Newb looking for Piano/Vocal mix feedback

W

wolverine1190

New member
Hey guys,

The title basically says it all. I love music production, but don't have a lot of experience yet. My friend wanted to record a song of just piano and vocals so we did that, and now it's up to me to make it sound good. If I could get some feedback on what's wrong with the mix, what's right with it, what might make it better, etc. that would be fantastic! Thanks in advance.

https://soundcloud.com/wolverine1190/mix3

Some things to keep in mind/my current thoughts:

-It's by no means a perfect vocal performance, my friend is a pianist, not a vocalist
-my friend wants a warm piano sound, so it sounds kinda dark. I think it might be a bit muddy though.
-the overall sound is supposed to be pretty intimate, exposed, weak, etc in the quiet parts and my powerful in the loud parts

EDIT: Seems like soundcloud isn't working (unless it's just me). Hopefully it comes back up soon... In the meantime, here's an mp3 version View attachment mix3 .mp3
 
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For someone who is not a vocalist, he sure can sing!

What did you use to record the vocal - it sounds pretty bad (the recording, not the performance). Is the room treated? Maybe there's too much processing in the mix?

May I suggest you help others as you expect to be helped in the clinic (even if it's just to let someone know you listened and liked something).
 
Great performance! He's a great singer and pianist.
The piano actually sounds pretty good to me; it conveys the mood perfectly. But then again, I'm not sure exactly what it is that you envision in your head.
Also, I agree that the vocals are a little bit muffled and unclear as said above.
Overall, I like it!
 
Vocals are not as clear as I would like. The piano is dark like you said. The piano lacks detail, really noticeable when the piano is solo. Let the piano take up all the sonic space until the vocals kick in, then automate. I like the music though. Good work so far.
 
Thanks for the feedback. The vocals were recorded with a shure KSM 313 in a treated studio at the university I attend. The only processing done to the vocals is reverb, compression, and a wide gentle boost around 2 to 3 KHz. I added just enough to get the vocals to come out over the piano, but it does seem to lack some "air". I'll play with that. I'll definitely automate the piano as well, the middle of the stereo image does sound empty with the vocals go out now that you mention it. I'll get a revised version up as soon as I can. Thank you again!

(and I'll definitely be commenting on others' posts, I love this kind of stuff :) )
 
Great piano playing and nice voice. I think the vocalist needs to work on his articulation more. Muddled vocals can really kill a song for me. I want to hear and understand what is being sung.
 
i'd take the lows on both the vocals and piano down a decent amount because they are both a bit muddy... .the warth he wants is definitely there from his playing.
 
jonny deep said:
What did you use to record the vocal - it sounds pretty bad (the recording, not the performance). Is the room treated? Maybe there's too much processing in the mix?
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I'm working on the things suggested so far, but I'm kind of lost as to what to do with the vocal track. Jonny, you think the vocal track sounds "pretty bad", and although it's not perfect I can't seem to hear anything that would make me say that it's bad. Could you maybe be a bit more specific about why you think it sounds bad? The only thing I hear is that it might be a touch unclear (as others mentioned), but gently boosting the highs more (as I've already done some) results in the voice sounding harsh and essy, and cutting more lows results in the voice sounding kind of fake, thin, and telephony with no body and less harmonics. To me the track doesn't sound bad, so I guess I don't know what to aim at fixing since I don't know what's wrong.
 
wolverine1190 said:
I'm working on the things suggested so far, but I'm kind of lost as to what to do with the vocal track. Jonny, you think the vocal track sounds "pretty bad", and although it's not perfect I can't seem to hear anything that would make me say that it's bad. Could you maybe be a bit more specific about why you think it sounds bad? The only thing I hear is that it might be a touch unclear (as others mentioned), but gently boosting the highs more (as I've already done some) results in the voice sounding harsh and essy, and cutting more lows results in the voice sounding kind of fake, thin, and telephony with no body and less harmonics. To me the track doesn't sound bad, so I guess I don't know what to aim at fixing since I don't know what's wrong.
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It kind of sounds a bit lo-fi. I don't know if there's a bit of noise or distortion or if it's just the encoding on Soundcloud or the MP3.
 
Yeah i think the playing and singing is really good.

I agree with the advice of taming the lows off of both the vocal and piano. Probably more-so the piano. There were spots where the piano was covering the vocal. I think automation could fix that.

There is a little cloudiness to the piano. Maybe removing some low end will help with that. But you might need to treat the low mids too. Maybe a notch cut around 700hz-800hz, give or take.

