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Color Me Red - jtbStudio
#6
Well, you're certainly not afraid to wield the editing scalpel! I can see where you're coming from here, in that the riff is such a strong element of the arrangement that it feels a shame on some level to interrupt its relentless groove in Outro 1. Even in that context, though, I think I'd still have left Mid-section 2 in there, as that provides crucial musical variety -- you could still have cut straight from that to Outro 2 without dropping the beat. I like that you kept the ElecGtr04 part from Outro 1 in there, though, as it'd have been a shame to lose that!

The blend of acoustic and electric guitars in the main riff section is also pretty cool, making a nice balance between lively dynamics and rock attitude. When it gets to the Mid-section, though, the cleaner guitar layers seem rather understated, which feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity in terms of differentiating the song sections. Could the bass maybe have a bit more bite in the midrange too overall, so we hear its nice little fills and slides better?

The overall tonality does seem rather clouded and middly on the whole, partly because the sub-100Hz region feels underplayed to me, and partly because the lead vocal's pretty much the only part that's contributing much above 5kHz -- there's a bit of energy from the acoustic guitar strums and snare transient, but there's not much besides. I can see the argument for clearing away some high end to reduce vocal masking, but I think that needs to be weighed against the danger that the mix will then sound a bit woolly whenever the singer's absent, which it quite often is here.

In some cases, overall-tonality issues are quite simple to remedy with a bit of buss EQ -- it's rare that I do a mix without buss EQ myself, in fact, because I usually end up giving my first-draft mix a bit too much of some frequency range or other, and then my ears get used to it so they don't notice... I get slapped round the face with it at the referencing stage! Smile However, in this case I think you'd need to rework the lead vocal sound, because if you simply boosted the highs on your mix buss as things stand, the vocal would become very harsh -- even without buss EQ, in fact, the vocal's already on the bright side, and discourages me from turning the listening volume up, which probably isn't good for a song like this. I do like the vocal delay effect, which gives a feeling of room boundaries without overtly distancing the singer, although I'd perhaps low-pass filter the return, as the consonant 'ricochets' get a touch distracting in the verses.

Hope some of that's useful. Thanks for posting!
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Messages In This Thread
Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by jtbStudio - 05-11-2016, 11:40 AM
RE: Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by jeffd42 - 05-11-2016, 01:01 PM
RE: Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by jtbStudio - 05-11-2016, 11:39 PM
RE: Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by Roy - 05-11-2016, 01:44 PM
RE: Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by jtbStudio - 05-11-2016, 11:51 PM
RE: Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by Mike Senior - 21-11-2016, 08:34 PM
RE: Color Me Red - jtbStudio - by jtbStudio - 22-11-2016, 12:49 PM