Blue: Updated

[pauli]

Awesome song, this is my kind of music.

Difficult to balance due to the midrange heavy arrangement with not much high end to work with, but on the first pass mix here it seems I'm getting some decent results. Shelf EQ and a gated reverb helped boost the highs on the drums, but neither helps much with the vocal, so the breathy sound is the result of a savagely EQ'd and de-essed distortion send.

Patrick mentioned on Alan's thread that there's some tonal inconsistency in the vocal track since it's comped together from multiple takes, and that'll be obvious enough in this mix because I haven't addressed it yet... want to see how the community feels about the balance so far before I go down that long and perilous road.

Somewhere down the line I might add a guitar solo? You guys hear me yapping all the time that I'm a musician, and this is smack in the middle of my comfort zone, so might as well. The arrangement could use a little some extra to give it some variety, I think.

[ptalbot]

Hey pauli! Glad you like the song. There's 3 more coming next month that I think you will like as well.
I hope you don't mind me telling you how I see the song. Of course this is just hints and I'm happy to hear your take on it, that's the whole idea behind sharing these tracks. I know that I wanted the whole mix to be drowned in delays because I wanted to achieve a dreamy/hypnotic-like quality in the sound.

Now I like the balance of the drums in your mix, although I think the cymbals are a bit loud at times.
Actually, I think the drums overall are too loud compared to the rest of the instrumentation.

I know that the vocals are rather challenging, their sound is pretty muffled (I don't know how I managed to oversee this, honestly), but in the end, I have boosted quite a lot of high frequencies and added some parallel compression and a healthy dose of reverb (plate+room) and delays which helped brighten them up as well. I think you've boosted them nicely, but I guess they are still lacking the parallel processing and are too dry yet as well.

The guitar(s) in your mix are rather low and IIRC I had boosted quite a lot of high end on them as well, and accentuated their delay.
During the chorus in particular, I think they are really driving that part, along with the BGvs.
The vibra/rhodes are more of a pad thing IMHO.

I agree with the arrangement though, now that I listen to it I think it's too linear.
Truth is, this is one of the rare song where I've started from the lyrics mostly, and have spent quite some time on them.
I usually have much more instrumental passages and at least one guitar solo in all my songs, but somehow in this one I decided against, because I thought it was quite long already and more "lyrics oriented" anyway.

But I would be really happy to hear what you can come up with!
Keep it up!

[juanjose1967]

Hi, Pauli! I think that you can end up with a great mix here because even though this is only a not finished mix, it sounds pretty good to me.

Well, you're a musician so at least you have the ability to add a guitar solo there. I believe that some of us are not (at least I am not), so go ahead and give something special to one of the many mixes that will come for this track

[pauli]

Hey pauli! Glad you like the song. There's 3 more coming next month that I think you will like as well.
I hope you don't mind me telling you how I see the song. Of course this is just hints and I'm happy to hear your take on it, that's the whole idea behind sharing these tracks. I know that I wanted the whole mix to be drowned in delays because I wanted to achieve a dreamy/hypnotic-like quality in the sound.

Now I like the balance of the drums in your mix, although I think the cymbals are a bit loud at times.
Actually, I think the drums overall are too loud compared to the rest of the instrumentation.

I know that the vocals are rather challenging, their sound is pretty muffled (I don't know how I managed to oversee this, honestly), but in the end, I have boosted quite a lot of high frequencies and added some parallel compression and a healthy dose of reverb (plate+room) and delays which helped brighten them up as well. I think you've boosted them nicely, but I guess they are still lacking the parallel processing and are too dry yet as well.

The guitar(s) in your mix are rather low and IIRC I had boosted quite a lot of high end on them as well, and accentuated their delay.
During the chorus in particular, I think they are really driving that part, along with the BGvs.
The vibra/rhodes are more of a pad thing IMHO.

I agree with the arrangement though, now that I listen to it I think it's too linear.
Truth is, this is one of the rare song where I've started from the lyrics mostly, and have spent quite some time on them.
I usually have much more instrumental passages and at least one guitar solo in all my songs, but somehow in this one I decided against, because I thought it was quite long already and more "lyrics oriented" anyway.

But I would be really happy to hear what you can come up with!
Keep it up!

Hey Patrick, thanks for commenting.

I've got all the same quibbles with the mix that you do and I'm planning on restarting it... I usually spit out a quickie mix like this to get an idea as to what I'd like to do with it.

Funny that you mentioned para comp, delays, and plate reverbs on the vocal... because all three are present in this mix but only what I needed to get the vocal where I wanted it.

As for the guitars.. that's gonna be an automation thing. Some places I like them louder than others, but for me the vocal is the most important bit in this song. The drums were mixed in a bit too early during balancing, I agree... the overheads are going to need some wrangling. They're very cymbal and tom heavy.

New mix coming soon!

[ptalbot]

Looking forward to it!

[HbGuitar]

Funny that you mentioned para comp, delays, and plate reverbs on the vocal... because all three are present in this mix but only what I needed to get the vocal where I wanted it.

