Junk Yard Swing Mix

[Marc Gosselin]

Hi folks, I'm new here

I asked my recording arts students to pick a multitrack session from the Cambridge site for us to mix..

my criteria was for the students; to pick a song that has space with mid/slow tempo.. the reason behind that was so we could add some effects.. in this case, I gave them an example of slap-back delay on lead vocal, stereo chorus to bring out the steel guitar, trippy-delay verb on the 3 shot drum fill, and some ambient reverb on that funky tambourine thingy at the very start.

things that may suffer in my mix:
I did not feature the piano much on this track, as I gave it more of a supportive roll on the 'Junk Yard Swing' theme.

The only thing that I've mixed before with this style of arrangement is a Canadian artist by the name Ben Caplan.

Thanx you Wesley for providing this awesome multitrack for the world to butcher !

hope you enjoy my mix

Marc

[Pedaling Prince]

I asked my recording arts students to pick a multitrack session from the Cambridge site for us to mix..

my criteria was for the students; to pick a song that has space with mid/slow tempo.. the reason behind that was so we could add some effects.. in this case, I gave them an example of slap-back delay on lead vocal, stereo chorus to bring out the steel guitar, trippy-delay verb on the 3 shot drum fill, and some ambient reverb on that funky tambourine thingy at the very start.

All of which worked extremely well, with the exception of that slap-back delay on the vocal. If you were looking to simply demonstrate what slap-back delay sounds like to your students you succeeded brilliantly. However, I don't feel the effect is a good fit for this particular song; this song, I feel, needs a very dry approach, only subtle reverb, and echo just doesn't sound right. Also, the dynamics sound overly squashed here, as if there's too much compression on the master buss. You mentioned that you like compression. I'm the polar opposite; I avoid it whenever possible. Makes me wonder what you're going to think of my version of The Butterfly Effect's "Preach Right Here" when it's done...

As for this mix, the slap-back and excessive compression are the only negatives. Outside of that, you did a superb job here. Nice definition among the instruments, nice clean vocals (other than that slap-back) and you managed to keep noise to a minimum, too; given that this material was quite noisy (it was recorded on analog equipment) and the fact that compression will tend to bring noise out that's quite an achievement.

I did not feature the piano much on this track, as I gave it more of a supportive roll on the 'Junk Yard Swing' theme.

Honestly, I liked the piano despite the over-compressed sound; I missed it in your mix. However, you did a commendable job of keeping its contribution, however subtly, without drawing too much attention to it.

I look forward to hearing other mixes from you.

[Marc Gosselin]

Thanx for the input.. it appears that I came late to the party,

I do agree that the Slapback effect is a bit heavy.. but it was a demonstration mix for my students to replicate in their class assignment mixes.. Reverb and delay effects can be very subjective to ones taste.. If the client wanted the slap-back gone, there would be no argument.

Audio compression (or limiting) is a fact of life in the world of music production, compression is used to deliver a product that can sustain playback on any system, big or small at any volume.

The negatives of using compression.. the obvious one is reduced dynamic range
Do we abuse it.. absolutely !
Does everyone use compression in a tasteful manner.. nope, I hear it's artifacts all the time.

The artifacts I try to avoid when using compression:

1- Inadvertently removing the attack from percussive sounds
2- Pumping and breathing.. Where the attack is too fast and the release is too slow
3- heavy compression (high ratios) that alter the frequency response of the signal.. often heard as weird phase anomalies.
4- Inadvertently making the mix sound muddier (cloudy bass)
5- Inadvertently making the mix sound harsh or sibilant (bright vocal Ssss's and bright cymbals)
5- bringing up the noise floor way up


I hear small degree of #1, #2 and #3 in that piano track.. which is why It's lower than most other instruments in my mix.. those artifacts can be masked by the louder more dynamic instruments in the mix.. also, it creates a sense of depth in the world of multi-layered sounds.. the heavy compression on the piano also allows it to be "hanging in the balance" at a lower volume.

[Pedaling Prince]

Thanx for the input.. it appears that I came late to the party,

If by that you mean how few comments you've gotten, I myself have found that if you comment on other people's mixes of the same song they'll tend to come around checking out yours. So usually right after I post I mix I make a point of reviewing everyone else's mixes of that song, whenever possible.

