Diana Light The Moon Reprise

[robgreen]

Been a while since I've had chance to work on anything new, and this is maybe a bit of an odd one to come back with.

It's based on another tune I had in the clinic a couple of years ago which I'd originally intended to be a bit of an ambient soundscape piece, but had gone off in another direction. With that in mind, I'd always wanted to make a second version closer to that original idea.

I stripped some stuff out, brought some previously buried bits to the surface, remixed it all and added some new parts. Heatmiser had sent me some ambient noisey guitar parts for that first version, which also feature here too. The end result is pretty different, and I think pretty close to where I wanted to go this time around.

Balance of the various parts was a tough call throughout, and probably not to everyone's taste - but how's it sounding?

Mix 4 - new mix - 2nd May


Mix 1 - old mix - 25th April
Diana Light The Moon (Reprise) Old Mix

Thanks all

 

[rayc]

The Clinic has become quite "cinematic" of late.
The bass as bed works fine.
It leans a bit to the side of the squeaky string acoustic for a bit.
The slide makes the whole thing remind me of Bo Hansson & his LOTRings suite.
Cool stuff Rob. i like it.

 

[easlern]

Sounds great to me, brilliant piece man. Guitars seem just a bit dry, might try pushing them back just a bit, that's all I got.

 

[TripleM]

Nothing sticks out as sounding bad. Tone on things is generally ear pleasing.

Mixwise two things stuck out to me. One is there isn't much of a low end to speak of. A droning bass - or at least a heavier/more prominent one than what you have - would help.

The other thing was that it felt narrow. Even though there was plenty of stuff on the edges, the things in the center were much louder. I think that's what gives it a narrow feel.

 

[Tadpui]

Man it's been so long since I've posted in the clinic, I almost forgot where it was.

Agreed that it's light on the bass, it could use at least a few more dB. Acoustic sounds good, the electric does as well. You could probably pick an element or two and make them a bit brighter, like the acoustic or electric guitar maybe. Just to keep things from getting too dark on the whole. Not much, just a little bump somewhere.

I think that I liked your other version better, with the titular vocal mantra.

 

[Robus]

Interesting and attractive. The midrange is a little bit pushy.

 

[robgreen]

The Clinic has become quite "cinematic" of late.
The bass as bed works fine.
It leans a bit to the side of the squeaky string acoustic for a bit.
The slide makes the whole thing remind me of Bo Hansson & his LOTRings suite.
Cool stuff Rob. i like it.

Great, thanks for checking it out Ray – cinematic is always good with me. That guitar does get a bit squeaky doesn’t it – I kind of like it a bit trashy sounding, but I’ll tame that fret squeak on the update. You’re right about the lean too, there are a couple of parts on the other side that are pulled back and probably causing the tilt. Easily remedied.

Don’t think I’ve ever heard of Bo Hansson before, but I’ll check him out. I’ve been listening to Spiritualized’s Pure Phase record a lot recently, which although not something I was consciously referencing, does have some similarities too I think. Thanks as always!

Sounds great to me, brilliant piece man. Guitars seem just a bit dry, might try pushing them back just a bit, that's all I got.

Awesome, thanks Easlern. Thanks for the compliments and your thoughts on the guitars. I’ll take another look at how they sit – with the nature of the mix, I’m pretty conscious that too much reverb anywhere could turn the whole thing to mush, so may be more of a balancing thing. Cheers man

Nothing sticks out as sounding bad. Tone on things is generally ear pleasing.

Mixwise two things stuck out to me. One is there isn't much of a low end to speak of. A droning bass - or at least a heavier/more prominent one than what you have - would help.

The other thing was that it felt narrow. Even though there was plenty of stuff on the edges, the things in the center were much louder. I think that's what gives it a narrow feel.

Thanks Trip, I was keen to get the tones right, so that’s good to hear. You’re right on the low end – I think I was conscious that I’m normally too heavy on the bass and ended up too far the other way. I’ve started tweaking and it sounds better with the bass boosted. Good spot.

The sense of narrowness is puzzling me though, and I’m trying to work out what might be contributing to that feeling. The bassline is the only part of the whole mix that’s centred – literally everything else is panned somewhere in the region of +/- 15-40. Hmm, I’ll have a think, it might just take some rebalancing of frequencies across the stereo field as much as anything??

I appreciate your thoughts and time. Cheers.

 

[Bubba po]

Hi, Rob - I'm listening at work at the moment, so no critical listening here. Overall the thing sounds pretty nice. What's it all about?

 

[robgreen]

Man it's been so long since I've posted in the clinic, I almost forgot where it was.

