Hey Carrie Ann - Olli H

[Olli H]

Vocals was the only important thing in this song, and I couldn't make anything decent out of it. Nothing wrong with the singer, but the recording quality sounded like it was recorded through an old children's 8-bit karaoke system.

The problem with vocal sound dictated everything else in my mix. As I had to leave vocals quite dark, it was very difficult for me to add any other instruments to the mix.

My main reference was an old Randy Newman "He Gives Us All His Love".

EDIT new version: 2014-08-03

[Voelund]

Very difrent and very good version
I also thought about leavin the 2nd vocal out first verse. Works great
Did you shift the lead and backing vocals on last "we can work it out?"
If so excellent idea.
Seem your mix is build around the vocal and a bit dark till strings hit.
Are strings 2 bright ? They sound great alone but compared to strings the missing frequencies from vical makes it harder for it to cut through.
Not sure if its a problem.
I think your mix is clear but it seen to me you choose not to make the mix you wanted because of the problematic recording. And so made a choice to sacrifice excitement and music for technical reasons.

Listenin your mix a weird idea came that it might work with telephone voice and full sound on instruments.

Not sure if you can use any of this. On a technical lvl I enjoyd the mix, miss a bit o what some people say norwegians have. You know the joke about norwegian shrimps ? How you tell its a real norwegian shrimp. It yells proudly: im a lobster I am ( jeg er en hummer jeg )
Your mixes are so good technically you may explore that lobster side a bit

[takka360]

Harmonica is placed nice, strings sound fine to me .
This is a good mix the one thing wrong is the vox are too loud a lot of the time.
Real good work,one of the best mixes ive heard of this,nice bottom end too.

[thedon]

Lovely sounding mix ,I like the sound of the Double bass .

[Olli H]

Thanks for comments.

Did you shift the lead and backing vocals on last "we can work it out?"

Not that I remember. I muted one background track.

Not sure if you can use any of this. On a technical lvl I enjoyd the mix, miss a bit o what some people say norwegians have. You know the joke about norwegian shrimps ? How you tell its a real norwegian shrimp. It yells proudly: im a lobster I am ( jeg er en hummer jeg )
Your mixes are so good technically you may explore that lobster side a bit

This was certainly a big compromise mix. Haven't heard about norwegian lobsters before. But now that we are in Norway on metaphorical level I would say I didn't try to make a telemark-landing, I was happy to make any kind of landing... and find the next song. I think I'll check those new Telefunken multitracks, just got them today.
http://www.telefunken-elektroakustik.com...weetwater/

[Olli H]

Lovely sounding mix ,I like the sound of the Double bass .

I had to admit. I cheated, or replaced it. (Isn't that the same thing). I used the midi track with better double bass samples.

[pauli]

I really like this, Olli. From a personal taste standpoint, I think the ending could be more climactic, but that's simply my interpretation of the song. It would seem most of us are preferring a much more bottom heavy sound than I'm hearing in my head as well, so although I feel there's too much, the instruments are pretty well distinct from one another. Maybe make a bit more space for a bigger timpani at the end? The harmonica gave me chills when it came in... perfectly placed in the mix with a lovely reverb. Almost broke my heart, in a good way

The two main issues with the raw tracks in my opinion is that the proximity bass boost on the vocals makes it sound congested, and the bump in the 3000 range on those same track. cheap microphone maybe? I have a inexpensive condenser mic with similar qualities. The first issue to me is easily treatable with a low shelving cut before any compression is applied. This seems to be a personal taste viewpoint as many have disagreed. However, it's possible for us to reduce the impact of the 3000 kHz boost with various forms of EQ and compression, and I think you've done an excellent job there. The sibilance on the vocal is really hard on this track... it impacts the sonics so much that you can tell where the S sounds are just by looking at the waveform, and you handled it really well. Is the vocal a bit too loud, perhaps sitting on the mix a bit too much?

The only real "problem" I find with your mix is that the strings, although they sound absolutely beautiful, don't seem to fit with the rest of the track when they first come in. The ambience of the strings is lush and sexy, and I think the level of brightness is perfect... or it would be if the rest of the track were a bit brighter. Basically, the strings in your mix contain so much brilliance and resplendence that I feel imbuing some of those same qualities broadly to the rest of mix would be a better move than reducing the brightness... because I think they sound too fantastic to change them. Something about the way the reverb is working on the strings also "feels" a little different, almost like they were recorded in a different room, although I think that's part of why I love the sound so much. The disconnectedness isn't jarring and it doesn't ruin the mix for me, but it makes me want slightly more high end sheen in the surrounding tracks.