Audio compression (or limiting) is a fact of life in the world of music production, compression is used to deliver a product that can sustain playback on any system, big or small at any volume.

Yes. Which is a practice I abhor, one that I've made it my mission, as an aspiring audio engineer, to fight.

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

Having heard the crystal clean sound of CDs from the earliest days of consumer digital sound in the 1980s, 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 the use/abuse of dynamic range compression in mastering you mention.

Now that I've created dynamic mixes from 137 of the multitracks on this site, mixes of some of my favourite songs now sound squashed and lifeless to my ears. For example, I'd love to get my hands on some of Meat Loaf's original multitracks, particularly for Bat Out of Hell III (you can really hear the differences in mastering techniques over the years if you listen to the original mixes of the three Bat Out of Hell albums ). The dynamic range on most of the tracks on Bat III is 9 dB or narrower, and generally I've found that dynamic range narrower than 10 dB never sounds good.

I've also noticed that recordings with dynamic range as wide as 14 dB can still be made plenty loud even on the tiny speaker of my iPhone. So, having tried both fully dynamic and dynamically compressed music on a wide variety of playing systems I have seen no evidence that masters with dynamic compression offer any benefit over fully dynamic mixes.

Besides, if Apple has its way, the whole point may soon be moot.

Apple has mandated that all iTunes Radio stations use Sound Check. Most people here probably know exactly what that is but, in brief, Sound Check automatically analyzes the overall volume of each song and aligns them so that they're all about the same volume; that way there are no wild swings in volume from one song to the next.

This "loudness war" insanity started, for the most part, because artists wanted their songs louder than their competitors' in the hope that their song would draw attention on the radio because it's louder than all the others. Well, with iTunes Radio, if you do manage to make your song louder than the others, iTunes will just turn it down to the level of the others, anyway. Dynamically compressed material, when level-matched with dynamic material, always ends up sounding washed out and wimpy because the brief transients that create that clarity and "sparkle" like the snap of drums, the pluck of a guitar string etc. usually squashed out with compression, and even if they don't they still don't peak as high above the average volume as they would have with the dynamics intact. So the dynamic recording, played on an even volume playing field with the compressed one, has the decided advantage.

Apple does tend to set trends; I'm hoping this development will discourage, and eventually eliminate entirely, this obsession with making recordings "loud" that has slowly ruined the sound quality of CDs from the late 1990s on.

Having said all that, I'm really getting curious as to what you've going to think of my mix of "Preach Right Here" when it's done...

[takka360]

Great mix,love the vox.

[Pedaling Prince]

Great mix,love the vox.

You know even he admitted that the vocal was overdone deliberately to demonstrate slap-back effects to his students...

[Marc Gosselin]

If the world wanted to go back to 14dB of dynamic range, I'd be all about it.. trust me, I like dynamic range.. I've been down the road of the Loudness Wars awareness campaigning way too many times.

But my clients are not having any of it.. the argument for little (to no) compression can't be won with most clients wanting commercial success.

I simply had to refine the way I use compression so that it still pleases my ears with a clear conscious.

I'm not aware of Apples sound check software.. I guess I'll have to look into it, sounds intriguing..

[takka360]

Great mix,love the vox.

You know even he admitted that the vocal was overdone deliberately to demonstrate slap-back effects to his students...

I love the vox myself and that is what matters to me.

[Pedaling Prince]

If the world wanted to go back to 14dB of dynamic range, I'd be all about it.. trust me, I like dynamic range.. I've been down the road of the Loudness Wars awareness campaigning way too many times.

Hm... then maybe you'll like what I come up with on "Preach Right Here" after all...

But my clients are not having any of it.. the argument for little (to no) compression can't be won with most clients wanting commercial success.

Try showing them this:

http://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ

I've never seen the superiority of dynamic material explained better.

I'm not aware of Apples sound check software.. I guess I'll have to look into it, sounds intriguing..

Actually, "Sound Check" is a feature built into iTunes. Here's Apple's explanation of the feature:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2425

Most playback software and portable players nowadays have features designed to do what Sound Check does; Apple was just the first to mandate its use on radio stations played through its playback software.