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Colour Me Red - JMac52 mix
#1
I did a little different arrangement. The main electric guitar is maybe not as dominant as a lot of the mixes. I heard John Hiatt, so I tried referencing "Slow Turning" but I'm not really practiced at using reference tracks.

Any and all feedback welcome!

J

Posting final version... thanks for all of the feedback and especially to Mike for his wonderfully detailed critique!




.mp3    Colour Me Red.mp3 --  (Download: 7.85 MB)


.mp3    Colour Me Red Final.mp3 --  (Download: 7.6 MB)


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#2
Very organic. I like it. Dry vocals on the chorus--brave move, but works with the rhodes up.
~~ Here to learn and help ~~

Marty
Mixer/Engineer/Producer
Austin, Texas, USA
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#3
Thanks, Marty I appreciate it. Yeah, I really liked the Rhodes doing the driving in that part, and then kick it up a notch with the guitar in the 2nd chorus.
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#4
Hi JMac52,

I like your arrangement shake up. Sounds groovyBig Grin

Dave
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#5
Very cool. Great take on this and wonderfully unique. All the sounds are excellent and mostly well placed. concerns: Kick drum is skewed by the room mics but it is kind of cool with it appearing to come from stage right. I like the job you've done at keeping the pulse of the ensemble, which I feel is key to this song and retaining the enormous energy. Great use of the Rhodes too. Some of the sections feel a bit disjointed when you introduce sectional content, but overall, a great job.
PreSonus Studio One DAW
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#6
Mixinthecloud,

Thanks really appreciate the feedback. I didn't notice notice the kick until I listened on headphones kinda late in the game and needed a break and figured I would fix it later.

If I understand your "disjointed" comment correctly, seems like it's the cost of having some more dynamics in the arrangement... I'll think about ways to make the transitions between sections feel less abrupt.
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#7
(18-11-2016, 05:10 AM)JMac52 Wrote: Mixinthecloud,

Thanks really appreciate the feedback. I didn't notice notice the kick until I listened on headphones kinda late in the game and needed a break and figured I would fix it later.

If I understand your "disjointed" comment correctly, seems like it's the cost of having some more dynamics in the arrangement... I'll think about ways to make the transitions between sections feel less abrupt.

Yes. I would say that is accurate. Not sure if it was the transition to the new sectional content or that it surprised me, that made me notice!
PreSonus Studio One DAW
[email protected]
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#8
Lots of very intelligent arrangement ideas here. The biggest innovation is the drop-down at Verse 3, which makes a lot of sense. The problem with riff-based structures is that they often try to pull off one big build-up lasting throughout the whole song, which is extraordinarily difficult to deal with from a mixing perspective: either the earlier sections sound over-sparse; or the later sections become over-cluttered and run out of headroom; or somewhere between those two points the momentum just flags, because there's so little you can afford to add to each new section without making the following section feel like a let-down. This is something you can hear people like Mumford & Sons grappling with repeatedly, for instance. If you can stick a drop-down in the middle of the song, however, the long-term dynamics of the mix get much easier to manage -- you only have to sustain the momentum of your build-ups across half the time.

Now in this song, there's already a drop-down of sorts at Outro 1, but that still leaves a lot of the song as a single long build-up, so in that respect I think your move to add another drop-down at the start of Verse 3 is a canny one in terms of maintaining the music's sense of excitement and forward drive. I also like the way you've generated a sense of build-up across your 'multi-ramp' structure by differentiating repeating sections, for example: Mid-section 1 versus Mid-section 2; the Intro riff texture versus the riff texture following Verse 1; and Verse 1/3 versus Verse 2/4. So, overall, your thought-process appeals to me a great deal.

However, I think a few of the specific arrangement decisions don't necessarily work out that well for you in practice. For instance, the decision to remove the heavy electric guitar chugs from Mid-section 1 leaves that section sounding a bit lacking in energy after the riff-section that preceded it. The electric guitars already play a more stripped back, subsidiary role by nature of the part, so I'm not sure you needed to remove them there in terms of clearing space for the new cleaner parts. Of course, though, keeping them in means your Mid-section 2 isn't then substantially bigger-sounding than Mid-section 1... Ah, the joys of juggling long-term dynamics! Smile One way of squaring the circle here might be simply to mult that Rhodes part for Mid-section 1 so you can give it more of a middly, upfront sound which is closer to the function of those missing electric guitars. It'd need to be finely judged, but then dealing with these kinds of issues tend to be a bit a bit finicky -- it's one of the hardest parts of mixing, I think.

Another moment that seems to fall a little flat is the lack of kick-drum in Verse 3. I agree it's nice to be able to reintroduce it for the following riff section, but Verse 3 feels like too late a point in the song to completely drop the pulse. One idea would be to add some subtle percussion there (even just cross-sticks counting off) or another idea might be to shift the picked banjo part four or eight bars earlier so it begins contributing rhythmic information before the rest of the band come back in. Just throwing mud at the wall... Smile

In terms of sonics, I love the squishy cymbals you've got going here -- they have a great attitude! In general, however, I think the balances aren't that solid yet. It feels like the lead vocal is often too quiet, while other things leap forward at times -- the acoustic guitars at 0:35, 0:43, and 1:45, for instance, the backing vocals at 1:30, the banjo in Verse 3, or the ElecGtr4 part at 2:46. I get a sense too that the mix doesn't quite cohere, which makes me think that some addition work with subtle delays/reverbs might help. The vocal also seems to be being masked rather a lot by other parts in the 1kHz region, which gives it a slightly soft/hissy impression in the mix. As on quite a few the other mixes in this sub-forum, the low end feels a bit lightweight, and could probably do with a bit of sub-100Hz LF boost on the bass guitar. (Whatever you've got on the toms, though, it sounds like it's contributing way too much low end, for example at the end of Verse 4 where it seems out of control.)

Overall, though, thanks for throwing a load of great arrangement ideas into the pot here -- it sounds to me like you're thinking like a musician, which is never a bad thing!
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