Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Signe Jakobsen - What Have You Done to Me + voc tuning demo
#1
Hi - I'm sure I'll update this as I review the mix.  I said I'd keep my intro brief, but... someone might be interested...    here are my listening notes:

Kick 1 - kick is far enough to pickup a lot of leakage, unfortunately it's occasionally pegging the pre-amp (i doubt it's the mic but I'm assuming it's a dynamic) and there's an unpleasant "plap".    Gated.    But you know, the kick is bouncy and holy cow, is it in the pocket.  What a drummer ! 

Snare top  2 -  A lot of light snare accents.  There is a complete drop-out at the 52 second mark, like a punch-in silence.    I ignored it at first because I was gating anyway before I changed my mind because a. the Snare top sound is unusually good and the drummer gets in a lot of ghost hits that I just couldn't nudge the trigger enough to include to my satisfaction.  I tried an expander but I still heard it breathing. Forget it !  I just let it fly.  It's a great track.

Snare bottom 3 - SnareDown seems to be phase inverted already but I did scoot the track slightly to align them.  The bottom snare is pre-gated that unfortunately is opening up on kick hits as well as snare hits.  I used a bandpass for the gate trigger at 455, the center of the snare's main body tone, and gated that.  It still ain't pretty.  But it was good enough to send to a room reverb to give some sheen. 

Hihat 4 - mic'd with SM81 ?  According to the  Albini theory, this is never needed.  I did highlight it on the rimshot section (bridge) because the drummer was doing such nice little triplets. Again - pro drummer.

OH 5 - nice separation.  drummer's perspective, or he's a southpaw.  Ride is nicely represented on the far right.  There IS a bit of maxing out clipping on the OH right channel  but I don't hear any artifacts. 

Tom 6 - There's one single rack tom hit at about the 35 second mark.  That's it.  a lot of drum tone resonance otherwise.  I'm isolating the one hit, cutting the rest.  I'm not leaving it open being very tom-flavored

Fl Tom 7 - There are no hits.  Eliminating altogether.  Actually,  lacking a drum room mic, I took the unused Floor Tom track, notch out the drum's resonance, and compress the crap out of it to make a crunchy mid-EQ room.  I did 3 notches but there were so many more overtones, I could have done 6 more and it still would sound like the bloody tom.  Just not useable.  Anyway, no big deal - I took a copy of the OH, compressed the crap out of it with a vintage compressor plug in that I think is supposed to be an emulation of a Distressor.  Gives the kit a nice bounce.  I highlighted it on the verses but brought it down on the rest of the track.
 
Shaker 8/9 - this is a loop, background sounds to the loop indicate 9 is the same as 8, I don't notice any offset or different effect.  It really doesn't do much but I put it in the intro.

Bass 10 - big standout is the 2nd verse - slap-pops here.  I excised that section and set it on its own track with a multiband compressor to let the high-end of the pops come through.  There is only one mistake I can find:  on a turnaround before the 2nd verse, on the 3 and 4 of bar 30, two sixteenths and a rest repeated, the guitars go up a half step while the bass does not and it clashes.  I inserted a bass note from another section. I'm not thrilled with it because instead of going to the maj 7 the bass goes up to the 2 (B natural).  It's in key but ... it's not...  Actually I think the tracking eng./producer dropped in a guitar clip towards the front to help patch this but I ignored it.  There was also an isolated vocal phrase but I didn't know what that was intended to fix.

EGuit 11/12 - These are absolutely identitical - Not even a different effect or mic or anything - compare the two waves, absolutely word-for-binary word the same.  Eliminating track 12.  One problem is there is a lot of 60 (though it actually seems more like 80/160) cycle hum.  The clips are edited but not very well, so I had to go through and re-envelope them to clean out the buzz which I found very distracting.  Don't get me wrong, amp noise isn't always bad - but it is here.  I did re-amp this part, put it through a tweed Vox amp like sound.  I tried to make it fancier or bigger etc. but at the end of the day it just needed to be a basic brown-shoes rhythm part.

E guit 13 - Direct out of an electric-acoustic guitar pickup, maybe an Ovation.  Gross.  Scratch track ?  deleted.

Eguit 14 - Maybe a single coil pickup, through an OD effect/pedal, maybe a modeled amp or not.

Eguit 15 - Same sound as 14, but double tracked. 

