Kat Wright - By My Side

[Marty]

Hey Marty,
Sounds great! Nice work on adding clarity and 3D depth to the mix. I really like the vibe.
I know from having worked on this mix as well, that the vocal mic has some nasty upper mids when you boost them, in addition to all of the bleed.
Hey I heard a cool little backing vocal lick that I did not have in my mix, did you add that or was it in the session?
I can hear it on a few phrases here, maybe a bit of dynamic EQ?

Thanks Rob. I found some harshness also in the 3k-7k range. I used Soothe2 at 100% mix first, but it created too many unpleasant artifacts. I ended up using Soothe2 at 40% and then processing individual phrases with RX De-crackle and some notch EQ. The phrases were typically when she was singing a certain note (I think it was the VI).
The background vocal lick was part of the second background vocal. You may have accidentally edited it out. I know I almost did. The lick was low in gain and had a lot of bleed on it.
The biggest challenge, for me, was the drum bleed in the lead vocal. I started by using RX to isolate the vocal. This left a clean, but phasey and artifacty vocal that rarely sounds good in a mix. The secret is to blend it with the unaltered vocal until the volume is right and the bleed is minimal. A trick I learned from years of mixing live concert recordings.