Mix this! Singer/songwriter song, pt. 2

M

michaelmirra

New member
Hi, I made a similar thread a few months ago for my song "Baby Blue" and I loved some of the mixes people came up with so here I am again with a new song. This one is called "Saints." I'm not sure if I'll use it for anything yet, but let's have some fun and see what you can do. If it comes out great maybe I'll put it on something and of course I'll give you credit.

Here is a download link: https://www.mediafire.com/?kf1a62y2fr5jg52

My only notes are that I only sang the chorus once so you'll have to copy and paste it and if you could delete the silence in the beginning that would be grand. Other than that have fun and play around with it however you please.

It was recorded at 100bpm.

Thanks!
 
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michaelmirra said:
That was really neat!
Click to expand...

Hey thanks, only took me like 10-15 minutes. I pretty much just threw some re-verb on everything. Id really like to have the vocal file raw and not edited. there are some effects on it already, maybe you recorded with a physical hardware? but if not i would love the vocal file raw and i would putt a lot more effort into it to see what i could do.
 
I'm taking a look at this, and I too would prefer vocals recorded dry. There's a delay effect on there which makes it muddy to do any other processing. Also, why is the bass track in stereo? There's all kinds of effects on it as well that muddy up the low end.

Lastly, was this recorded to a click? If so, BPM?
 
Here's my quick run. Now, I have some comments as you listen and for future recording:

-The vocals had delay and possibly chorus effects on already. This is a very bad idea if you're going to have your song mixed by someone else. I can't remove those effects, and any modulation or delay effects significantly impact the ability to manipulate the audio. Compression will not just compress the voice, but also the delay. Pitch correction software can get confused by the delay.

-Regarding pitch correction, these vocals are so off key so often that there wasn't much I could do. In order to get the vocals in tune, they would have ended up sounded like the obvious robotic auto-tune effect. I wasn't going to do that since it wouldn't fit the song, so I did my best to correct the most egregious errors, but there are plenty I couldn't fix.

-The saxophone was similarly out of tune and off key almost to exclusion. This was more easily fixable with pitch correction, but still not simple and not completely.

-The organ/keyboard was either out of tune, had too much chorus causing pitch issues, or simply played wrong. I can't tell. This cannot be fixed, so it was buried and EQed to hell in order to compensate.

-The bass was recorded in stereo for some reason with chorus and some other effects on, which, again, made it difficult to get a full, solid low end to the song. If I were doing this for a client, I would be asking for a new bass part, or replacing it completely with a midi bass.

I hope you've seen the pattern here in all these complaints. Chorus/delay effects can wreak havoc for an audio engineer. Try to give the stems as dry as possible.

As a musician, you should be working on your pitch and intonation on all instruments, including your voice. It will help your recordings tremendously.

In the end, it takes guts to share your music and so thank you for that.

Brian
 

Attachments

  • Saints master v1 [Half Enigma Productions].mp3
    8.5 MB · Views: 47
I dl'd the tracks this morning. Hopefully I have a chance sooner than later. I agree with the prior gripes regarding existing effects on to-be-mixed tracks, but what can you do. I see it as a challenge. Definitely some pitchiness that should be corrected, therein lies the challenge -- getting autotune to play nice with the delay already present on the vocals.
 
Here's the mix. The sax, bass, and vocals all had prior effects on them. It usually makes it somewhat challenging but in this case not as bad as I feared going in (based on the prior comment(s)). The acoustic had some rough spots, so I nudged them to line up. The bass had some artifacts/clicks that I tried to remove best I could, and I also autotuned the bass as it seemed to wander out of pitch a little. Old strings? Not fretting the notes cleanly? Otherwise I tried not to mess with the intent.

It feels like this could use some mild drums to give it some energy.

View attachment Saints [Boogeymen Productions Mix].mp3
 
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