Solitude

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guitar zero

guitar zero

c = b#
Just finished mixing. Would appreciate thoughts on the mix, as well as any thoughts on how to get rid of, or record without the fret squeaks on acoustic guitar. I know they're part of playing, but ours are especially bad. Are there good strings to get that don't squeak as badly?

 
What's your vocal mic? Nice flavor!

Nice tune. Nice sounds. I like the mix. There's a lot of verb on the intro backvox..to me it sounds a bit much, and out-of character w/ the rest. Only thing that caught my attn.

The fret noise isn't distracting to me.

But if I want to get rid of some of it...or reduce it, I display the audio track, isolate the moment when a squeek occurs with a highlight drag across the offense, open my paragraphic EQ, see visually the freq zone...usually 4000-6000k, and drop the line in that zone on the spike. Then apply the effect for that 1/4 second or whatever. That kills the squeek and allows the rest of the notes to ring in their normal, lower freqs. If it's under a mix, y' can't notice anything different.

Some of your fret noise is finger-drag...at a lower frequency. If it's between chords, and there's nothing ringing, I sometimes use a volume envelope and reduce the volume of the drag for its duration.

Hope that helps.

But I have no problem with the guitar track. The drags are a bit 'there'. Usually the result, in my case, of red-light/white-knuckle stiffness when trying to get a keeper......beer helps. :^)

Love the vox track!
 
towards the end there's a tom hit that gets cut off kinda awkwardly. was that on purpose? i think if that hit is just left alone to ring naturally it'd fit much better. btw i like these songs you're putting up. it's your son right? he's got a great voice and they're very melodious tunes.

people like string squeaks. i knew a girl that loved black bird (beatles) because of the squeaks. it makes things sound real. sometimes it's annoying, but i thought it was fine in this song.
 
Jeff,

Thank you for the response. I understand what you are saying about highlighting the portion of the audio track, but I'm not sure how to EQ just that segment. Are you using automation for that? I tried just EQ'ing the whole track, but that robs you of so much tone, it has to be really limitted in how you apply it.

The vocal tracks have been worked and reworked. It's been so long since we recorded that one, but I think the mic was Studio Projects B3 through an ART MPA Gold and ART VLA, none of which I have any more. It's a mix of compression after tracking from Buzz Elixir, Purple Action and PICO compressors with A-Designs EM-PEQ for low cut and a little 3K added for presence. Finally applied a reverb from my... uh...cough...Behringer V-Verb #79 called Dimension B. The Behringer V-Verb is the best $79 I've ever spent on audio equipment. The mix went through a Drawmer 1968 and Great River EQ. Probably more info than you wanted, but I'm just thinking out loud about what I did. I'm the worst when it comes to tracking notes.
 
When applying an effect, it will work on only the highlighted/selected portion of the track.

I can open a multi-band compression...build a narrow band on the squeek-freq, and compress the crap out of it within that narrow band....for mere moments. It leaves other sounding-stuff intact.


Different squeeks in different situations respond better to some fixes more than others. I reserve the fixes where accidental thump, squeek, and random goobers badly eff-up a decent track. But I apply only to the region on the track where the offense is...sometimes less than a 10th of a second is all it takes.

Using stereo enhancers on the whole track ....moving a HF band to the side, can remove the attention from finger noise.....the squeeks sound off the center and lose aural importance.

I'm no workmanlike recordist...I just experiment a lot.

I think your tune is fine, though.
 
Great song, GZ!
Great melody line and beautiful voice. I think the harmonies sound great. I didn't hear any distracting squeaks from the acoustic. I really dig the simplicity of the arrangement with few instruments. Nice stuff, well done!

Joey :):):):)
 
greyharmonix said:
towards the end there's a tom hit that gets cut off kinda awkwardly. was that on purpose? i think if that hit is just left alone to ring naturally it'd fit much better. btw i like these songs you're putting up. it's your son right? he's got a great voice and they're very melodious tunes.

people like string squeaks. i knew a girl that loved black bird (beatles) because of the squeaks. it makes things sound real. sometimes it's annoying, but i thought it was fine in this song.
Click to expand...
Actually the tom cut off was intentional, sort of a sudden stop in the music. Thanks for the comments, yes it's my son. He's pretty good at cranking out the songs. He writes and records faster than I can mix 'em.

jeffmaher said:
What's your vocal mic? Nice flavor!

Nice tune. Nice sounds. I like the mix. There's a lot of verb on the intro backvox..to me it sounds a bit much, and out-of character w/ the rest. Only thing that caught my attn.

The fret noise isn't distracting to me.

But if I want to get rid of some of it...or reduce it, I display the audio track, isolate the moment when a squeek occurs with a highlight drag across the offense, open my paragraphic EQ, see visually the freq zone...usually 4000-6000k, and drop the line in that zone on the spike. Then apply the effect for that 1/4 second or whatever. That kills the squeek and allows the rest of the notes to ring in their normal, lower freqs. If it's under a mix, y' can't notice anything different.

Some of your fret noise is finger-drag...at a lower frequency. If it's between chords, and there's nothing ringing, I sometimes use a volume envelope and reduce the volume of the drag for its duration.

Hope that helps.

But I have no problem with the guitar track. The drags are a bit 'there'. Usually the result, in my case, of red-light/white-knuckle stiffness when trying to get a keeper......beer helps. :^)

Love the vox track!
Click to expand...
I couldn't get EQ automation working, so I cut the squeaks and pasted to a second track with the EQ cuts. I think it sounds much better. Thanks again for the tip. I also cut way back on the reverb and echo on the opening vocals. I think you were right about that too. I think it's better with less.
Also fixed some other volume issues on back up vocals. Here's the remix:
 
I'm not getting a lot of finger squeak noise either... I think the mix is good just the way you have it.
Wonderful song, the writing, playing and singing are all top shelf stuff. :cool:
 
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