously difficult to be sure, but throughout the choruses I feel like the underlying rhythmic pulse of the song is undermined by the attempts to introduce more character/engagement. I think hints a bit toward your genre preferences (and I remember at least once you mentioned being a very passionate fan of Aphex Twin and the DnB genre) and in that context the more characterful processing elements make more sense to me. Obviously subjective comments are spheric at best since we all have different ears, especially when it's hard to zoom in on specific technicals, but perhaps "it doesn't feel quite right" is the best way to say what I'm trying communicate. The electro hi-hats and lead vocals are a bit abrasive on the top end, for my ears... there's also a bit of comb filtering/jumbly-wumbly created by the tight delays on the vocals that's a touch distracting.
Sometimes the overall sonic signature/texture is also a bit thick, such that the diverse elements of the choruses blend in with one another a bit too much to discern their musical contribution.
On this review it feels like I'm focusing too much on the negatives and not enough on the positives, which isn't to say that overall I didn't enjoy it, because I did. I already mentioned that I found the handling of depth and placement inspiring during the choruses, but I also enjoyed the treatment and "stereo-ness" of the Rhodes. The minimal compression at play is an interesting and refreshing choice given that this genre tends to suffer more from the excessive squeeze of modern production methods. Skrillex's music (is it music? lol), for instance. The main point I'd like to drive is how arrangement difficulties can lead to mixdown difficulty, even when the engineer is as proficient in handling that sort of challenge as you are. You appropriate diagnosed the main issue as presented... the verse are fuller, wider, more musical, more engaging, and tracked better than the choruses. Not generally a good thing, arguably. But in your attempt to solve the problem, have you perhaps taken things a little too far? Obviously that depends on your audience to a large degree. However, I feel (and I think this is not a subjective observation) that there's now too much happening in the chorus, such that I find myself frequently distracted and at times uncomfortable as I listen. IMHO, things have gone from being much too open to being a bit too dense and cluttery... a bit banal to almost confusingly eventful. I doubt the nature of this can be adequately described with simple, blanket technical answers. Is there too much reverb? Too many FX? Too many edits? I can't possibly say, but there's a bit too much something. This is all forgivable to me, because it took me two weeks of poking these tracks with a really long stick to get something I felt I could post without selling myself short... I can only imagine how long you noodled with this, and I'm duly impressed.
So what I'd like to discuss with the group... it's good to enhance the sonics as presented, especially when we feel that enhancement is required to get listenable results. But when is it too much? At what point do we sacrifice more character and engagement to make sure we're not throwing the baby out with the bad water? What less-than-the-best sonic attributes should we let makes it through to the master to avoid undermining the song in some other way. When should we undermine the musicality of a song to support the lyrics? Should we be doing that at all?
Furthermore, what does this constant push we feel as engineers to make things intensely engaging from start to finish say about our skip-button, media bombarded culture? Maybe the music isn't the problem... maybe our modern media format has trained our audiences to seek unmusically processed material to avoid being bored by it. Is there something the engineering community could/should be doing to correct that? If you tried altering the arrangement of Mozart's Ein Klein Nachtmusik to make it more rhythmically engaging, for instance, the resulting lynch mob could take down entire music hall... because that crowd hasn't (yet) been trained to seek different forms of engagement when they're not presented.
Hopefully this doesn't come off as hateful or mix-bashing... not my intention at all. But these observations I've made feel worth sharing to me, even if they're perhaps the observations of a man's soul in his 60's occupying the body shared by a much younger set of ears. Perhaps that make them irrelevant, but I do feel like many of the psychological drawbacks of digital mixing are evident here.
What's very impressive to me here is the management of the depth field during the verses. There are probably a lot more reasons for this than I actively understand, but I've found the depth field on this track a real trick and many of the mixes on the forum seemed to hint at similar difficulties. There are some odd moments where the placement of instruments is a bit surprising for me, such as when the guitars enter during the verses, they come further forward than the vocal, which is a bit of an unusual choice... although given your demostrated control of depth placement on this mix, I suspect it was intentional and a subjective artistic decision.
