Mixing/mastering critique wanted

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pdlstl

pdlstl

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For some of you this genre may not be to your liking.

This is the first of a 12-song CD I just handed my first paying customer!

It's a mixture of bluegrass, Celtic-sounding songs and a couple are a little folky.

This first one is called "Light In The Window" and is pretty bluegrassy.

For some reason when I click on it from the link, it opens in Quicktime and has a small blank space at the beginning. If I pull the cursor back to the beginning, it plays without the blank space. I assure you, there is a complete song there.

Please feel free to offer comments/critique.

Light In The Window

Thank you,

Earl
 
This sounds great, very clear. I like the tone of the guitar. This sounds like something I would hear on a bluegrass station. I'm not a fan of the genre, but it's good.
 
I liked the song as well. It was well played and recorded.

The singers voice is lacking a little bit of bottom end but that is about all that stood out to me on headphones right now.

What was the project recorded on originally? Analog or digital? Maybe you could furnish a few details about the project.

Very pleasant music.

Cheers! :)
 
Ghost,

Regarding the vocal, are you referring to the male or the female? Or both?

This was tracked in my living room.

I used an AT4033 on everything but the banjo. I used an AT 4041 on it. Into a Mackie 1202 VLZPro and through a Delta 44 into SONAR 2.2.

The individual tracks have a small amount of EQ and no other effects.

The mixdown was put through Ozone adding another small amount of EQ on the overall mix and a very small amount of reverb.

Thanks for the comments!

My goal is to become a small facility targeted at a specific consumer. That is, I want to cater exclusively to acoustic talent. Bluegrass, folk, Celtic, etc.

Regards,

Earl
 
Sounds mostly pretty good to me. A few nitpicks:

There's a kind of "thinness" to the track as a whole, and to the vox especially (I only hear a female - am I missing something here?) It's a kind of brittle, top-end-y thing that I'm gonna guess would be helped by undoing whatever you did in Ozone.

The reason I say that about Ozone is that I've found that Ozone just rarely sounds good on acoustic material - particularly if you have the "analog modeling" engaged (and on any but Ozone 2.0 it's *always* engaged).

Plus I think with this kind of material, you shouldn't really need any processing to the mix as a whole.

I'm totally guessing here, but I hear the distinctive artifacts of Ozone's "harmonic excitation" and it is giving the sound that harsh, digital abrasiveness. This sounds well-recorded and well balanced - and of course the performance is great. I'd try to just let a little more warmth and naturalness into the sound - which I suspect involves NOT doing a lot of processing - especially to the final mix.

Chris
 
Thanks Chris.

No 'harmonic exciter". I think it's just me boosting the highs in the EQ. I kept bringing the highs up because I would listen to it in my truck and there wasn't any "sparkle".

What's a different way I can accomplish this?

Thanks,

Earl
 
The instruments are sitting reasonably well, but the vocal is a problem.

It's very thin sounding and really isn't sitting well with the rest of the bed tracks.

I suggest you take a listen to Alison Krauss -- her "Now That I've Found You" CD is a great sampler and the recordings are quite stellar that would provide an excellent sonic model for you to emulate.
 
BB, et al

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll see if I can warm/fatten up the vocals a bit this evening and post the results.

This is the first serious project I've ever done and want to learn as much as possible from you fine folks.

Earl
 
Excellent!!!

Now that's bluegrass!! Well done.

If you want to do a little work on it, bring the vocals up just a touch.

Some harmony here and there would be nice--for that old fashion stylization.
 
Yeah, Alison's stuff is definitely good to shoot for (her recordings are always superb), although I'd also say that with bluegrass, you can away with sounding a little more "homegrown" as long as everything's balanced well and there aren't any glaring mistakes.

As far as the "sparkle", I'd go more for just having everything sit clearly and cleanly, with a balanced sound. And be *very* gentle with "mastering" apps like Ozone - if you use them at all. It's so easy to mess stuff up - especially very organic-sounding stuff like this - with those things.

I'm a big bluegrass fan and while this tune is never going to have the "gloss" that Alison's stuff has, with a little tweaking it could still get the music across effectively. And I think with bluegrass, the less the production gets in the way of the music, the better.

Just my opinion, obviously.:)
Chris
 
Chris,

I totally agree with your "less production" comment.

This music is simple and pure to begin with. Each track has EQ and nothing else. The "mastering" is just another bit of high end bump (which I will bring down this evening) and a smidgen of light reverb.

I tried to keep it light and airy using nothing more than instrument placement in the mix.

Does it sound "over-produced"?

Thanks for all the great comments! That's the only way I'll ever learn.

Earl
 
Very nice banjo/mando sounds... oh... a female vocalist. She's got great tone.
Great musicianship. Man, what a pure voice. Absolutely no forcing anything...
dtb would really appreciate this. Where's the ham-bone solo? :D Reminds me of
Dolly's voice... traveling cross-country music... 8-track... truckstops...
all good things. Good recording/mix, too. Nice job :)

Chad
 
Chad,

The vocalist is 16 and plays all the mandolin on this.

Thanks for the words of encouragement!

Earl

PS - Love your avatar!
 
Vocals could come up a bit. Nothing bad to say, all the tracks were really good. Was that a gut bucket? Don't tell me if it wasn't, I'll be disapointed :)
 
Doug,

Don't want to disappoint you. So, I'll just say that there was an old Kay with very suspect strings on it in my house at the time of the alledged session... :D

Working on the vox issue(s). Once I yank the EQ off, I think I'll be able to get them to settle in a little better.

Earl
 
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