Siren - voelund

[Voelund]

Had fun mixin this one

Colourcoded and cleaned up tracks yesterday and made a quick mix and familiarized me with most o the tracks.

Today I mixed it in about 3 hours.
Added some claps and snares from a danish superbe sample pack 6 bit deep, its free and really cool. Clean snares and claps and bang sounds, as well as 3 versions run through a real EMT140. Search for 6 bit deep studio and you will find it.

Anyway - these tracks are well set up and recorded but not much in terms of arrangement and its 5+ minutes long, so i went a little crazy changin things, makin a build up in intro, choosin instruments to mute, unmute an make some interest by havin difrent sonics.

It didnt work out that bad, maybe the drumfree pre last chorus piece should have had lyrics, duno, maybe last chorus shouldve been repeated maybe outro is way too long (added claps and hits to make interest) but this is how it turned out today.

I added a buscompressor while mixin, somethin I never do, but this track bein so 80s called for it I think. Made it pump a little to the rhythm, suited the song I think.

Let me know if I messed things up big or you like it.

OBS: new version post 6

[pauli]

hey man. as always, your sonics are great. it's very slick sounding and pleasing to the ears.

I had a giggle as I sometimes do when I listen to others' mixes and I think about how entirely differently we've interpreted the song... I'm developing this one as a punchy, modern dance track, whereas this has less punch, but it's a lot smoother and richer, and it still makes you move your hips. Your arrangement ideas played into that really heavily in my opinion, so if smooth and cool is what you were going for, then I'd put another feather in your hat, because you nailed it. great work.

[thedon]

Always enjoy listening to your creative mixes, I like it a lot !
One minor complaint is when the snare comes in at 2.16 sounds a touch upfront in the mid bass somewhere around 180hz area !
and no F major chords lol !
Great job !

[Voelund]

Thank you, not being english tongued means I often have to look up phrases and words.
Smooth, cool and rich soundin are words I gladly can live with, rather than punchy
Punchy mixes to me are often very loud and distorted and I guess thats not how my ears work, I turn the knobs till I find something i like.

I spent a lot o time in a local recordin studio watchin how the guy used that Biiig 16 track mixer and one compressor one akg spring reverb and one outboard eq. That was a big studio in my eyes, as i had a 4 track at home and a L R C pan box to mix it down to cassette .... My only eq many first years were mic placement
I listened to evrything, classical stuff, folk songs, 60s and 70s music, beatles, floyd, blues, zeppelin, manfred man, miles davis, chick corea, return to forever, paul simon, hendrix, deep purple, thin lizzy.
None of this is really punchy but better described with the other terms. Maybe we try to replicate what we hear as youngsters

For the snare I agree, its too heavy in the lo mids, I wanted it to sound overly 80s. Maybe a touch of noise triggered by the snare goin to the verb with long predelay would emphasize that 80s thing.
I also miss a little more 2 and 4 in the first part of the song, i think I´ll be addin little more percussion.
Also the vocals could do with some automation, Its a nearly static mix. I think the feedback guitar is the only thing automated, and maybe a telephone notch on one vocal. Some level ridin would suit it.

Thank you both for the positive words !

[Voelund]

For the F major there are some places where there still is a touch of that A note - I will investigate where that comes from, maybe a 2nd finger on one o the guitar tracks touched the 3rd string lightly, I hear it a couple o places still. that means listenin through the soloed tracks and is abit time consumin but can also be a goldmine if theres a great noise to be moved to other places where it can be magnified and used in other context and make things shine...

[Voelund]

New version, with automated vocals, some pan automation and a little lift in lvl in choruses, some more claps and sounds and I moved some more stuff around, made a new outro.

I may change some lvls, maybe your suggestion will be the same as I hear, one thing I hear is the 2nd and last "help me to love you" vocals have a nasty "h" sound in front of it and I cant hear anything but that right now
So I guess I will have to cut that out somehow.

For the F major chord it actually was the guitar playin just before the F chord holdin its notes over the F, that created a very nasty sound. I cut of all endins in guitars and that solved it nicely.

