INITIAL LISTENING : consumer grade $ 60.00 jambox flat EQ
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I'm feeling a 'La Bamba' kind of thing here in the intro, I like that.
Choo' wanna dancing baypeeee ?
In the intro ... did you clone the riffing guitar track, and place one track near center, and pan one track to the right ? The riffing guitar is well balanced with the left panned rythm guitar. The riffing is up in the mix enough to 'lead' and give the listener focus, but not so loud that it's overbearing. Very dancy and sets the tone and stage for the song very well.
I think you've done a very good job with the guitar placements in the intro.
Dropping the riffing guitar out when the first verse lyric starts is very effective and gives you a very strong and effective vocal entrance. The vocal is very exposed, well out in front of the mix, and still maintains a posture 'within' the mix. Nicely crafted within some fine lines here.
Your doubled vox here is either incredibly precise, or you did this manually by cloning the track, and then panned those two tracks symetrically and with similar volume level ?
Whichever method you've used here, the singing is more than strong enough to select one of these tracks as the 'lead' and drop one track well behind the lead, just to fill the vox out and give it a bit more body and presence. IMHO, present the strong track a little drier and 'in the face' to generally give us more confidence in understanding the lyrics.
I have learned in my mixes, that presenting two lead vox tracks, either a clone and an original, or doubled tracks that are very closely performed ... when presenting them at nearly the same volume level and their pannnig is symetric ... it introduces sibilance, and can introduce a phasing or flanging effect on some of the words that are naturally softer sounding, like the word 'for' as an example can get lost easily.
Any reverb then added to those vox tracks will magnify that. Your vocal texture I describe as soft throat, medium mouth singer, you don't need much reverb to sweeten your already sweet voice, just enough to keep you in the room with the instruments. Your attention to diction and pronunciation makes your mouth of medium sibilance and I think you are really a very soft and sweet vocalist, so it's tough to make your vocal crisp.
If you want a crisper vocal, to come closer to the texture of the guitars, experiment with running one of your lead vocal tracks through an 'enhancer' filter plug-in, like what you can find in soundforge. Then mix that one with an original, and see how that gives life to the consonants and vowels without promoting sibliance.
So I'm very interested to know what you actually did here.
Now ... it's working, and it's nice, I just think you might find something that works even better, so I'm just IMHO'ing here and proposing some experimentation.
Where I am in my development as a reviewer ... is the closer it is to really good, the more I can say about it in my observations, and you are really close to 'the big winner here' for this genre.
Good, consistent intonation, and especially appreciated on your hold out notes as the phrases end, good support there.
Still listening in the first verse here ... and there are some challenges to actually understanding the words, and I think this is related to the reverb or effects you are using on the vox, the quality of your natural vox ... and the sibilance promoted by the symetrical panning of the doubled vox, and the similar volume levels of the doubled vox.
At 00:40, at this first change, I hear the supporting harmony vocals with a lot of seperation. You have done exactly what I want so many others to do. You have enough headroom created with your tasteful instrument mix to let the lead vox ride out high above the mix, and extra room under the lead vox for the supporting harmony vocals to have both seperation and some character, without being 'too loud'. Very nice crafting there. It really seems like the backup singers are on a riser just above and to the right of the lead singer. This promotes the feeling that the lead vox has a good posture 'within' the mix.
Very bandstand
without seeming to dated
...
At 01:03, I would like to hear the lead vox a little hotter, EQ -wise ... maybe. No, it's a headroom issue here I think. And I'm going to start chasing something here I don't really have the words to define well.
The harmony and backup vox are getting just a tiny touch muddy, or maybe there are some sonic challenges from the guitars here ? Yes, the riffing guitar on the right could be brought in tighter at this point, and reduced in volume ? An EQ adjustment on the guitar at this point might just do the trick. But I'm guessing, i'm chasing something here.
Maybe, just maybe, the back vox are a touch too loud here, if that can be possible ... in my critiques
. There is room later to bring the harmony vox up in the chorus for this type of presentation later, a more 'musical' presentation perhaps later. I want to hear the lead singer more here in this first chorus.
You singing is so good here in this first chorus, that I want to hear the lead vox in this chorus presented more strongly, by bringing the back vox down a hair, or experimenting with the panning here on the back vox. Or the EQ touch on the right stereo riffing guitar.
At 01:55, the back vox and lead vox are perfect
At 2:08, things remain perfect.
At 02:19 we enter this first chorus, and I think it's the drone guitar riff in right stereo that is competing with the mix. I think starting by addressing that guitar and what happens with it throughout the mix could really refine the mix. After the intro we literally have what the riffing guitar is doing engrained in our brains, so very little volume is needed to continue to support that idea. Dropping it's level significantly in the body of the song, gives you an opportunity to bring it up in the beginning of the outro, and then fade it aggressively as I mention later.
At 2:42, I really like this change, the lead vox continues to be well out front, but still maintains a good posture 'within the mix', back vox are very good here.
At 3:13, the last chorus, this is the mix I want to hear in the first chorus
, the guitars could be brought down very low here for outro ... the guitars could fade much more aggessively around the vox mixes here, the vocals are simply strong, and good enough, to take it out.
Very tight performing.
I want to hear skids and his wife work their mixes closer to something like you are doing here, I think there are a lot of similarities between what you do here, and what they do.
The bass is mixed perfect. When I think about it, I hear it, when I don't conciously try to pick it out ... I just hear a good mix.
The drums are never overbearing, and when they become active they don't 'stun' us. Good use of compressions, and you have some flexibility to open up the compression a bit.
Good mixing for with a rather complex mix. Great performing. A sad topic presented in a darkly sweet frame ... Great song.
SECONDARY LISTENING : (super clean, super seperating SONY MDR-7506 phones)
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Intro really sounds groovy, these phones are really more enjoyable than the jambox.
lyric is more understandable, so we can average here on the sibilance issues, but I've listened a bunch of times already.
backvox is great coming in at 00:40, great headroom giving advantage to that layering with character maintained in the backvox, it's just all about good seperation there, and you get that because you have the headroom to do that.
I'm hearing some sonic competition between the riffing guitar and the backvox. That's the ticket I think.
1:28, verse vox is simply 'spot on' .
1:56 is wonderful.
2:05 this next verse is perfect.
Chorus at 2:18, the right guitar is competing with the backvox, it's EQ tweaking time on that guitar I think, but it's such a nit area, and I could chase that, it's just a gut feeling because I don't have clear terms to describe what's happening there. And of course that riffing guitar 'idea' doesn't need much volume to support the 'idea', just the impulse of that riff under the mix is all we need this late in the song.
Bass is perfect, I can hear it better now, I like the bass it matches the guitars. The little punching walks at 3:04 are just totally tasteful and clean.
Pan those back vox in this last chorus to the other side, and they will compete less with the riffing guitar ?
yeah I'd fade these guitars down around the vox aggressively to craft the outro ...
A KEEPER BIGTIME ! were any mini-skirts harmed in the production of this tune ?
