60s Ghost Girl Group "The Gypsinettes"

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wjgypsy

New member
I once posted here on the bbs under a different name some 12 years ago, it's good to be back. Here's a (home recorded) song :



Credits :

WJAY : Recording and mixing
Jeanie Gypsinette (and her girls) : Singing / Vox
The Ice Creams : the backing band

Coming soon to 7" wax!

sam-gypsinette.jpg
 
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The pitch shifted nature is REALLY obvious in the intro.
There are some sibilance etc issues that go with it all the way through.
Really should be a mono mix.
The 1st bass note seems to be mistimed.
The song is good, the band seems good too.
You do need to naturalize the vocals some more though.
Maybe they'd be less obvious with a solid mono mix - you certainly have enough reverb for a mono mix.
The guitar tone is spot on for the UK in the late 50's/early 60's.
 
I agree with rayC. However, I'd go for an over-exaggerated stereo mix like the used to do back then. Hard-pan only without any "modern" doubling techniques for the vocals.
 
Thanks for listening Rayc / Camazza!

Actually, no pitch shift was used. Guitar was a Fender Jag through an old Tube Silvertone in a room with high ceiling/cement floor.

All reverb is real room sound, except for the added amp-verb, on the vocals. Thanks for the comments!
 
This has some really nice stuff on it - I like the lead vocal line a lot and the "you know the way to my heart" line is a really strong hook, I like the super tape-saturated vocal and the general feel of it is very nice. I don't feel it needs to be in stereo as I'm more a fan of putting modern twists on old styles than reproducing them faithfully - I think some of the interest comes in interpreting the old idea in a new way.

The main critique I have is that I'd like to hear more of the bassline - it feels a little light in that area of the spectrum. Other than that, damn good.
 
robgreen said:
I'm more a fan of putting modern twists on old styles than reproducing them faithfully - I think some of the interest comes in interpreting the old idea in a new way. The main critique I have is that I'd like to hear more of the bassline - it feels a little light in that area of the spectrum. Other than that, damn good.
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Thanks robgreen! I concur with your "New Dogs / Old tricks" thinking, it's made for really interesting, great records! .

The Bass is a 1955 American Standard (that became KAY) "doghouse" acoustic, with a Shure beta 52 on the F hole and I *might* have set up an A/T in the room, trying to remember. I've had good bass response with most systems that I've played this on, even though most of the doghouse seems to be in the super-low freq of the mix, of course and may be getting lost on smaller speakers. Thanks for letting me know, what is your monitoring set up like? (for the sake of my own notes and comparison)
 
wjgypsy said:
I've had good bass response with most systems that I've played this on, even though most of the doghouse seems to be in the super-low freq of the mix, of course and may be getting lost on smaller speakers. Thanks for letting me know, what is your monitoring set up like? (for the sake of my own notes and comparison)
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No problem. They're nothing special - bookshelf speakers in a small, untreated room. They're what I use for recording/mixing, so I'm quite familiar with them, and they do pick up bass pretty well. However, I do often face a bit of a struggle to get the bass balanced in my mixes so take what I said with a pinch of salt if you're getting good responses on better setups.
 
I get plenty of bass - mainly bottom end and no real definition - it's occasionally subsumed by the bass drum.
All your own vocal with no pitch shift? Wow, cool. You do a great job of it but it does sound a little like a sex role change movie soundtrack - Lemon & Curtis like.
I REALLY would love this in mono.
The extreme stereo as used by the Beatles in theor early afterthought stereo mixes is REALLY hard to listen to - it may be historically accurate but iit was never sonically good.
The room verb is good if that's all it is. Just what's needed to stack tracks into a wall of sound.
Please consider mixing in mono even if just as an experiment.
 
rayc said:
I get plenty of bass - mainly bottom end and no real definition - it's occasionally subsumed by the bass drum.
All your own vocal with no pitch shift? Wow, cool. You do a great job of it but it does sound a little like a sex role change movie soundtrack - Lemon & Curtis like.
I REALLY would love this in mono.
The extreme stereo as used by the Beatles in theor early afterthought stereo mixes is REALLY hard to listen to - it may be historically accurate but iit was never sonically good.
The room verb is good if that's all it is. Just what's needed to stack tracks into a wall of sound.
Please consider mixing in mono even if just as an experiment.
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Not me singing, I just recorded/engineered this experiment at the studio, but thank you!

