First sound from the new space

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Most of you guys know that I'm not much of a fan of posting samples for anything other than technical troubleshooting purposes, but I have had a fairly large number of requests from folks here wanting to hear what the new studio sounds like. I have provided a link for a few individuals, but it's getting tiring and time-consuming doing that one at a time, so here you guys go:

This was the first shakedown mix. The vocalist is the daughter of one of our friends who helped with some of the carpentry and wiring while building the studio in exchange for recording and producing his daughter with this song. The studio's "house band" provided the arrangement and backing tracks for her vocals.

And in return we got to use this track as a nice trial run for the new studio, helpful in that - as some may hear in the mix - we have discovered quite a bit in the way of fine tuning that could stand to be done to the live room and iso booth. But all in all, it's not bad for a first run in a new space with new gear.

Emily Rago - Other Side of the World

G.

 

[Greg_L]

Link don't work for me.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Link don't work for me.

Oops, had a typo in the link URL. It should be OK now.

G.

 

[Chili]

Sounds good. Nice voice!!!

Glad to FINALLY hear some of your work.

Cheers,

 

[Greg_L]

The bottom end is kind of light and lacks a little clarity on my setup, or it could be my congestion filled head, but overall it's very nice and shiny.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

The bottom end is kind of light and lacks a little clarity on my setup, or it could be my congestion filled head, but overall it's very nice and shiny.

Probably a little bit of both . Yeah, what I discovered was that the sub-bass below about 60Hz or so is rather un-tamed, and there is too much sympathetic ringing between the kick and the floor tom in the drum kit, which is adding some mud in at ~120Hz and somewhere in the general 400+Hz range.

Some adjustments to the kit as well as some more bass trapping is probably called for in the live room. Also, if you listen really close, there is a slight phasing in the vocal. I need to look into that a bit more; I think at least part of that is the iso booth, which plays a bit too lively when a vocalist backs off the mic. A little more absorption in there is probably in order.

G.

 

[JordanD]

i like it! i wasn't crazy about the pianos at first because they were a little shrill, but it all ended up coming together nicely, although the acoustic guitar sounds a little light handed, but i like the song; it could be a hit!

 

[CIRO]

Hi, Glen!
Congrats for the new space!

Things "if I could put my hands":

My main comments are about drums (probably room needs more tretament?...);really, there´s some boom in the BD(60hz).
Hihat sounds a bit "harsh" in the highs
Snare looks like something to the R (intentional?)... nothing wrong,but I´d cut something in the mid/highs for a better separation hihat/snare.

Mix "itself" is pretty good.
Guitars, keyboards, voice, everything sounds excellent.
Bass guitar lacks something in the 80 range in my system.

Thanks for sharing it!

Ciro

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

but i like the song; it could be a hit!

Thanks, but we can't take credit for the song itself. It's actually originally a K.T. Tunstall tune. But I'm glad you like it anyway .

(Same to you Chili )

My main comments are about drums (probably room needs more tretament?...);really, there´s some boom in the BD(60hz).
...
Bass guitar lacks something in the 80 range in my system.

Yeah, like I say, the sub-bass is quite un-tamed, which limited things a bit as far as what could cleanly be brought out down there. I applied a lot of corrective EQ, including a hard high-pass at about 65Hz and a camel-back EQ with the center valley at 120Hz, but it just isn't quite clean enough. You can hear the "boom" in that little drum run before the first main solo verse. We need to address that in the room and the kit itself. We're also switching kick mics from the Beta52 that we used here (and which I frankly never really cared that much for) to the Sennheiser e602, which hopefully will tighten it up a bit.

Hihat sounds a bit "harsh" in the highs
Snare looks like something to the R (intentional?)... nothing wrong,but I´d cut something in the mid/highs for a better separation hihat/snare.

More mic changes that we may make there, especially in the OHs. On this track we used a pair of NT1s for the OHs, and IMHO (as well as my partners) they are just too brittle-sounding. (Actually, IMHO, those NT1s tend to be too brittle-sounding for a lot of things.)

It also doesn't help make the mix easy that we have a lot of shaker and cabasa in that mix. I like them, but they definitely add to the weight in the high frequencies, and are a large part of the "shiny" high end in that mix, and tend to confuse the high end from the kit. That also contributes to what many may hear as "anemic" bass; half of it is the trying to keep the LF mud we already talked about in check, the other half is that the large amount of high end information in that song tends to try and pull the overall perceived spectral balance towards that high end even when the bass is "normal".

G.

 

[TripleM]

I thought it sounded nice. There's an acoustic guitar that I thought was on the thin side - but it's probably a difference in personal tastes.

Question - were you trying to hide the use of Autotune, or were you using it as an effect?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Question - were you trying to hide the use of Autotune, or were you using it as an effect?

Neither one; there is no Autotune or any other pitch correction software in there anywhere.

If you're talking about the vocal, there is only a little reverb on the vocal. That slight phasing/flanging type sound you might hear if you listen close enough is either a problem with an overly-lively iso booth -I mentioned that earlier as part of the fine tuning we need to do to the acoustics of the new space - or a crappy artifact of the reverb in the new board. I won't be back to the studio myself until Monday, so unless my associates look into it between now and then (which I hope they do), I'll have to work it on the fly on Monday when we start tracking a new project.

G.

 

[ido1957]

Very nice Glen - performance and recording both great!

