01-02-2015, 11:01 PM
This one is a bit of a head scratcher and it's important you listen to every track in solo from start to finish. We should be doing that on every mix anyway, but everyone gets lazy from time to time, and this isn't the project for that.
Many of the pads, loops and instruments on this project serve entirely different musical purposes in different parts of the song... and in the case of the pads/synths, some of them change character entirely! If you don't catch that and mult the synths from the very beginning, it's really easy to "mix yourself into a corner" and have to backtrack.
Another pressing issue is the dodgy timing in the female vocal and strings. On the female vocal there are also some pretty bad edits that need correcting. Since a very lush backdrop of ambience is required in this genre, timing correction becomes ever more important as a means of helping you keep the reverb under control. I worked for a good while on timing edits where I didn't the first time, but since this was a monitoring test from the outset... honestly, life's too short... but at least the still poor viola/violin timing will illustrate my point as to how bad timing can make a mess of a long reverb.
A final note for any new mixers who might be reading... there is a time and purpose for master buss reverb... and this isn't it. My first effort that I'll link to used a simple master reverb to achieve the ambience, but the significant drawback of a long ambience on the master is that you can't control how much each channel is feeding into it, so consequently, the vocals are quite washed out. In the new version, I used a more controllable strategy of layering reverbs... a short chamber for blend, a long and spacious hall for the dreamy texture and depth, and plates/delays assigned to individual channels or small groups for sustain, tone, or "effect." Using this strategy, you can specify exactly how much each channel should blend in with the mix, it's depth within the mix, and the individual effects can help you alter the character/tonality of your tracks in a way that EQ and compression can't... if you can't seem to find an EQ or compressor that shapes a signal the way you want, short plate reverbs can really help.
Here's the link to the original thread:
http://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/showt...p?tid=3522
As always, if there's anything I can do... if you like it and want to try for some of these sounds, if you hate it and want to avoid these sounds if at all possible, feel free to drop a comment.
Many of the pads, loops and instruments on this project serve entirely different musical purposes in different parts of the song... and in the case of the pads/synths, some of them change character entirely! If you don't catch that and mult the synths from the very beginning, it's really easy to "mix yourself into a corner" and have to backtrack.
Another pressing issue is the dodgy timing in the female vocal and strings. On the female vocal there are also some pretty bad edits that need correcting. Since a very lush backdrop of ambience is required in this genre, timing correction becomes ever more important as a means of helping you keep the reverb under control. I worked for a good while on timing edits where I didn't the first time, but since this was a monitoring test from the outset... honestly, life's too short... but at least the still poor viola/violin timing will illustrate my point as to how bad timing can make a mess of a long reverb.
A final note for any new mixers who might be reading... there is a time and purpose for master buss reverb... and this isn't it. My first effort that I'll link to used a simple master reverb to achieve the ambience, but the significant drawback of a long ambience on the master is that you can't control how much each channel is feeding into it, so consequently, the vocals are quite washed out. In the new version, I used a more controllable strategy of layering reverbs... a short chamber for blend, a long and spacious hall for the dreamy texture and depth, and plates/delays assigned to individual channels or small groups for sustain, tone, or "effect." Using this strategy, you can specify exactly how much each channel should blend in with the mix, it's depth within the mix, and the individual effects can help you alter the character/tonality of your tracks in a way that EQ and compression can't... if you can't seem to find an EQ or compressor that shapes a signal the way you want, short plate reverbs can really help.
Here's the link to the original thread:
http://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/showt...p?tid=3522
As always, if there's anything I can do... if you like it and want to try for some of these sounds, if you hate it and want to avoid these sounds if at all possible, feel free to drop a comment.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!