23-05-2015, 03:05 AM
I mixed this one way back and remember a lot of the challenges you mention.
Dynamically the whole mix feels a bit flat to me... not necessarily solely as a result of your processing. Keep in mind that these tracks are sourced from tape, which naturally rounds off transients... and it's old tape, so doubly so. Main takeaway from there is that you may need to work a bit to protect what transients you have, rather than attenuate them as we usually have to do with digital recordings, to keep the sound lively and modern. So parallel compression is a good start in the right direction there, but it's good to try and leave juust a little more transient on the parallel channel, especially in a situation like this where you're basically performing a restoration... the guitars and vocal both feel a little blunted in this respect to me, and the mix as a whole is a bit squeezed. Even modest compression settings across the mix are potentially dangerous in this situation, though... don't forget that the guys working on tape didn't have the 96 dB of dynamic range that we have to work with when mastering for CD.
Try to think of channel compression more as a tool for shaping dynamics rather than explicitly managing them... consider the transient and sustain envelope your primary target and try to manage the dynamics more with automation and buss compression.
There's quite a bit of crackling/distortion surrounding the guitar solo across the stereo image... not sure what's going on there. Could be printed on the tracks, but it almost sounds like digital distortion.
Re parallel distortion on the bass.... I personally think this bass needs more midrange harmonic content to get itself across and bring the funk, and distortion is the best bet. If it's hurting the low end, try bandpassing the parallel channel with a linear phase EQ, allowing only the content you're aiming to enhance to get through. There will probably still be a bit of subtle comb filtering depending on how you're achieving the distortion, but this is very easily solved with a simple phase rotator... usually you can just fiddle with it until it gets louder, then you can be pretty sure that the phase relationship isn't going to be counterproductive if you need to pull the parallel channel up in the mix.
Dynamically the whole mix feels a bit flat to me... not necessarily solely as a result of your processing. Keep in mind that these tracks are sourced from tape, which naturally rounds off transients... and it's old tape, so doubly so. Main takeaway from there is that you may need to work a bit to protect what transients you have, rather than attenuate them as we usually have to do with digital recordings, to keep the sound lively and modern. So parallel compression is a good start in the right direction there, but it's good to try and leave juust a little more transient on the parallel channel, especially in a situation like this where you're basically performing a restoration... the guitars and vocal both feel a little blunted in this respect to me, and the mix as a whole is a bit squeezed. Even modest compression settings across the mix are potentially dangerous in this situation, though... don't forget that the guys working on tape didn't have the 96 dB of dynamic range that we have to work with when mastering for CD.
Try to think of channel compression more as a tool for shaping dynamics rather than explicitly managing them... consider the transient and sustain envelope your primary target and try to manage the dynamics more with automation and buss compression.
There's quite a bit of crackling/distortion surrounding the guitar solo across the stereo image... not sure what's going on there. Could be printed on the tracks, but it almost sounds like digital distortion.
Re parallel distortion on the bass.... I personally think this bass needs more midrange harmonic content to get itself across and bring the funk, and distortion is the best bet. If it's hurting the low end, try bandpassing the parallel channel with a linear phase EQ, allowing only the content you're aiming to enhance to get through. There will probably still be a bit of subtle comb filtering depending on how you're achieving the distortion, but this is very easily solved with a simple phase rotator... usually you can just fiddle with it until it gets louder, then you can be pretty sure that the phase relationship isn't going to be counterproductive if you need to pull the parallel channel up in the mix.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!