[The_Metallurgist]

hi Voelund,

thanks for the Knopfler tip by the way.....i bought the album! i must admit, i'm finding it dark and lacking presence across all my gear. but this aside, it's an interesting album even if the clarity is lacking a bit.

i dropped in to see what others made of this....er...song, after posting mine, and hey, there you were!

i'm getting major fatigue here, off the top end (so unfortunately i couldn't hear the song past the first minute). when i was mixing it, the material gave me such a hard time, i had to drop an aggressive low-pass filter on the stereo buss until i had opportunity to eventually sort out my direction - AND I STILL GOT EAR BURN! i think the problem here, and indeed in many mixes of this....song....is too much content to fit in across the spectrum, so many have encroached the HMF and HF regions...where i get the pain. i have golden ears, so i feel it long before others, especially musicians who've failed to protect their ears from hearing damage!!

the problem, if you wish to fix it, will cause mega congestion lower down the range....another problem i've seen in abundance with other's who've had a go....it challenged me also.

i get the idea about the drums, the originals were "overly simplistic" (i'm being polite for a change!) - they need a drummer! but my approach was to look elsewhere for rhythm. so, rather than try and make the drum kit present in the mix, i tried to give the listener something else to engage with to help push the song along. the key element in this song is the VOCAL, and it's sad that nobody has really got this working in the way i'd expect to hear it. i also spent hours trying to minimise the sibilance issues they'd introduced!

i'd recommend an application of the adage "Less is more", and see how you get on. i understand you are a musician, and i can understand your wanting/needing(?) to retain other musician's work, but as a mixing engineer, sometimes that's not an option! i think this song, at 59 tracks, many in stereo(!!!), is a clear case in point.

sun is shining here....time to get some air
catch ya later!
Cheers
Dave

[Voelund]

Thank you for your thoughts on this.
I must admit I find it strange that you find the Knopfler record too dark soundin and my mix of this too bright.
Havin heard way brighter mixes here, also of this one I find my mix pretty mainstream, and generally I mix a lot darker than most, so I guess i should say thank you

I agree the voice is the star her, but to me it made sense wrappin it in the supplied sonics for verse chorus and build up, and as you noticed I found the drums to be a little boring so i beefed them up with extra hits, samples and new sounds like the claps and bling.
The reason for me bein here is pretty simple: I wanted to get better at mixin and found it easier to experiment on other peoples songs than on my own. The way I think and mix often includes things like "I wish they had included or played this or that" and if its somthin I find myself capable of producin I do it. Thats how I work. I realise far from evry mix engineer play an instrument or are capable of drum prograamin, movin parts around creatin other chords and so on. But should that prevent me from doin so ?
Less is more you say, and I also read your thought on the 80 - 20 thing. I think if it fits it fits, if its too much its too much. And then some things are not audible, till you take them away.
This song could also work with just the bas and guitars and some synth and percussion.
But thats not how I heard it.

[The_Metallurgist]

Thank you for your thoughts on this.
I must admit I find it strange that you find the Knopfler record too dark soundin.....

i'm a bit late getting back to you on this...but i did some research to see if any reviews had the same opinion as me. two i found, specifically mentioned the warmth factor as being dominant (i said "dark", but it's the same thing in essence). interestingly, these two reviews were from the UK where the culture isn't perhaps so familiar as it is in the USA.

i haven't listened to any Knopfler stuff for years, apart from a quick spin of his work along side Emmylou Harris in 2006? i borrowed it from the library out of interest last year, but didn't get on with it. my memory of earlier Knopfler stuff goes back to Dire Straits....which i don't recall being so warm as the Privateering album, but that's not surprising. for me, this degree of warmth is a culture shock really, which is no doubt why i'm surprised by it i guess. but clearly this is representative of the genre, i've since discovered, and it's not a genre i'm ordinarily familiar with.

importantly for me, it helps illustrate the importance of referencing our mixes against relevant releases so expectations are met. so, i've got a "warm" album in my collection that i didn't have before... that's an added bonus!! i've never mixed anything as warm as this before, so it will be quite an experience having a go.....and i don't think the quality gets better than a knopfler production, mastered by Bob Ludwig. how cool is that for referencing against?

cheers again for the tip.

[Voelund]

A complete diffrent sonic experience is the duke elegant album by dr. John. Its been rotating in my car, partly for the fine playing but indeed for the sonics.