Llarion at the controls...

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RAMI

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Mr. Phil the Jazzinator re-mixed one of my songs. I would love to share it with you all here. I think he did an awesome job, but won't post my specific comments yet so as not to influence anyone. Let us know what you think about either mix. This shouldn't be a comparison about which is "better", because I don't think that exists and we both already agreed they each have their merit. I just think it's cool to have someone else produce my stuff. It was actually kind of a weird feeling. Like letting a stranger babysit your kid. But I love what he did.

LLARION's MIX
MY ORIGINAL MIX
 
Man thats a great mix Llarion, Sorry Rami, no Bad blood?? :o :)

But really, Your first mix was really good rami, I had nothing bad to say about it..
But this remix, really brought out the big produca sound in the track, your voice was kick ass on the first take, but on the remix, your Voice its just pure class, I also liked the guitar on the Llarion track, I think it gave more room for the killer bass.

Again Rami your prior mix was all good, I just was so amazed at what Phil did to it...

an exlent job Phil. :)
 
known Phil from way back in the early days of MP3.CON (yeah, I said CON) and this is the type of proffesionalism (sp?)I've come to expect from him. I love the space he's carved out for the bass. Crisp, Clean & Coheasive mix, just the way it should be.

RAMI, I actualy listned to your mix of this last week and was very impressed with it. I don't know about you but I always feel I mix better when it's not my own material. Good song.

oh...and did ya know Phil plays drums too? :D

Alec
 
Rami, don't step on any snakes after you read this... but to me Llarion's mix has an edgier crunchier rock feel to it. I dig this :) I'm like Nak, I thought your original mix was awesome too but Llarion's just adds a little something to it.

Good jobs, both of you ;)
 
Wow, guys, thanks!!! Please, don't say mine is better. It's just different. I was going for an Aja-era Steely Dan patina. That lopey, low-slung, funky groove just grabbed me, reminded me of how songs like "Home At Last" sound.

It was really brave and supremely cool for Rami to allow me to mix and master his song. Being a "multi" myself, I have a specific set of tastes for the sounds in my own palette, and Rami does too. I took it in a slightly different direction, to show him the things I hear when I listen to his music, and to show him how many different choice there are with a piece of mastering/mixing that can all still sound good.

I told Rami that I liked the dimension and "sparkle" in my mix, but that I liked the warmth and "organic" feel to his better. Rami isn't used to hearing his voice "produced", and I layered it on pretty thick, while still trying to maintain at least the spirit of his upfront sound. I think I did a decent job...

Thanks very much Rami for the experiment, I had a great time working with the tune!
It took a lot of self discipline to not add a Hammond B3 sound in there. :) But, I did fulfill one ulterior motive I didn't tell you about: by hearing your tracks individually, I got GREAT insights about you as a player (yes, you're a mutant, and you're too good to be allowed), and as a recording engineer. Deconstructing your setups taught me a lot; I wanted to learn how to mic acoustic drums better, and I learnd that a simple setup can still take you very far. I expected a lot more individual drum track than there were! Well done!!!

By the way, GO RALLY!!! :) :) (Hi, Alec!)
 
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Guys, what's with all the apologising for liking an obviously much better sounding final product? You'd have to be deaf to not hear how much superior Phil's mix is. And I'm not just saying that to be humble or nice, it's simply obvious. It's the difference between someone who truly knows what he's doing (him) and someone who's still learning and slowly improving, and pretty much winging it (me). The seperation, sparkle and space he created are stupendous. I was up front to him about the fact that I still am not 100% sure about the wetness on my voice. The vocal sound is inarguably better, but taste-wise, I do prefer my vocals to be a little drier. I usually add very little reverb, very little delay and never double my vocals. But that's personal preference and I told him to do anything he wants. I didn't say anything about keyboards but I thank him for respecting me enough to remember that I don't like keyboards in my songs. I like my songs pretty raw, intimate and organic. This is quite the learning experience for me and I'll be using his mix as a reference for all of my future songs. I now have a standard to try to achieve. Thanx alot Phil, I can't tell you how much I'm honoured that you even wanted to waste any of your time on one of my songs.
 
Phil. I don't expect you to give away all your secrets, but I will PM you later and ask you just a few general questons, if you don't mind. Just general things like compressor setting for the drums, etc...That snare is NOT my snare (I know it is, I just mean it came to life like there's no tomorrow...)
 
RAMI said:
Phil. I don't expect you to give away all your secrets, but I will PM you later and ask you just a few general questons, if you don't mind. Just general things like compressor setting for the drums, etc...That snare is NOT my snare (I know it is, I just mean it came to life like there's no tomorrow...)
Click to expand...

I'll tell you everything you want to know, and publicly; I have no secrets... Ask away! :)
 
Ok coool. Well then, maybe everyone can get a bit of an education if you don't mind doing it publicly. How did you compress the snare and overheads? I know you told me you used some exciter or maximizer on it too, but I'm wondering about the compression.
 
Wow! I do like the warmth in RAMI's mix. Sort of the band is performing for you.

