So a short preamble... or is it pre-ramble? A young guy just starting out with mixing saw a few comments I'd made... what I'd call "pedantic" he called "in depth" and asked me for my thoughts on his work. I figured I could be a lot more helpful if familiar with the tracks as presented, so I downloaded the song and got sucked in before I knew it.
So... big reverbs? There are 5 or 6 different reverbs going on in varying levels and with a good bit of automation. Tons of fun, mixing this. Jay Menon's recording skills and musicianship are really impressive.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
Very nice mix. Well balanced and the low and high end very nice controlled and round. The sound you got reflects very good the emotion of the song.
The only thing it distract me a bit while listening was when the snare comes in, i think the reverb is making it too big and its taking to much of your mix.
The snare is the major tricky bit in this mix in my opinion it's the one track in this mix that wasn't well recorded. I'll give it another look and see if I can make it sound a little less exposed.
Thank YOU for listening and sharing your thoughts
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
Hello! Is it only me who likes your snare? It has it's own character that I believe it sounds good for that style of music!! The whole mix I believe that sounds nice!! Bravo!
For me, the snare close mics sound considerably better than what the overheads captured, so I decided to use the close mics exclusively... If you'd like to give it a shot, I duplicated the overheads and inverted the polarity on the copy. Then you put a gate on the copy, and trigger it to open very briefly when the snare plays. You have to fiddle with the timing and the range control, but when you get it just right, the snare in the overhead mics gets completely masked by the close mics, so you can really lay the processing on it to improve the sound without any phase difficulties, and any affect on the cymbals will be very brief and masked so as to be unnoticed.
If I go back into this one, I'll maybe try a pultec emulation to give the snare some body... I'm skeptical that a sample would work transparently in this case. It's a little thin, but I like a nice wet gated verb on a snare for ballads
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
When presented with such a well recorded vocal, the real trick is being brave enough to do as little as possible. In this case, there is very minimal eq. There is tape saturation which helps control the dynamics, adds warmth and character, and helps keep the vocal up front at all times, so the only additional compression necessary was a high threshold, low ratio set up to smooth out the peaks. In all I think there were only four effects inserts, so credit really goes to jay menon for a beautiful performance and capture. All I did was enhance his recording so that it's properties would remain audible while other instruments might steal its thunder!
Thomas, right now I'm very sick with tonsillitis, so my ears are stuffy and I don't trust them at the moment... But when I'm well Ill check out your work and reciprocate your comment. Thank you for listening and your time.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
it's the one track in this mix that wasn't well recorded. I'll give it another look and see if I can make it sound a little less exposed.