That's tough of course, because the only tracks here with any appreciable high end content are relatively unimportant to the musical message, and I'm still not happy with mine... I'm in a very intense revision process after your and Alan's comments opened my ears to a few problems. My current strategy is using tape-saturation to fill out the vocal sound so that a treble enhancer can do its work without being "needling" or overemphasizing the 3000 boost... mixed results, there. Niells' mix gave me an idea... I wonder if tonal plate reverbs might add a little more flavor and brilliance to the tracks that are too dark?

Again... fantastic work. I always love comparing your work to mine because it always seems to give me an idea that improves my work in a lasting way.

BTW, adding samples is NOT cheating in my book. Obviously he used a bass sample in the first place because his recording environment wasn't suitable for tracking such a difficult bass instrument, so he's already doing us a huge favor and sending a message at the same time. I doubt he would have included the session midi if he didn't feel his work could be improved with a higher quality sample. To me it's no different than hiring a session musician to track a part properly. I always use my brother when I need a good piano part... because he's a great pianist and I'm god awful. And one of the principle criticisms of David Bowie's early records was his instance on tracking his own guitar parts. Many feel they would have sounded better with a more qualified guitarist... so if a better sample improves an artists work, he and the record company would have been thankful.

[Olli H]

Thanks for all comments. Some small fixes done. File in the first post. (I haven't find a away to add the same file to different posts without sending it again.)

- vocals slightly down
- changed reverb slightly with vocals, drums and piano
- and also some other minimal changes that I don't remeber any more.

[Olli H]

The harmonica gave me chills when it came in... perfectly placed in the mix with a lovely reverb. Almost broke my heart, in a good way

Thanks,
Normally I try to go with minimal editing. (I'm suspicious that every plugin deteriorates the sound just a bit.)

And in this case it was:
- just a little bit saturation
- hi-pass 430 hz, low-pass 5.5Khz
- basic room reverb

Nothing else.

[Olli H]

The only real "problem" I find with your mix is that the strings, although they sound absolutely beautiful, don't seem to fit with the rest of the track when they first come in.

I agree

The ambience of the strings is lush and sexy, and I think the level of brightness is perfect... or it would be if the rest of the track were a bit brighter. Basically, the strings in your mix contain so much brilliance and resplendence that I feel imbuing some of those same qualities broadly to the rest of mix would be a better move than reducing the brightness... because I think they sound too fantastic to change them. Something about the way the reverb is working on the strings also "feels" a little different, almost like they were recorded in a different room, although I think that's part of why I love the sound so much.

I'm very glad you like it. I don't have Uaudios Ocean Wave Studio plugin, but it was that sound that I was after. Some time ago I downloaded some examples of it (dry+wet), and then I tried to create that sound with my basic plugins. So, my OWS-reverb-aux consist
- free Klanghelm compressor
- ValhallaRoom reverb
- stock EQIII
- basic delay in other channel
- and last but not least: MONO

I love to do that kind of experiments. I download samples or demos of plugins, and try to create similar effect with my free/cheap (but hopefully hi-quality) plugins.

My current strategy is using tape-saturation to fill out the vocal sound so that a treble enhancer can do its work without being "needling" or overemphasizing the 3000 boost... mixed results, there.

How about trying some transient designer (I used free Bitter Sweet) as the first plugin in vocals to cut down some transients. The ugly noises in the voice sound to me like overhyped transients.

Again... fantastic work. I always love comparing your work to mine because it always seems to give me an idea that improves my work in a lasting way.

I'm glad if I'm of any help. I also do much comparison with forum mixes at the end of my mixing project.

But during the main mixing process it would be better idea to use several pro-mixes from big stars from any decade, or better still from all decades.

For example in this case find something with piano and strings and align that part directly to right spot with exactly the same level. Preferrably couple of different songs. And then listen 3 seconds to the reference, swith back to your mix, back to OTHER reference and so on. You don't have to imitate any sound, but it will give you an immidiate feedback if you're going towards a professional sound.

And then same thing with vocal and piano and so on. It doesn't have to be a sound you're after, but it has to be a sound with special quality in it.

Well, that's my tactic ...

BTW, adding samples is NOT cheating in my book.

I agree. But when I'm just practicing normally I love to take the challenge to make the best out of provided tracks. Most of the time the problems are the most fun part of the mixing. In this case for some reason my first reaction was "OMG what a bass sound, I won't touch that." So I felt little disappointed with myself.