I'm also hearing a couple of vocal artifacts e.g., 1:08, 1:37, 1:41. Little pops and clicks.
 
jonny deep said:
It kind of sounds a bit lo-fi. I don't know if there's a bit of noise or distortion or if it's just the encoding on Soundcloud or the MP3.
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Hmm.. interesting. I don't think it'd be soundcloud, I'm fairly certain they don't compress files and I uploaded it in .wav format. I wonder if it could be the reverb I'm using? I guess I just don't have the ear for it yet as I don't really hear anything "lo-fi" but I'll take your word for it, I trust your ear over mine haha. There is a bit of hiss to the track, I'm not convinced the audio studio we were in had the nicest gear as even the headphone output of the sound board is quite hissy on its own. Maybe that's what you're hearing? I could definitely see how high frequency hiss would give a lo-fi sound.

and TripleM, thanks for advice as well! I had been playing around and cut both around 250-300 Hz and somewhere between 700-800 Hz and it made everything a lot more clear. I'm just afraid of losing body and richness, so I'll have to play with it for a while. Thanks for pointing out the noise too, the whole track is from about 2 or 3 different takes and I haven't quite pieced everything together seamlessly yet.
 
wolverine1190 said:
Hmm.. interesting. I don't think it'd be soundcloud, I'm fairly certain they don't compress files and I uploaded it in .wav format. I wonder if it could be the reverb I'm using? I guess I just don't have the ear for it yet as I don't really hear anything "lo-fi" but I'll take your word for it, I trust your ear over mine haha. There is a bit of hiss to the track, I'm not convinced the audio studio we were in had the nicest gear as even the headphone output of the sound board is quite hissy on its own. Maybe that's what you're hearing? I could definitely see how high frequency hiss would give a lo-fi sound.

and TripleM, thanks for advice as well! I had been playing around and cut both around 250-300 Hz and somewhere between 700-800 Hz and it made everything a lot more clear. I'm just afraid of losing body and richness, so I'll have to play with it for a while. Thanks for pointing out the noise too, the whole track is from about 2 or 3 different takes and I haven't quite pieced everything together seamlessly yet.
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Soundcloud does compress files, and to a paltry 128kbps (although you can have the option to download at original upload quality).

I'm not sure my ear is that well trained. It may be the hiss I'm hearing or just frequency clashes with the piano or maybe my monitors are screwed.
 
Alright, first off, sorry for letting the thread die a bit. School's been crazy.

So I got some time to work on the mix. I automated some panning and whatnot, but what I really wanted to accomplish was to remove the muddiness from the mix, so I messed with the EQ of the piano and rolled off a bit more of the low end from the vocals. I had already had significant scoop on the piano's eq around 240 Hz. I moved the scoop around and found that scooping somewhere between 700 Hz and 800 Hz also made things much more clear. I ended up scooping both those areas but to lesser degrees than what I had originally had. The piano sounded fine like this on its own, but as soon as I brought the vocal in, the piano sounded way too thin with no body (lots of treble, lots of low end) which is expected I guess considering the cuts I made. So I played with the EQ more and ended up pretty much right where I started.

Needless to say at this point I was a little frustrated because I couldn't seem to get everything to sound right. I decided to listen to each piano track solo (there's two of them, on panned left, one panned right) and figure out which one was the problem. So I solo'd both of them one at a time and panned them center. Both sounded good on their own, and not muddy at all. But when I brought both tracks in together, the muddiness was there again. Not knowing a whole lot about mixing and sound yet, I really don't know how to approach this problem. Is it a phasing issue? Is it something I can fix with eq by removing the offending frequencies from one of the tracks all together?
 
Are the two Piano tracks identical? Copied track? If so phasing will almost certainly occur.

Have you tried a mix with just one Piano track and Vocal panned centre? It may be all it needs.

*Edit* I did listen to this last week and thought I'd commented on it, apparently not. It's a nice piece, great performance. Just needs tarting up :D
 
Mr Clean said:
Are the two Piano tracks identical? Copied track? If so phasing will almost certainly occur.

Have you tried a mix with just one Piano track and Vocal panned centre? It may be all it needs.

*Edit* I did listen to this last week and thought I'd commented on it, apparently not. It's a nice piece, great performance. Just needs tarting up :D
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Each track was recorded with a separate mic, during the same take though. One was positioned near the bass end of the piano and one near the treble end, and they're panned respectively. I might try one track though. I want that "big stereo piano" sound, but if the two tracks are making it sound poor, that's no good. I'm about to play with it a bit more right now. Thanks for the positive feedback too, not quite sure what "tarting up" means though haha.
 
wolverine1190 said:
Each track was recorded with a separate mic, during the same take though. One was positioned near the bass end of the piano and one near the treble end, and they're panned respectively. I might try one track though. I want that "big stereo piano" sound, but if the two tracks are making it sound poor, that's no good. I'm about to play with it a bit more right now. Thanks for the positive feedback too, not quite sure what "tarting up" means though haha.
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If you're getting problems with stereo micing, try flipping the phase/polarity of one of the tracks.
 
I uploaded another mix to soundcloud, here's the link:

https://soundcloud.com/wolverine1190/mix5

The main difference is the vocals, they have more low end rolled off than the previously linked mix. They're more clear but I'm afraid that I've made them too airy/thin. The whole first verse (before the piano interlude) was basically whispered, and it's supposed to sound very whispery/intimate, I just don't want to take it too far. The piano is EQ'd slightly differently as well, but it's pretty similar to mix3 (as I said, I pretty much ended up right where I started). Let me know what you think (if I made it better/worse/if there's new problems/etc).

I tried the single piano thing to see if that made the piano a bit more clear, but because each mic was set up to record a different spectrum of frequencies from the piano, each track on its own really didn't sound too great, and I couldn't get them to sound like a whole piano.
 
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