SLuiCe
New member
You can skip to the song by clicking here and selecting A Brother With Wings. This is mostly a bunch of tech talk that I promised in another thread...
So I got rained out of work again today and figured I better get some vocals done on this idea for the HRC. As if my tired voice wasn't enough to deal with, I gotta battle with no compressor at all on a LD condensor. I don't use a lot of compression on vocals, but none at all? Sheez.. If I stood back too far, I was getting major proximity effect. "Where's the beef?" I asked myself. My solution: Turn the input down on the pre when it's time to yell it out! But it was a great vocal challenge to figure out how to control those dynamics (especially the consonants) and still try give it some ooomph.
Another challenge, since I'm just starting to learn to play bass, was not having any compression on that. I really had to concentrate on my string attack, or the shit would just be pinned...errr, I mean the meter would go red. A lot. So that was good for me.
The acoustic guitars kinda pissed me off without a little compression too. I couldn't keep the noise of my computer out of it. I usually use a 6:1 @ -10dB on my acoustics, with a very fast attack. Fortunately this tune is all finger picked so pick strikes were absent, and it was just a noise floor issue w/o the compressor. Again, sensitive condensors. Good challenge.
My first instinct when setting the levels for this "mix" was to reach for the EQ (I've resisted for now, but I'll be back... ).The vocals during the verses are tripled, in unison that is.. I wanted like a small men's choir happening. With my voice, this made the mix of the song really low-mid heavy! So I know I'll need to carve a little sculpture in that range to get them to play fair. The acoustics (will actually eventually be re-tracked with compression and less room noise but otherwise...) could use a hole in the 500-1k range me thinks. And I think I'd cut some low to low-mids (170-350ish) out of the accompanying clean electrics as well. I don't need their low end; it's the upper mids to highs I want to use them for. The bass will probably want a low end roll-off rising to about 80Hz, a small cut down to around 170Hz and straight up to about 300 @0dB. It sounds like it wants a little string brightness, so maybe a kick up at around 600 and 1K. I would also consider a boost around 6k except that this is a very cheap bass, and I don't like what it does in that range. The major focus here will be in the low mids come mixing time.
Reverb will be interesting on this tune. I'm not sure what I'll do there. I kinda like the barbershop dryness of the harmonies (if I can give them a better performance that is!
), but part of me wants to go big too. Whatever I do, there probably won't be any long decays...90-100ms should be more than sufficient since there's a fair amount of rhythm to the song. A predelay of 35-45ms should also do it. I may want to roll the reverb highs off at 4k to avoid any prolonging of sibilance here and there...especially with tripled vocals. I must've used an "S" once or twice...I'm sure of it. From there it should just be a matter of what level to mix the reverb in- I'm guessing about 13-15%, but I'll decide that after I clean up the rest of the mess and see what's left for space So on to the tune I guess
A Brother With Wings
Honestly, I didn't hear anything that demanded "fixing" as far as compression/EQ goes. You did a great job of tracking it, obviously.