I personally enjoyed hearing the drums and bass off to one side on those albums, even the later capital jazz records too -It's all up to tastes, of course. Hearing the (beatles') really wild and experimental stuff in stereo was fun, but then that cavern rock and roll stuff is great in mono for sure!

For what it's worth, last summer I read "Tearing Down The Wall-of-Sound : Rise and Fall of Phil Spector" - interesting read!

There was a mono mix of this originally, trying to find it now but gave up and just made a new one, and I do like the sound of this better in mono now actually! Makes me wonder how I missed it a year ago when encoding the file, funny how ears can change! Thanks for pushing me to do Mono Morning Mixing!

MONO MIX EMPEETHREE :

 
Now, that's COOL!
the vocals work so much better implanted in the mono.
One thing I'd suggest is a wad of reverb or delay at the pause/drum break at 1.49. Just to give it tha 50's vibe a little more.
I know I've harped on about it but the proof of this little pudding was in the mono eating!
 
Some un-pleasing vocal distortion on the louder notes. Vocals are very difficult to understand. Lot's of reverb and distortion.

Everything is so drowned in reverb that it's kind of a mush.

Bass sounds pretty good. It's a bit loud I thought.

I liked the lead guitar. Fit the song well.

Snare sounds pretty good. Overheads sound a little thin.
 
TripleM said:
Everything is so drowned in reverb that it's kind of a mush-----I liked the lead guitar. Fit the song well
Click to expand...

No reverb was used in the making of this feature (with thee exception of a little amp echo on the overly distorted combo that re-amped Jeanie's vox), the rest is natural from instrument/room mics

the song was tracked in this space :

189192_194137210607320_418747_n.jpg


Thanks for listening TripleM!
 
wjgypsy said:
Thanks robgreen! I concur with your "New Dogs / Old tricks" thinking, it's made for really interesting, great records! .

The Bass is a 1955 American Standard (that became KAY) "doghouse" acoustic, with a Shure beta 52 on the F hole and I *might* have set up an A/T in the room, trying to remember. I've had good bass response with most systems that I've played this on, even though most of the doghouse seems to be in the super-low freq of the mix, of course and may be getting lost on smaller speakers. Thanks for letting me know, what is your monitoring set up like? (for the sake of my own notes and comparison)
Click to expand...

Mr Gypsy, I have a confession to make. I just noticed that at some point recently I must have accidentally knocked the bass knob on my amp and it was all the way down on the lowest setting.

Unsurprisingly when I listened again after, there was plenty of bass - in fact the bass level was spot on. Please disregard my first feedback even for the sake of own notes or comparison, I'm an idiot :facepalm:
 
I'm finding the EQ on the main vocal just a *touch* hyped in the high mids, and maybe above that as well. There's just a bit of wince factor involved with them right now.

I'm really digging this one. If you were aiming at a lowfi retro sound, you definitely got it in that quadrant. I'd be really interested to hear this one mixed in a more modern way, though, just to compare. (I think I'd prefer the way you did it here, but I'd like to hear the A/B anyway.) Are the raw tracks unaffected, or did you record it that way?
 
wjgypsy said:
No reverb was used in the making of this feature (with thee exception of a little amp echo on the overly distorted combo that re-amped Jeanie's vox), the rest is natural from instrument/room mics

the song was tracked in this space :

189192_194137210607320_418747_n.jpg
Click to expand...

Hailstorm disaster waiting to happen. Can you imagine being in there?
 
dobro said:
I'm really digging this one. If you were aiming at a lowfi retro sound, you definitely got it in that quadrant. I'd be really interested to hear this one mixed in a more modern way, though, just to compare. (I think I'd prefer the way you did it here, but I'd like to hear the A/B anyway.) Are the raw tracks unaffected, or did you record it that way?
Click to expand...

This particular song was recorded that way, for the most part. Used an old Shure Unidyne for the vox, 3-mic set up on drums, 57 on solo guitar with an A/T about 20 feet away, Beta 52 on the doghouse bass. Thanks for lending an ear Dobro!
 
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