 

[beatlebum]

Great to finally hear what you can do! It would have been so disappointing if it was bad and thankfully it's not...its really good in my opinion. Understated, subtle, great vocalist (reminds me of Aimee Mann), but you don't want to hear compliments so...

My first impression was that the crash was a bit harsh. Second listen and it didn't bother me.

Why did you leave out the bass note on the 10th bar? It just sounds like a mistake.

The male backing vox are a bit too subtle in my view (but don't bring them up much!) - maybe they need more compression so they sit more consistently under the lead vox.

You could say the strings are a tiny bit artificial but then they are on most records these days, including the original.

This version is utterly loyal to the Tunstall's and you don't get away with loyal covers unless you are as good as the original or very close. I dare say that this version is better than the original, probably because I think your vocalist suits the song better that KT but also because the music is slightly and subtly better.

Good stuff.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Why did you leave out the bass note on the 10th bar? It just sounds like a mistake.

I can't give you an immediate answer to that, it could very well be a true mistake. We would not have intentionally taken or left it out without punching in a correction.

The male backing vox are a bit too subtle in my view (but don't bring them up much!) - maybe they need more compression so they sit more consistently under the lead vox.

Now that I think about it, maybe that's what TripleM was mistaking for Autotune on the lead vocal. As you rightly noticed, it's not Autotuning, but rather a guy called Steve (the keyboard player) laying some backing vocals under the main vocal.

I like the subtlety myself. We weren't really going for a duet effect so much as just a little strategic fattening of the lead vocal.

You could say the strings are a tiny bit artificial but then they are on most records these days, including the original.

The strings are real violin samples, played on a MIDI keyboard, of course. I forget which software and library was used - they were supplied by one of the other engineers.

This version is utterly loyal to the Tunstall's and you don't get away with loyal covers unless you are as good as the original or very close. I dare say that this version is better than the original, probably because I think your vocalist suits the song better that KT but also because the music is slightly and subtly better.

Thank you, that's very generous of you to say so. The loyalty to the original was painstakenly intentional, both for the benefit of the vocalist, and also because a couple of my team members produce karaoke CDs as well as original productions, and this was great practice for applying those kinds of skills in the new studio. If you were a fly on the wall, you might have laughed at the time some of us spent in the CR pacing back and forth like an expectant father on speed in a waiting room, listening to the original on a MP3 player, mentally deconstructing the original mix and figuring the arrangements .

Thanks to you and ido for the kind compliments, though. One can never get enough of those .

G.

 

[mixmkr]

generally very nice... and said above, it would have been disappointing if it was rubbish... but it isn't. I greatly value the remarks of people that have decent music (ears) to back up what they're saying and take the others with a grain of salt and just another "opinion". Equipment reviews, etc are usually just passed over, as they're meaningless.

Sorry for that little rant.

I'm glad the bass finally came in, but the effect of coming in later isn't working for me, because the bass is too weak and undefined. The same with the drums coming in. No dyanmic change, unless that's intentional.
And I hope it isn't MY system, but it all seems to lean to the right... drums and all. The keys hang in there in the left, but all those cymbals, etc are really leaning to that side.

Nice talent and tune. Some fine tuning, this would be a gem.

 

[guitar zero]

I thought you did a good job with the vocals on this tune. They are warm yet clear and the level is perfect. I do agree that the backing vocals could come up just the tiniest bit. Nice recording, I enjoyed it.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

And I hope it isn't MY system, but it all seems to lean to the right... drums and all. The keys hang in there in the left, but all those cymbals, etc are really leaning to that side.

It's interesting that you say that, because I've also had a private critique from someone else here with very good ears (I'll leave their name out of it, but you guys know them) who thought the mix leaned left mainly because they thought the vocals leaned that way.

Actually if one looks at the L/R energy spread in something like RND's Inspector (which I just did, BTW), one can see that while the "center" does waver a little left and right with the arrangement, the overall balance is pretty much dead center.

I can't explain the discrepancy other than to speculate that maybe folks are used to LCR panning, and when one decides to spread the mix a little while still keeping overall balance - and it really isn't spread that much - that they tend to perhaps subconsciously focus on one "sonic stem" or another.

I don't know, just a theory .

I thought you did a good job with the vocals on this tune.

You might be surprised to lean that very little was actually done to the vocals. Mostly just an MXL V69N in the ISO booth, with just a taste of verb, barely whispered the word "compression" over the DAW keyboard, and a liberal sprinkling of punch takes .

G.

 

[mixmkr]

Well.... that made me d/l the file and check it out. It aint my system, and I hope those other "ears" aren't one of our mastering friends. This mix is definately leaning to the right and my eyeballs are telling me the same thing.

The keys are strong on the left, mainly because they are so full freq and loud, but it's like that they are symetrical with the rest of the mix.

I'd say the vox is the closet thing to center and the bs gtr too...but that's hard to tell.

However, listening on the radio, etc...I could give a flip as the tune is superceding the production...mainly those lovely vocals.

 

[ocnor]

Sounds good. I'm not used to hearing that kind of clarity around here.

 

[mixmkr]

this was the easiest program I could show it in, with my limited visual abilities....

But check this out. It's subtle, but notice the difference.

Notice the intro, with the keys showing slightly more energy on the left (top). Then overall, about 1 - 1.5 dB overall more energy on the right. My super-duper spectrum analyzers show it too...but couldn't get a good shot to post.