Agreed that it's light on the bass, it could use at least a few more dB. Acoustic sounds good, the electric does as well. You could probably pick an element or two and make them a bit brighter, like the acoustic or electric guitar maybe. Just to keep things from getting too dark on the whole. Not much, just a little bump somewhere.

I think that I liked your other version better, with the titular vocal mantra.

Ha, you stumbled on a bit of a weird one to reacquaint yourself with it too Tad. Sorry about that!

I still intend to keep the other version, though that still needs some more work as well – I just wanted to make this as a bit of a companion piece. I love remixes and seeing bands reinterpret songs at live shows etc. so as I had this idea stuck in my head I thought I’d run with it.

Thanks a lot for checking in and sharing your thoughts. More bass is definitely coming up on the update, and generally a smoother sound I think. Hope you manage to get some stuff finished soon – you’re the great procrastinator on here!

Interesting and attractive. The midrange is a little bit pushy.

Thanks Robus. Yeah, I think a couple of the mids parts are a touch harsh in retrospect and even though I haven’t really added any EQ, they’re a little stacked. Nearly done with an update – once I’ve figured the issue trip mentioned above, I’ll post it up. Appreciate your thoughts

 

[robgreen]

Hi, Rob - I'm listening at work at the moment, so no critical listening here. Overall the thing sounds pretty nice. What's it all about?

Hi Bub, it’s a re-working of a song I had in the clinic a couple of years ago. There were some vocals in the original – essentially the title repeated a few times. The title came from this book about the romans as a kid - it’s still at my parents house and I came across it when I was back home a couple of years ago writing the original version. It had a section on Roman mythology with a story about the moon goddess Diana lighting the moon each night. Cool story and made me think about comforting fictions.

There’s also spoken word section in the original which was a reading of Tennyson’s Ulysses that I lifted from a documentary about John Glenn. It fitted thematically (apart from mangling Roman myths with Greek ones). Most of that dialogue is cut from this reprise, but I cut up some other phrases and bits of soundtrack to add to throw into the musical soup.

Thanks for listening, I’ll have a better sounding update up soon

 

[TripleM]

The sense of narrowness is puzzling me though, and I’m trying to work out what might be contributing to that feeling. The bassline is the only part of the whole mix that’s centred – literally everything else is panned somewhere in the region of +/- 15-40. Hmm, I’ll have a think, it might just take some rebalancing of frequencies across the stereo field as much as anything??
.

I'm at work now and can't re-listen. So I have to go from memory. But I think there were some vocal tracks and other tracks that were "rather centered." Maybe they weren't 0%, but they weren't too far to one side or the other. Then there were other tracks that *were* hard panned. But the thing was that the "rather centered" tracks were louder than the hard panned tracks. And since they were rather dominant in the mix, it gave the mix a narrow feel.

 

[robgreen]

I'm at work now and can't re-listen. So I have to go from memory. But I think there were some vocal tracks and other tracks that were "rather centered." Maybe they weren't 0%, but they weren't too far to one side or the other. Then there were other tracks that *were* hard panned. But the thing was that the "rather centered" tracks were louder than the hard panned tracks. And since they were rather dominant in the mix, it gave the mix a narrow feel.

Thanks for clarifying that Trip, I appreciate you coming back in. I'll bear all that in mind and see if I can address it on the updated mix.

 

[heatmiser]

Hey rob! Glad you found a use for some of those old tracks!

I like this. I listened a few times by plugging my Senn tracking phones into my phone. I thought you had a nice balance between clarity, and letting some sounds overlap a bit which gives it a nice harmonic flow with different bits rising and falling throughout the course of the track. You could probably do lots of carving and pruning and EQ stuff so that each track is more distinct, but I'm not sure that would necessarily be good here?

I think, perhaps like you, I am not so good at super fine tuning mixes - once I get it reasonably close or in the ballpark, I tend to say it's good. I think you're definitely in the ballpark to my ear, but I would listen to these other folks as they often pick up on subtleties that I miss. I thought the bass seemed sufficient, but others find it lacking, so definitely try giving it a nudge or a boost and see how you like it.

Cool sounds...I'm glad you revisited this!

Oh, btw - I really liked that Pavement cover you sent me the link to - sorry I didn't mention that. I wasn't so crazy about the recording or mix necessarily, but the performances we really cool!

 

[Manslick]

Sounds pretty good to me man. I like the skippy rhythm. Some kind of sea shanty groove like 6/8.

 

[robgreen]

Hey rob! Glad you found a use for some of those old tracks!

I like this. I listened a few times by plugging my Senn tracking phones into my phone. I thought you had a nice balance between clarity, and letting some sounds overlap a bit which gives it a nice harmonic flow with different bits rising and falling throughout the course of the track. You could probably do lots of carving and pruning and EQ stuff so that each track is more distinct, but I'm not sure that would necessarily be good here?