Eguit 16 - bit of a solo part - about 1:08 there's an artifact which sounds like a disk write/digital error.  Going to just patch over that from another note

Eguit 17 - Same sound as 16 double tracked, no 1:08 artifact.

Eguit 18 - Solo, whole notes on the fundamental, m7 and maj7 notes.  useful and don't have to be in the foreground

Eguit 19 - humbucker crunch sound, power 5ths, edit with hard outs without any envelope smoothing.  May need to soften.

Eguit 20 - Supplemental to 19, same sounds.  Note, on three sections, these power chords are shifting to the next note a 16th note late (the e of 1-e-and-a-2-e-and-a), which stylistically is fine BUT the bass and the MIDI Guitar two tracks do not.  First example is at beginning of bar 27.  The effect makes the half-step walkups fuzzy.  I replaced the notes to make a hard cut on the 1.  On the 2nd chorus, bars 40 and 42, there is a hard out with a pop, I quick faded those to soften it.

MIDI Eguit - 21 / 22 - Different patches, same part.  Just whole notes, no rhythm.  Padding for the crunch.  Keeping them low and wide L&R.  Really not needed but *shrug*.

Keys: 
  Piano - there are two different tracks, the first is kind of a dull sound, they double except on the 2nd half of the bridge the 2nd piano track mimics the bass line.  Piano 1 chords on outro.  The piano I pushed back with some reverb but then faded it back to front at the end.  It just doesn't need to be front and center since it's not particularly "real."

  Strings - A sort of a fluttery strings sound, not trying too hard to sound real.  I brightened the corners. 

  Organ - there's an arpeggio it does in the 2nd bridge.  I pushed it left.

  Vocals - Okay, this chick can BELT.  Total pro.  There are a few words I'm finding hard to suss out (enunciation).  She has good mic technique too, pulling away for the loud notes.  There was a pop-filter I'm sure but there are a couple of slightly blown "f"s.    Several backing vocal parts to fit together - There is only one vocal part I can't justify and it's the 2nd round of the "I've been upgraded" line during the last chorus.  It's low, a fifth, kind of whispery by nature, same as on the bridge except here in the noisy busy climactic last chorus it just doesn't have a place in the family portrait.  Everything else I could find a place for, I pushed one backing vocal part with an early reflection reverb, I pushed the double-tracked chorus lead parts far L and R, with her vocal vamp to the front so I hope it all fits. 

    I tuned.  She didn't need a LOT of tuning, she's just such a great singer, BUUUUT a little nudge on one note and another really made the pieces fit nicely.  Please understand I deliberately tuned with a light hand - I didn't flatten notes (well maybe two). 

  About the tuning demo track -  So you'll hear an untuned "before," a tuned "after,", a sine wave at C = 261.63 Hz, then repeating the same clips with the generated sine wave.  Then the combo of the tuned and untuned vocals together starting from the bridge to the end.  I kept all the effects and placement in situ.  In the combined tuned/untuned section you'll hear apparent flanging on some notes  - I did not add this - the more "chorus"ed it sounds, the more the untuned note deviated from the tuned.   

  I'm not crazy about the intro as it is, with the rhythm guitar, closed hat quarter notes, and vocal by themselves.  It doesn't launch the song.  I Frankensteined a drum clip (what a great swingy pattern, absolutely killer, could mix a whole song out of that) and did a DJ filter sweep and made the guitar fuzzy but I'm still not crazy about my homebrewed intro.  I don't really know what the song needs to kickstart it exactly - i'm thinking about what would sound good on the pop radio station, and starting and ending bone-dry is very fashionable now so the ending is on the money, but the intro just... doesn't take off.  I may work more with it. 

    I need to monitor it in more situations to see about the bass management and see if there's too much sparkle on the vocals, or not enough.    I mixed on headphones because (whisper) I'M STUCK AT HOME ON MY LAPTOP. 

Thanks for listening !  onto the next song...


.mp3    Signe Jakobsen - What Have You Done to Me (boomaga mix).mp3 --  (Download: 6.24 MB)


.mp3    boomaga - Vocal Tuning demo (Signe Jakobsen).mp3 --  (Download: 1.7 MB)


boomaga  (Drew Perkins)
MTSU Mass Comm Recording Industry, BS in Audio Recording Production & Tech, 2004
 using Cubase 10

Gear List
Reply