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Pedaling Prince Mix: James May - All Souls Moon
#1
I am self-taught both in video/film editing and audio engineering, having been experimenting with audio and video since my teen years back in the 1980s.

My guiding principle in mixing I call the "principle of least treatment."

Having heard the crystal clean sound of CDs from the earliest days of consumer digital sound in the 80s, comparing it to the overprocessed, overcompressed mess many commercial mixes are today, I have come to believe that current mixing techniques rely too heavily on processing, particularly in the use/abuse of compression in mastering.

In general, I go as gently as possible on all processing, using only the minimum EQ, automation and compression necessary to get everything to blend smoothly, and under no circumstances do I EVER apply processing or compression of ANY kind at the mastering stage; my goal is to preserve 100% of the dynamics of the original recording.

I joined this forum in order to get all of YOUR thoughts on what I've done with these multitracks. Criticism is welcome so long as its polite and constructive. Smile

Of all songs I've mixed from this site, this one evoked probably the strongest emotional reaction. It just took me totally by surprise. It was such a beautifully sentimental and sweet take on HALLOWEEN, of all things. I really started to get emotional when I heard the opening lines:

"A day when all the souls who've slipped away from here
"Draw close to those they've left behind."

That's probably the most poignant description I've ever heard of the meaning behind Halloween.

The first time I heard those words sung against this beautiful acoustic backing I ended up stopping my work on the mix at the time just to listen all the way through. And even though I didn't quite have the backing vocals balanced at that point, when it hit that gorgeous, "You're not alone," refrain it reduced me to a useless bag of weepy mush. I am an emotional man by nature; I'm the kind of guy who cries at emotionally powerful movies, and I'm proud of it. Well this song gave me a powerful, and totally unexpected, yank at my heartstrings. I just fell in love with it.

I'm a screenwriter as well as an audio engineer. There are many characters from my screenplays and backstories "living in my head" as it were. This song was doubly powerful for me as it also spoke directly to a pain in one of those characters' hearts that I didn't even know she had. People she had lost in her past. It's interesting when that happens, when I hear a piece of music that gets one of the characters in my head to open up about something in their past they've never shared with me before.

Does the above sound crazy? It's not. I'm perfectly sane, believe me; it's just a "writer thing." Blush

Because this was so important to me (and to the aforementioned character who, like most of my characters, I consider a friend), I worked EXTREMELY hard getting the balance on this one right. I kept on feeling like I couldn't do it justice, not for any lack of confidence in my abilities but more a sense that this was just one of those things that's beyond the ability of language and music to fully convey.

But I'd like to think I did it justice.


.m4a    17 All Souls Moon.m4a --  (Download: 8.43 MB)


John A. Ardelli
Pedaling Prince Pictures
http://www.youtube.com/user/PedalingPrince
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