In some mixes I find your edits, particularly during chorus sections, a bit strident and distracting. How much of this is due to my different interpretation and familiarity with the song-as-presented, it's obviously difficult to be sure, but throughout the choruses I feel like the underlying rhythmic pulse of the song is undermined by the attempts to introduce more character/engagement. I think hints a bit toward your genre preferences (and I remember at least once you mentioned being a very passionate fan of Aphex Twin and the DnB genre) and in that context the more characterful processing elements make more sense to me. Obviously subjective comments are spheric at best since we all have different ears, especially when it's hard to zoom in on specific technicals, but perhaps "it doesn't feel quite right" is the best way to say what I'm trying communicate. The electro hi-hats and lead vocals are a bit abrasive on the top end, for my ears... there's also a bit of comb filtering/jumbly-wumbly created by the tight delays on the vocals that's a touch distracting.
Sometimes the overall sonic signature/texture is also a bit thick, such that the diverse elements of the choruses blend in with one another a bit too much to discern their musical contribution.
On this review it feels like I'm focusing too much on the negatives and not enough on the positives, which isn't to say that overall I didn't enjoy it, because I did. I already mentioned that I found the handling of depth and placement inspiring during the choruses, but I also enjoyed the treatment and "stereo-ness" of the Rhodes. The minimal compression at play is an interesting and refreshing choice given that this genre tends to suffer more from the excessive squeeze of modern production methods. Skrillex's music (is it music? lol), for instance. The main point I'd like to drive is how arrangement difficulties can lead to mixdown difficulty, even when the engineer is as proficient in handling that sort of challenge as you are. You appropriate diagnosed the main issue as presented... the verse are fuller, wider, more musical, more engaging, and tracked better than the choruses. Not generally a good thing, arguably. But in your attempt to solve the problem, have you perhaps taken things a little too far? Obviously that depends on your audience to a large degree. However, I feel (and I think this is not a subjective observation) that there's now too much happening in the chorus, such that I find myself frequently distracted and at times uncomfortable as I listen. IMHO, things have gone from being much too open to being a bit too dense and cluttery... a bit banal to almost confusingly eventful. I doubt the nature of this can be adequately described with simple, blanket technical answers. Is there too much reverb? Too many FX? Too many edits? I can't possibly say, but there's a bit too much something. This is all forgivable to me, because it took me two weeks of poking these tracks with a really long stick to get something I felt I could post without selling myself short... I can only imagine how long you noodled with this, and I'm duly impressed.
So what I'd like to discuss with the group... it's good to enhance the sonics as presented, especially when we feel that enhancement is required to get listenable results. But when is it too much? At what point do we sacrifice more character and engagement to make sure we're not throwing the baby out with the bad water? What less-than-the-best sonic attributes should we let makes it through to the master to avoid undermining the song in some other way. When should we undermine the musicality of a song to support the lyrics? Should we be doing that at all?
Furthermore, what does this constant push we feel as engineers to make things intensely engaging from start to finish say about our skip-button, media bombarded culture? Maybe the music isn't the problem... maybe our modern media format has trained our audiences to seek unmusically processed material to avoid being bored by it. Is there something the engineering community could/should be doing to correct that? If you tried altering the arrangement of Mozart's Ein Klein Nachtmusik to make it more rhythmically engaging, for instance, the resulting lynch mob could take down entire music hall... because that crowd hasn't (yet) been trained to seek different forms of engagement when they're not presented.
Hopefully this doesn't come off as hateful or mix-bashing... not my intention at all. But these observations I've made feel worth sharing to me, even if they're perhaps the observations of a man's soul in his 60's occupying the body shared by a much younger set of ears. Perhaps that make them irrelevant, but I do feel like many of the psychological drawbacks of digital mixing are evident here.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!