And I really love the mr.-produced-in-a-big-studio sound of Llarion's mix. It retains enough emotion and the layered sound gives the "band behind you singing" feel. :)

I agree they're both different. Although, I'm leaning towards Llarion's mix 'coz, now that sounds pretty much like a CD to me. :)
 
RAMI said:
Ok coool. Well then, maybe everyone can get a bit of an education if you don't mind doing it publicly. How did you compress the snare and overheads? I know you told me you used some exciter or maximizer on it too, but I'm wondering about the compression.
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My favorite compressor is the C4 Multiband that's in Waves. In this case, I just used the opto-mastering preset. It was more of an EQ job. BIG boosts on the snare at 8K and 11.3K. (on the order of 9db) A rolloff above 16KHz, so the top wasn't shrill. Audition has a wonderful 30-band EQ. I then use the Waves L1 Maximizer in a narrow range to pull some dimension into the sound. Then I narmalize to -0.5db, and then giveh the waveform a "haircut" in the form of a slight hard limiter at a little above where the majority of the transients are, with a db or so of makeup gain. The snare and kick and toms also went through BBE Sonic Maximizer at very light boost settings. Hard to describe exactly what this does, but it's like an intelligent tone control...

The bass guitar has a HUGE midrange hump to give it some presence, I added a big curve between 2.5 and 8K, the peak was about an 8db boost, and the lows were rolled off in a curve, -15db by 31Hz, geometric curve up to unity at 250Hz and a 1.5db boost around 125Hz.

The toms mic had some bottom added to it (250-400Hz), and some edge, and some upper mids pulled back just a tad.

The lead vox was converted to stereo, EQed (minor tweaks) run through C4 (there is a nice vocal preset, that I slide the frequency breaks around at), then I put it through RBC Voice Tweaker Pro, there is a nice doubler preset, but it's aggressive, so I pull back the intensity.

The backup vox got a macro applied to them that EQes, compressed limited, and slightly 'verbed" them, so they all had nearly identical profiles. That's how you get peaky waveform vox to blend well.

The mixdown gets some hand enveloping of larger transients, a gentle EQ nudge at 4K and 125HZ, and lastly, a pass through the L1 maximizer, 16bit dither, 4.0db threshold, -0.3db ceiling.

In all, a lot of little things going on, subtlety is key. THe ony place I had to press hard was some EQ settings...
 
WOW!...well, that explains alot...haha. So you boosted the overheads between 250-400...OK, I usually just cut around 150 to give the bass drum mic it's own place. I didn't realise you could (or should) cut or boost eq frequencies by 8 or 9 db. If I eve rhave to change something more than 6db, I figure I should re-track it...But now I see I should break rules if it sounds good. Besides, I just have three band eq's to work with. This is so eye-openin, man,,,thanx alot.
 
RAMI said:
WOW!...well, that explains alot...haha. So you boosted the overheads between 250-400...OK, I usually just cut around 150 to give the bass drum mic it's own place. I didn't realise you could (or should) cut or boost eq frequencies by 8 or 9 db. If I ever have to change something more than 6db, I figure I should re-track it...But now I see I should break rules if it sounds good. Besides, I just have three band eq's to work with. This is so eye-openin, man,,,thanx alot.
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What do you do your mixing/mastering in? Trust your ears, and trust your EYES, not convention. I've boosted or cut things as much as 18-21db at times, to get specific sounds, or right a particularly egregious issue. you can have a really narrow band, with a narrow Q, and affect a miniscule paet of the sound spectrum a lot, which gives you the effect you want.
 
Great Song = Great Mixes

Rami - another great tune - as mentioned by a previous poster, I'll be singing that "I'm so Mondayyy" to myself for a while, it's super catchy. :cool:

Llarion - another great mix (speaking from experience ;) ). I like that "sparkle".

One thing I kept thinking as I listened to both mixes - a great song, performed this well makes for great mixes.....

Excellent !
 
Thanx Ido...Nice comment. I think both mixes have their merit, but Phil's definitley puts it over the top.
 
ido1957 said:
Rami - another great tune - as mentioned by a previous poster, I'll be singing that "I'm so Mondayyy" to myself for a while, it's super catchy. :cool:

Llarion - another great mix (speaking from experience ;) ). I like that "sparkle".

One thing I kept thinking as I listened to both mixes - a great song, performed this well makes for great mixes.....

Excellent !
Click to expand...

Thanks dude, you are SO right. You could make so many different choices in mixing this tune, and they would all sound good because Rami's tracks are such high caliber... It was a joy playing with it!!
 
Llarion said:
What do you do your mixing/mastering in?
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I mix on my TASCAM 2488 and then bring it into Wavelab, which I'm just learning now. So my mastering really only consists of throwing some L1 on the whole mix at the moment. Any "production" that might accidentally happens, occurs in the mixing process in the TASCAM.
 
OK, so you need som post production education, cool, we can do that. Man, you're gonna be a FORCE when you learn the tools at your disposal!!!!!
 
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