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A Place For Us - EKN Mix
#1
What a daunting task this was !
I spent quite some time listening to and scrutinizing each and every track and I eventually selected 35 of them fom the 69 in the archive. The drums / percussions were a challenge by themselves, as well as the backing vocals. I had a hard time making them sound as I wanted.

I almost gave up, but now I'm glad I didn't. I'm rather happy with the mix I achieved and although it was a lot of work, I think this song was worth it and I learned quite a lot from this challenge.

Any hints to make it (even) better ? Big Grin

Happy listening
Erick


.mp3    A Place For Us - EKN Mix 01.mp3 --  (Download: 8.91 MB)


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#2
Wow what a great mix Erick im impressed .
Very good work.
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#3
Thank you so much Alan Smile
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#4
It sounds great, and I think the ambiance on the vocals is just perfect. My only suggestion is to either fade in or remove the breath noises leading into the vocal line. They're rather pronounced and a tiny bit distracting. Good work, this is excellent.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#5
Hey Pauli, thanks for your kind words. That's funny because I really love the breath noises in vocals, I think they give some life to a track, and as such they didn't bother me at all while mixing, and anyway I was so busy with other more difficult tracks that I certainly missed them altogether Smile But now that you brought them to my attention, I agree with you on them being a touch loud. That's the beauty of having more than one pair of ears to help you out Smile
I'll fade them out in my next release, along with other issues I have to fix too (some remaining sibilances despite my deessing).
Cheers for the listen and feedback.
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#6
Don't take them right out just take them down
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#7
Yes Alan, that's what I intend to do (maybe I misused the verb "fade out" ? I meant : lower the volume)
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#8
Yeah, I think a little breath noise is good for a more intimate vocal sound. I think melting them to another track (as if there aren't enough tracks to begin with) a couple decibels lower and a more severe low cut and stronger de-essing to mitigate the proximity effect is the ideal solution.


Again though, not a criticism at all... A massive pop mix like this would have been an undertaking with a main engineer to tackle the mix and several engineers he employs to get all of the tracks ready so that things like that don't get missed. For an unpaid job,69 tracks, many in need of fine automation, it's not really realistic to get this to a commercial standard for one person. I spent several hours perfecting my backing vocal sound, and after mastering realized my kick sounded like a suitcase! All things considered you did great!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#9
Oh wow... direct hit amidships by photon torpedo... just blasted me off my feet, man! Seriously! You even got me emotional, in tears a bit, at one point. More on that in a sec but... wow; this is nice! Big Grin

(15-05-2014, 09:10 PM)EKN Wrote: Any hints to make it (even) better ? Big Grin

Only two. I feel the compression on the vocals is a wee bit too aggressive; I'd dial that back a notch. On the backing vocals, I'd bring up the level of the "oh-woah-oh-ohs" a good 3-5 dB. Otherwise, this thing is freakin' awesome!

No other improvements to suggest, but I would like to offer some of my reactions along the way:

From the opening, with the beautiful definition you got out of the piano and nice, crisp, clean vocal sound I knew I was in for a treat here. At 0:38 when the drums come in I was pleasantly surprised by how good you got them sounding right out of the gate on your first attempt. Most of us seem to be having trouble with that, myself included; you've got a nice, bright punch out of that snare! How'd you do that?! Tongue Guitars sound awesome! Nice and bright!

Now here's where you grabbed me emotionally and drew out the tears:

At 2:12, when everything calms down and you get to those strings, I could hear the piano faintly in the background, slowly emerging from them. Then, at 2:32, when the piano drifts out to the front of the mix for a moment, like a siren emerging from a fog to reach for the man she loves... I'm listening to it writing this and I've got a few tears once again. Funny thing is if you had described to me what you planned to do, particularly the choice to drop out the backing vocals at that point, I never would've thought it would work. But it did. More than just "worked;" that was amazing, man. Seriously.

Not as sure I like your choice to fade out everything but the drums at the end. I'm thinking maybe bring up the backing vocals to go along with them? I was just thinking, with this particular mix, that the backing vocals standing on their own with the drums might be a cool effect...?

Really impressive work. Certainly the most creative mix of this song so far IMHO.
John A. Ardelli
Pedaling Prince Pictures
http://www.youtube.com/user/PedalingPrince
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#10
(18-05-2014, 02:50 AM)Pedaling Prince Wrote: Oh wow... direct hit amidships by photon torpedo... just blasted me off my feet, man! Seriously! You even got me emotional, in tears a bit, at one point. More on that in a sec but... wow; this is nice! Big Grin

Not sure I get the photon torpedo reference, but in the context of your sentence I take it as a compliment Big Grin

(18-05-2014, 02:50 AM)Pedaling Prince Wrote: Only two. I feel the compression on the vocals is a wee bit too aggressive; I'd dial that back a notch. On the backing vocals, I'd bring up the level of the "oh-woah-oh-ohs" a good 3-5 dB. Otherwise, this thing is freakin' awesome!

