My humble approach to Changing Things, Newly and Nicely Refined

[Mixinthecloud]

Colleagues,

I took a very simple approach to this interesting composition. Very little EQ and compression were used throughout until the mastering where some gain was added to even presence through the sound field.

I hope you find this to your liking.

As always, comments are encouraged and appreciated.

Lorenzo Price - Changing Things
8/17/2017

-----------------------
Nice! I like the natural sounding drums. You kept the ring in the toms and they sound very much like a strict Jazz kit. Mix balance is great.....like the mix a lot. I took a different approach with the drums......beefed the toms and gated them, added some low end bump around 40hz on the kick and dipped the low mids, etc. I love to listen to so many different approaches to the same material. It's a fascinating thing and it's very educational. Bravo again on a nice mix.

Tom

Tom,
I just finished listening to your mix and would echo your sentiments. One of the benefits of great musicianship is not needing to do much to bring out the artistry. When I listened to the individual channels for the drums they are wide open, especially the kick, which is a refreshing change. You can almost hear how new the head is on the kick. I did do some slight control on the first tom for its solid ring by dipping the low mids, but hey, that's the way it was tuned so I did not suppress it completely. And the way it is played brings different tone base upon the strike. Over-all the drums have deep low end boosted and the upper highs boosted as well, all done on the stereo drum buss. I was very cautious about making them sound too processed or altered. The only effects are an in-line convolusion reverb on the stereo master to add a sense of place and to deepen the sound field slightly to give a bit more space to each player.

My stereo placement for the drums was based on the overheads and listening carefully to where individual instruments appeared in them. Not sure this is the best approach, but it seemed to work in this instance. The piano was a bit of a challenge only in that the stereo spread was predefined. I used some trickery to modify that so I could effectively pan it slightly to provide more of a live mix yet keep a stereo mix of it. It required no EQ nor compression. The same can be said for the guitars. They are essentially flat. I did some minor compression of the bass to make it a bit more consistent, but not more than a 3 db drop.

Thanks for your words.