Lyndsey Ollard - Catching Up

[Richard]

Nice track. Its the first time I'm mixing live drums. I had a hard time with this song.

[SteveG]

While I hear some issues, like the noise of the swell guitar and maybe too much reverb in the mix, I think some of the ideas here were pretty damn cool- like cutting out the intro and opening with the first verse with vocals and a bunch of the tracks muted- very creative move

[Richard]

Ye that noise was something I decided to live with as I liked the sound of that guitar too much. I thought the reverb amount was "much" but not crazy much. Ill try to make a little more subtle reverb version when I get the time.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Voelund]

Hello.
I hear a couple of things you could change to the better.
The vocal could be deessed a little (more ?)
The verb sounds good, but I think its too much, especially first half of the mix.
Listen the guitar phrase at 0.48 for one - its very far away and nearly masked by its own verb. Its a shame for its a lovely phrase.
Verb works better when the drums kick in and in the last half os the song.
A lot of interestin guitar phrases can be automated with fade ups and downs to draw the listeners attention.

I second the thumbs up for arrangement changes, you could take it even further, if you wait introducing the strummed guitar till 0.12 or even later. I think makin changes to arrangments are very intersting and fun and can sometimes work wonders, and may be considered a good idea to familiarize oneself with.

Thx for the listen, I liked your ideas and the verb and drums especially sound good.

[Richard]

Hello and thanks for your thorough review. Ill try to address it in order.

De-essing is something I never learned. The person Im usually mixing has marvelous "s" sounds where I never need to compress. I tried to fix some of the harsher "ess"'s but it just squashed the vocal too much.

I think I agree with you on the amounts of reverb. At least for the vocal. The guitar at 0:48 is so heavily distorted and I couldnt make it sound better. Maybe I should reduce the reverb on that part alone.

Yes I configured the reverb for the "full mix" and used it through out the song. Maybe its also something that I should look at.

Pretty much every track in the song is automated to "enhance" the dynamics of the song.

About the arrangement changes: I didnt want to change it per say, I more tried to improve it. The song was slowly getting "harder" and "harder" but I thought the transitions could be better.