As for compression, I must confess I went the lazy route here Blush I had already spent so much time dealing with the drums and piano (more on that below), editing/retuning the vocals, and so on, that I decided a 2-step compression would do it, instead of adding yet some more automation tracks. I may reduce it a bit in my next release, since it could also partially take care of the breath noises Pauli rightly pointed out to me. But I'm personally quite found of the smoothness an electro-optical compressor brings to vocals.
As for the "oh-wow-oh-ohs", if I told you how much time I spent bringing them up, then down, then up again, you wouldn't believe me Big Grin The perfectionist in me kept deciding that +1dB was too much and then -1dB was not enough. After some time spent going back and forth, my brain wasn't able anymore to take any valid decision, so I settled down on this ! Will have to reassess this with fresh ears too.

(18-05-2014, 02:50 AM)Pedaling Prince Wrote: From the opening, with the beautiful definition you got out of the piano and nice, crisp, clean vocal sound I knew I was in for a treat here.

I'm really glad you noticed the piano sound as this was the first thing I knew I'd have to address when I first listened to the preview mix. I really didn't care for the original midrange-y upright piano sound, full of overwhelming harmonics and room ambiance. I decided this song needed a grand piano sound, you know that kind of instrument that gives you the chills just by playing low end notes full of magical harmonics Smile I then remembered that my DAW includes a copy of Melodyne that I'd never used until then, so I tried its polyphonic audio-to-midi feature. Well... hmmm... maybe it was my being new to this plugin, but the original track contains so many harmonics and ambiance that the plugin detected a lot of false ghost notes, however I adjusted the detection algorithm. I would have spent way too much time editing the outcome manually, so I ended up re-recording that track by learning the piano part and playing it on my keyboard. That was time consuming, but that's the price to pay when you're a perfectionist Big Grin

(18-05-2014, 02:50 AM)Pedaling Prince Wrote: At 0:38 when the drums come in I was pleasantly surprised by how good you got them sounding right out of the gate on your first attempt. Most of us seem to be having trouble with that, myself included; you've got a nice, bright punch out of that snare! How'd you do that?! Tongue Guitars sound awesome! Nice and bright!

Most of the time, I start by a rough drums mix, mostly EQ, levels and parallel compression when needed, so that they sound good to me on their own. Then I go on with the rest of the tracks and come back to the drums when the mix is almsot done, and adjust a few things here and there. For the snare, I set up an EQ band with a high Q and scanned to find which frequency(ies) could enhance it, as it lacked some punch at first when heard in the context of the mix. I ended up booosting 3dB @200Hz to recoup some of that frequency lost while HP filtering the snare @140Hz, and a 1dB boost @5kHz for presence. I did the same on both snare tracks and the OH track. Also, the kick, main snare (not the sample one), OH and room tracks have a send to a parallel compression bus.

(18-05-2014, 02:50 AM)Pedaling Prince Wrote: Now here's where you grabbed me emotionally and drew out the tears:

At 2:12, when everything calms down and you get to those strings, I could hear the piano faintly in the background, slowly emerging from them. Then, at 2:32, when the piano drifts out to the front of the mix for a moment, like a siren emerging from a fog to reach for the man she loves... I'm listening to it writing this and I've got a few tears once again. Funny thing is if you had described to me what you planned to do, particularly the choice to drop out the backing vocals at that point, I never would've thought it would work. But it did. More than just "worked;" that was amazing, man. Seriously.

I spent quite some time on this too Big Grin When I first listened to the preview mix, I liked this calm interlude before the final climax. But to my taste, the energy came back too early and abruptly with the return of the backing vocals and drums. I decided to make it last longer by ditching the vocals and make the energy grow with a piano and drums volume automation. At first, I had this part much more piano-centric as I wanted to take advantage of my efforts on the piano track, but then I'd lost the reminder of the backing vocals melody played by the solo violin. So I went for a more subtle approach and make the piano gently "emerge from the fog", as you beautifully described it !
Personally, what grabs me emotionally here is first the strings/hammond/mellotron combination that reminds me the sound of choirs and pipe organ in a church, and then, as already mentioned, the low end notes on the grand piano which are some of the most beautiful sounds an instrument can deliver to my ears (and I'm primarily a guitarist).

(18-05-2014, 02:50 AM)Pedaling Prince Wrote: Not as sure I like your choice to fade out everything but the drums at the end. I'm thinking maybe bring up the backing vocals to go along with them? I was just thinking, with this particular mix, that the backing vocals standing on their own with the drums might be a cool effect...?

I have to admit here again that I somewhat rushed this part, I was already exhausted by this tough mix. I quickly routed some tracks to a bus and automated its volume, but didn't even bother to take care of the reverb automation for those same tracks. I may rethink this.

Once again John, thank you very much for taking the time to listen and comment so thoroughly. It's always appreciated.
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