As for the guitars.. that's gonna be an automation thing. Some places I like them louder than others, but for me the vocal is the most important bit in this song. The drums were mixed in a bit too early during balancing, I agree... the overheads are going to need some wrangling. They're very cymbal and tom heavy.

New mix coming soon!

Hey Pauli,

Agree about your FX - I can really hear them.

This is one of those mixes where all the individual instruments sound great, but the final balance is off - wait....didn't i say that on another mix of yours..deja vu

The drums on this version are too dominant, but you know that. The vox sit nicely and you've managed to add some much needed space to them.

I think once you remix this as you've described you'll be in the zone.

[pauli]

Thanks HB. This is a really hard nut to crack... So many instruments are dominant in the same frequency ranges that it's really hard to pick what wants to be heard from moment to moment.

Anyone who's heard any of my guitar tone rants knows I don't like guitars to be very present in the high mid regions, and the vocal is pretty wibblywobbly tonally from time to time, and the vibes/keys don't add much in those regions without masking the vocal tone... In fact, the drums are the only tracks that supply a consistent amount of high mid content as presented, and the snare completely vanishes if you try to trim some of that out, so it's natural that the drums will fling themselves forward in the mix without figuring something out.

Fortunately, the artist was aware of these challenges, so we've been provided with the midi data used on the drums, keys, bass and toy piano, and that opens our options a lot. I'm trying a few different things to sort that bass and high mid issues out... Using the Rhodes midi on a pad with lots of high, airy stuff is really useful... You can pare it down to what you need to fill with eq and you can enhance the overall mix tonality quite handily... And with the right pad, you're almost creating a "fake" ambience that let's you use less reverb, which is mostly just going to overemphasize the abundant mids, and you get lots of awesome stereo width for free. I'm also finding it masks/blends the negative side effects of my vocal treatments used to firm up the high mids... What's not to like? Add automation on top of it, and the Rhodes/vibes Pat intended to be used as pads are suddenly freed up to function as instruments and give us some opportunity to liven up the arrangement! Every now and then I have a really good idea... Doesn't happen often, but it happens :p

The bass midi is useful for layering in a sub synth in much the same manner to help pin down the low end a bit, and I'll almost definitely wind up replacing/augmenting the drums... But the toy piano? I have absolutely nothing bad to say about it and I honestly can't think of any reason to use the midi for that, although it could be used to generate a really nice piano intro... Leave my options open at your own peril, because creative irresponsibility will almost certainly result :p

Sorry I haven't gotten around to reviewing your mix yet... I'm having a hardware problem that could really be skewing my low end perception (I'm getting very clearly audible rumble from 10 htz test tones, so there's obviously a lot of really nasty harmonic distortion in the sub) and that'd make my comments mostly useless... But I promise I'll get back to you when this is solved.

[ptalbot]

I realize that most of the instruments are competing in the same kind of frequency range.
It didn't bother me that much though, as I kind of liked that 'wall of sound' created by the guitar + rhodes/vibra/toy piano.
Indeed I was looking for that effect to create a warm background tapestry. So much for separation!

In the end though, and I think this is where you are on the right path, I struggled with the brightness, most likely not realizing that my 'wall of warmth' was making me push some 1-2k too far and making my mix a bit brittle and harsh... the bass in particular in my version has too much of that and not enough low-end. I realize that now, after listening to some of the mixes submitted here.
This is such a great learning experience for me! I love it.

As to the MIDI, I'm glad you find it useful.
I thought people might want to tweak and use their own sound and it could be fun to hear.

Using the toy piano as an intro is a great idea.
I'm really looking forward to hear your creative irresponsibility!

[pauli]

Yeah, that midrange buildup can be a huge mixing hurdle because it often tricks us into pushing the highs too hard. Eq boosts for the most part are trouble waiting to happen

My main line of thinking here is that rather than savagely cut mids out of the guitars and vibes, it might be better to do some selective muting and automation... Keep your vision for the mids intact without drowning out the highs. For instance, both the Rhodes and vibraphone sound really good with the stereo width narrowed a bit (they pan better that way) so forcing them to compete with one another isn't helping, and combined they rub up on the guitars mid content pretty forcibly... So easing each in and out across the stereo image can leave some space for the guitars and some room sound, maybe.

Not really sure what to do about the vocals, though, with the tonal changes... There are a few lyrics that can be cut and pasted to dodge some of it, but automation, dynamic eq, multiband compression... None of that is responding the way I'd like. Any tips you have on that score would be welcomed.

This is the kind of discussion I like to see on the board sharing ideas. Good stuff... Even if I can't get what I want out of this I've already benefitted a ton just from running my mouth LOL

[Blue Bus]

Hi,

the overheads are a bit too loud in the mix. what that is doing is making the vocals even more essy. the guitars sounds good. i think the space you have chosen is all very good.
just controlling the overheads will make your mix shine.

Regards,
Blue Bus.