03-02-2015, 07:04 AM
Thanks for your comments, buddy. Reverb is always tricky, especially when you need a really lush texture in the background and several synths with printed effects.
You're right about the strings, of course. Like I said though, life's too short to waste 3 hours fixing dodgy timing when you're simply trying to learn how your new monitors/absorbers affect you perception, so I pushed them into the backdrop a bit to keep them from distracting me too much. The female vocal, though, there was no mixing this without taking the time to correct all the wacky timing and bad edits. The backing vocal tracks are also a bit ridiculously disorganized.. it really pays off to move takes around and adjust the gain accordingly from the get-go so you don't have to spend the rest of your life automating everything at the end.
That's another good thing to touch on for any newbies who might be reading... if things need editing and organizing, try to do as much as you can before you start mixing. In the end, this is part of gain staging, which I touched on in the first "improvement mix" thread. Moving backing vocal takes around, either multing or moving a take to an existing track with a more similar musical purpose, can really save you a lot of time during the automation stage. Just be sure to adjust the gain of any take you move to an existing track to match the other content so you can keep a more static fader level (and the same compressor settings if applicable) throughout the mix... it really helps a lot, and while it seems like a tedious chore when you're wanting to start leveling and EQing, it's much more painful to dial in all that automation when you're trying to finish up. An hour or two in the beginning can save you from blowing your Saturday afternoon trying to sort this out after processing.
Please, if you're new to mixing, LEARN FROM MY ERROR and read as much about gain staging as you possibly can. I remember having to automate every friggin' syllable of the lead female vocal to get less satisfactory results than you hear on this version which employs far less automation, compression and EQ.
You're right about the strings, of course. Like I said though, life's too short to waste 3 hours fixing dodgy timing when you're simply trying to learn how your new monitors/absorbers affect you perception, so I pushed them into the backdrop a bit to keep them from distracting me too much. The female vocal, though, there was no mixing this without taking the time to correct all the wacky timing and bad edits. The backing vocal tracks are also a bit ridiculously disorganized.. it really pays off to move takes around and adjust the gain accordingly from the get-go so you don't have to spend the rest of your life automating everything at the end.
That's another good thing to touch on for any newbies who might be reading... if things need editing and organizing, try to do as much as you can before you start mixing. In the end, this is part of gain staging, which I touched on in the first "improvement mix" thread. Moving backing vocal takes around, either multing or moving a take to an existing track with a more similar musical purpose, can really save you a lot of time during the automation stage. Just be sure to adjust the gain of any take you move to an existing track to match the other content so you can keep a more static fader level (and the same compressor settings if applicable) throughout the mix... it really helps a lot, and while it seems like a tedious chore when you're wanting to start leveling and EQing, it's much more painful to dial in all that automation when you're trying to finish up. An hour or two in the beginning can save you from blowing your Saturday afternoon trying to sort this out after processing.
Please, if you're new to mixing, LEARN FROM MY ERROR and read as much about gain staging as you possibly can. I remember having to automate every friggin' syllable of the lead female vocal to get less satisfactory results than you hear on this version which employs far less automation, compression and EQ.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!