Ben Carrigan Hey Carrie Anne

[thedon]

Hey Don, always a pleasure to hear your latest work. I'm a Reaper user myself... having tried several other DAWs I can't recommend it enough, and the built in plug-ins are fantastic.

So I enjoyed several aspects of your mix... sounds like you've got a bright plate reverb or delay on the lead vocal. Good choice there in my opinion. Getting the vocal bright enough without losing the warmth is the real trick here, isn't it? Juan's right, the essing on this is tough. I agree you could de-ess the living hell out of the BG vocal with no sacrifice, and using the same settings on the reverb returns usually works for me. Although in this one the de-essing was so tricky that I faded all the esses in The tonal verb/delay sounds a little disconnected from the main track, maybe turn it down just a little?

You really separated the harmony and lead vocal... they're unbelievably distinct. I'd like to know how you did that....

This is also one of the best piano sounds I've heard so far for this song, possibly owing to your experience as a pianist.

The others are right, something's not right about the strings, and they're burying the vocals pretty severely, but it sounds like you did that on purpose. Allowing the orchestra to overtake the lead vocals as they fade out? Really cool idea Something I'm noticing is that the sound of the bow on the bass strings is very scratchy and prominent... pretty common for software instruments to have weird stuff like that. Something makes me feel like those frequencies should be cut a little bit to push the bass further back. The violin and cello samples have something similar, and I agree with Olli that it sounds like an enhancer. I've only recently started using those and I almost always overdo it until I give it a listen the following day. I've noticed something similar in several other mixes, where the strings tend to sound disconnected from the rest of the mix... maybe we're highpassing them too aggressively?

The big thing that upsets the mix for me is how severely the mix ducks in response to the timpani. It's an awesome effect and I did something similar, but the gain reduction is pretty profound and uncomfortable in my opinion.

Cool creative stuff going on here... the orchestra overtaking the vocals is growing on me, I feel like I've heard that on several of my records, but I'm drawing a blank. Good work Don.

Thanks For having a listen Pauli !

I need to spend more time on the whole mix.

With the harmony and lead vocal I used eq and tried the Stillwell/stereo width plugin on Bv 1.
Had fun with the piano added extra piano tracks and lots of eq especially one in mono to fill up the centre .