Alex the Adverturer

[Mike Z]

On first listen I thought these tracks sounded pretty good with the faders at zero and nothing else done to them. But there’s little to learn in doing that so I read Mike Senior’s March 2012 article and tried using some of the techniques he described. I’ve included my reverb notes as an attachment. Here are the main things I did:

Added short (.65 second) reverb to all tracks even though there’s already reverb on most tracks. This reverb has early reflections.
Added long (2.75 seconds) reverb to all tracks with reverb less than 2 seconds. This reverb has no early reflections.
Split track 14 and put long reverb only on the first part.
Used gating on the bass drum and tympani tracks to reduce their extremely long reverb.
Split track 1 (bass drum) and rotated the second part so the bass drum would be centered throughout.
Rotated the tuba (#23) more to the left so it matches the tuba in #21.
Nudged the initial French horn (#25) line left to better line up with the strings.
I wanted to replace some of the bass and oboe sounds but didn’t have anything that sounded better than the original.

[Mike Senior]

Judging by the massive rumblings 25Hz going on at 0:03, 0:11, 0:18 and elsewhere, I'm going to hazard a guess that you don't own a subwoofer! A persuasive argument for checking your mixes on a spectrum analyser.

Once I'd got over the shock of impending seismic activity, however, I have to say that I liked this mix a great deal. Very appealing, smoooth-sounding sonics, and an excellent sense that you're listening to an acoustic ensemble, within the demands of film-scoring thematic enhancement. I'd maybe turn the trombones down a fraction at 0:36, and try to pick out the part with the theme in that ostinato at until the upper parts take it over at 0:43. And maybe damp down the piano sustain gubbins that extends into the final fade-out -- it doesn't seem to be fulfilling any useful purpose there.

Great job -- thanks for posting!

[Mike Z]

Judging by the massive rumblings 25Hz going on at 0:03, 0:11, 0:18 and elsewhere, I'm going to hazard a guess that you don't own a subwoofer! A persuasive argument for checking your mixes on a spectrum analyser.

Thanks for the feedback, and you're right on both counts! I don't have a subwoofer and I really should use the Blue Cat spectrum analyzer that I recently downloaded.