David Tyo - Oh Life

[Mixinthecloud]

I think the most obvious challenge with this wonderful composition from David Tyo is the extreme dynamics of it. As I always assume what we are getting from the artist is a decent idea of what they are trying to state, keeping a semblance of those dynamics was a real challenge. The arrangement goes from intimate to thick and huge in the blink of an eye and that is not an easy thing to translate. With the thickness of the mid-section of the arrangement I felt the first two guitars really did not add anything either texturally, sonicly or rhythmically, so I nixed them. This allowed the strings to shine better and to add more significantly to the emotional and rhythmic character of the song. One thing that was easy to do was to create an interesting environment. I have heard some really great ones in the mixes already added here. The song was generally well recorded so no real issues there and the sounds were very easy to mix. I found I needed very little EQ. However, lots of compression was used on the vocals (all of them). this started with a 10:1 ratio on the lead and background vocal busses which were then summed to a master vocal buss with a CLA-2A set on 12:1 and a lot of reduction which kicked in when the vocal and harmonies kicked in. Even with this amount of compression there was still a ton of dynamics on the vocals. I did not do any gain riding but did some sectional boosts and attenuation on the wave forms where needed. I found it interesting the way mixers treated the end of the guitar solo. Plenty of variability there.

At the climax of the song I allowed the vocals to get buried by the ensemble as I felt the ensemble was where the best energy was for that section and allowed for the most dynamics.

That's all for now. Please give a listen and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,
mITc