Is this too brittle? To dry? - Italian Traditional / polka

S

SweetDan

New member
This is a band I played (bass) with for many years. We recently went to a studio to track this (and other tunes), and got a basic mix from the engineer. He wasn't all that familiar with out style of music, however, so I am trying do a better mix.



Let me know what you think.

Update: new mix



I've added delay/reverb to the vocals (and the guitar solo), cleaned up a few breaths or playing glitches, added a bit of tape saturation on the master bus, and other minor tweaks. What do you think?

Update #2: a newer mix

Better EQ-ing of the vocals; see response #13 in the series for details on exactly what I did, plus a link to a helpful EQ tutorial.

 
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If you could reduce probably around 2-3K area on the accordion that may take some of the shrill out of it. But it was a very good recording. Nice job.
 
Sounds real nice to me, I don't think a bit of fx would hurt but I'm not sure polka calls for that (not familiar with the genre.)
 
Vocals are very dry for the style of music...otherwise exceptional. :)
Loved the guitar solo. It sounds great for a rough mix.
 
SweetDan said:
Bump - new mix
Click to expand...

The second vocal that comes in - i would consider moving it into a different space than the original vocal. Pan it somewhere it stands out a little more. To me, it seems buried underneath the main line. Just my opinion. I don't hear the harshness, so maybe it was addressed already? The reverb and "spacial placement" of the main vocal sounds good to me.
 
I agree with andrushkiwt, take that backing vocal and move it just a little one way or another, keep the level, and I think it would stand out much better.

Other than that, I don't have any further comments. Sounds good, fun to listen to and different for this site ;)
 
Yeah, the tricky thing about the background vocal is I'm not sure where to put it. In the first mix I submitted, it's pretty far to the right, so very separate from the lead vocal. But after I made the other changes (got the reverb right, toned down the accordions), the background vocal clashed w/the rhythm guitar also on the right. So I tried equally far left, but then the background vox clashed with one of the accordions.

Decisions, decisions, decisions...luckily in this tune, I don't think it's horrible to leave the background vox somewhat centered, since that and the main melody are call-and-response, instead of harmonizing each other. Thanks for listening and commenting.
 
I listened to the new mix.

I thought the instruments sounded very good. Pleasing tone on everything. Levels were well balanced.

The vocals weren't bad, but I didn't think they had the quality of the instruments. They had a bit of a flat, cheap cardboard sound. A little mic distortion in a spot or two.

Drum pattern got repetitive after a while.
 
TripleM said:
The vocals [in the first updated mix; -ed] weren't bad, but I didn't think they had the quality of the instruments. They had a bit of a flat, cheap cardboard sound. A little mic distortion in a spot or two.
Click to expand...

I struggled w/your comment for a while..."What does TripleM know about my band and our music and how it's supposed to sound?" ran through my mind a time or two. And I can't do anything short of re-tracking the lead vocal where it distorted some - the engineer recorded too hot on this one.

But I calmed myself down a bit, did some googling on how best to EQ to remove boxiness in vocals, and found a very useful resource (6 Different Frequencies and How to Spot Them - Envato Tuts+ Music & Audio Tutorial), which was great overall of showing some examples of how to eq certain problems in different instruments. The technique I needed here was to apply a fairly narrow, kind of deep cut (~10-12dB) on the vocals around 1-1.2k. That did the trick, in terms of making both the vocals more clear. (The background vox still needs something else I think but it's better.)

The result: "final" mix #2 -


So, thanks for prodding me to make it better.
 
I like the background vocal to the side much much more. It sits pretty well, though i wonder if it has a bit too much reverb on it; i'm sure it's probably using the same vocals bus that has the reverb treatment, but perhaps it's a touch too much to begin with. Oddly enough, I didn't notice any "shrill" the first time around, but now I do. 1:57 is a good example. as is the final hit before the fade out at 4:15. They both made me want to pull the ear buds out. Don't get me wrong, I think this is really darn good, but there's something in the 1.5k-3.k region that is sticking out to me, perhaps even higher. It makes it slightly uncomfortable to listen to at anything more than 5/10 on volume. Probably isn't too much work there, just some EQ sweeping and master bus touches. but hey...i'm listening on my work buds, so maybe they're misleading me. see what the gang says as well
 
It sounds a little saturated and peaky to me. I don't know if that's in the tracking or the mixing. I think the individual tracks would benefit from a bit of levelling (compression).
 
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