I think, perhaps like you, I am not so good at super fine tuning mixes - once I get it reasonably close or in the ballpark, I tend to say it's good. I think you're definitely in the ballpark to my ear, but I would listen to these other folks as they often pick up on subtleties that I miss. I thought the bass seemed sufficient, but others find it lacking, so definitely try giving it a nudge or a boost and see how you like it.

Cool sounds...I'm glad you revisited this!

Oh, btw - I really liked that Pavement cover you sent me the link to - sorry I didn't mention that. I wasn't so crazy about the recording or mix necessarily, but the performances we really cool!

Ace, thanks for listening Pete and also for those tracks in the first place. There’s more of a feature made of them in this version I think as the melody (in as much as there is one) is more slow burning and so suits those saturated droning sounds pretty well.

Yeah, I’m with you on getting mixes ‘close enough’ rather than super refined, though you certainly get yours closer than me! I don’t think this is song that needs real clear separation of the parts, but I think I got some good advice above, and I think it’s helped me to focus on a few specific areas.

Glad you liked the Pavement tune too btw, I was only really involved in the performances and mixing in of piano so good to hear you essentially enjoyed everything I was involved with!

Cheers man, I literally couldn’t have done it without you!

Sounds pretty good to me man. I like the skippy rhythm. Some kind of sea shanty groove like 6/8.

Manslick, nice to hear from you! Thanks a lot for listening and glad it worked. It needs that bit of bounce from the bass to keep the whole thing moving along I think. The time sig is actually a rather slow 4/4 at it’s core, but that possibly comes across more clearly on the original where there’s a beat underpinning it all too?

Hope all’s good with you anyway

 

[robgreen]

Thanks everyone for thoughts. There’s a new mix on the OP along with the first effort, and new mix also on this post.

I’ve changed a bunch of stuff, which may or may not made much difference, but I think is generally for the better. The overall sound seems like it's ‘bigger’, but starting to lose perspective so might be imagining things.

Bass up a couple of db’s, some smoothing out of the acoustic guitar part, some work to correct the lean and all kinds of small tweaks to re-balance the tone/volume/panning of the various guitar and keys parts. Unless I’ve knocked something out of whack in the process, this is probably close to as good as I can get it. How’s this working:


Mix 2 - new mix - 27th April


Ta

 

[ido1957]

(I didn't listen to mix 1) There's a tiny bit of harsh/brittle edge on the instruments which I can't pinpoint without an eq. I don't know - maybe 4 k or something. It's just enough that it needs a little tweak. Nothing other than that, the mix sounds pretty well balanced and I like the choice of reverb(s) effect etc.

 

[ibleedburgundy]

I'm at work now and can't re-listen. So I have to go from memory. But I think there were some vocal tracks and other tracks that were "rather centered." Maybe they weren't 0%, but they weren't too far to one side or the other. Then there were other tracks that *were* hard panned. But the thing was that the "rather centered" tracks were louder than the hard panned tracks. And since they were rather dominant in the mix, it gave the mix a narrow feel.

I hadn't read your post and I was gong to say something similar. This is such a wild landscape type tune. I was thinking some aggressive panning would work for this. Maybe even some movement there back and forth. Eh, just an idea. Sounds cool dude!

 

[robgreen]

(I didn't listen to mix 1) There's a tiny bit of harsh/brittle edge on the instruments which I can't pinpoint without an eq. I don't know - maybe 4 k or something. It's just enough that it needs a little tweak. Nothing other than that, the mix sounds pretty well balanced and I like the choice of reverb(s) effect etc.

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts ido. There's a lot going on in the upper mids, so I think you may well be right and it's all become a bit stacked. I' ll take a look over the weekend and see where needs taming a touch. Good to hear everything else is coming through okay. Cheers

I hadn't read your post and I was gong to say something similar. This is such a wild landscape type tune. I was thinking some aggressive panning would work for this. Maybe even some movement there back and forth. Eh, just an idea. Sounds cool dude!

Great, thanks IBB. l appreciate you listening in. I thought I'd got a bit more of a spread on the update, but maybe there's still scope for more. I like your idea about movement back and forth, definitely some mileage in exploring that. Thanks again mate.

 

[heatmiser]

Hey Rob - listened to the new mix a couple of times and it sounds good. I didn't have much problem with the first one, but now I think maybe I do hear some buildup in the mids somewhere? Sounded ok through my tracking phones, but through speakers it sounded more crowded almost? Not sure if that is new or was there all along...

What did I actually do on this anyway? lol I know I did the distorted tremolo guitar strumming those chords...did I do the slide? It was a while ago now.