Starting Final Mixes: Song 12-I Know You Will (Feat. Jimistone & Taras Andrushkiw)

[BroKen_H]

Starting Final Mixes: Song 12-I Know You Will (Feat. Jimistone & Taras Andrushkiw)

Okay, give a listen and tell me what you think. Jimistone and Andrushkiwt on the solos at the end. Honored to work with these guys!

 

[Bruthish]

Gotta say this seems like a departure for you. I really like it! Sounds a little like some Black Sabbath.

As far as the mix. I think the main guitars need a little more clarity on the high end. They sound "muffled". The vocals fit nice. The drums...well they sound fake....but you work with what you have and I can relate to that. The song has some real potential. If you ever consider letting someone else take a stab at mixing, let me know, I would take a shot at this one. Great job bro!

 

[andrushkiwt]

Nice work Broken, thanks a lot for the opportunity to contribute. Great tune and hook. Had a lot of fun working on it, though Jimi def showed me up That dude can play some geetar, for sure.

How do you compress the vocals? They sometimes seem to duck under the mix, so I'd suggest a slower attack and quicker release. It'll let those hard consonants through within a phrase and not hold the rest of the lyrics back. Just a thought. Something to bring those vocals on top of the mix more.

Next collaboration, we need to figure out panning and settings better. I wish I had tracked it similar to Jimi and you so that they could nearly blend into one. I have my own "sound" I prefer, including pan preferences, so a little more work there and we'll be good. Thanks again man, I enjoyed it!

 

[BroKen_H]

I'm doing standard NYP. Main channel is completely uncompressed, parallel is compressed to death (11:1 @ 10 ms attack and 300 release) PLUS I duck other stuff off the vocal bus...I backed some of the ducking off when you said a part you wanted to hear in your solo was missing (it was completely buried. So maybe I'll have to automate the ducking. I can bring your panning in so it's not so wide and see if that helps...

 

[jimistone]

Sounds good Broken. Thanks for inviting me to play a few chops on it. It is a good groove and easy to solo over.

 

[ido1957]

It's probably too late but.... with dual lead players, the players may want to discuss using similarly voiced guitars, trading 1-2 bars somewhere, and a combined crescendo at the end. It takes a bit of back and forth but it would lift that part of the arrangement up nicely. Right now they are quite far apart from each other tonally.

 

[Robus]

Sounds good. Is that Jimi on the left and Taras on the right?

 

[JimmyS1969]

Wow! Really cool man!

Yeah, the rhythm guitars are a bit dark IMO. But damn, I dig the tune and overall it sounds good. Well done guys!

 

[BroKen_H]

Gotta say this seems like a departure for you. I really like it! Sounds a little like some Black Sabbath.

As far as the mix. I think the main guitars need a little more clarity on the high end. They sound "muffled". The vocals fit nice. The drums...well they sound fake....but you work with what you have and I can relate to that. The song has some real potential. If you ever consider letting someone else take a stab at mixing, let me know, I would take a shot at this one. Great job bro!

Funny you should say it's a departure and then say Sabbath...I hear the "Christian Ozzy" thing at least once a month. Piano doubled bass line, tinny doubled voice. I don't play guitar nearly as well as Tony, though.
I'll have a look at the guitars (there's like 6 tracks plus the solos...). ...and, yeah, I'm still fighting with the drums, but as I'm listening to most modern Christian music, it all sounds like fake drums, (with rare exceptions) so I don't feel too bad. I've got till October for my release date, so I'll be fiddling with a few flat/sharp vocal notes and looking at making the drums a bit more realistic. I may even move a few of the sloppier bits closer to the grid. Got all 12 songs tracked now, it's time to polish the turds.

 

[BroKen_H]

It's probably too late but.... with dual lead players, the players may want to discuss using similarly voiced guitars, trading 1-2 bars somewhere, and a combined crescendo at the end. It takes a bit of back and forth but it would lift that part of the arrangement up nicely. Right now they are quite far apart from each other tonally.

That would be entirely up to them. I'm really in love with both solos and I kind of like the difference. I don't want two LPs played through two Marshall stacks or two Strats played through two Twin Reverbs (no, that's probably neither or their setup). I wanted different. The main thing was to try to get them in the same space. Added sprint reverb to Taras' and echo to Jimi's to get them close. The tones, though...if I'm happy, and they're both happy, I'll leave well enough alone.

 

[BroKen_H]

Sounds good. Is that Jimi on the left and Taras on the right?

Jimi has the first 6 bars. His solos were so on target at the beginning that I kept both split and then took the wah solo from there centered (took a bit of manipulation to make that sound close.) The next 6 bars are Taras. When the vocal kicks in I've got Taras' part left and Jimi's right (is that where you were asking about?) as Taras was following the vocal line and Jimi was noodling between. The last several bars are a combination of Jimi's two solos culminating in spreading both back out left and right.

 

[BroKen_H]

Wow! Really cool man!

Yeah, the rhythm guitars are a bit dark IMO. But damn, I dig the tune and overall it sounds good. Well done guys!

Labor of love, man. Yeah, gotta look at those guitars. Too many tracks and maybe a few of them could be high passed higher, maybe add some 6k sheen, maybe do some comb EQ to bring out the best of each. Lots of time for polish.

 

[TripleM]

Very nice collaboration. Your vocal performances are getting noticeably better. I think I missed a couple of your posts, sorry. Don't know what those performances sounded like. This one isn't as tentative as you've been, and the pitch is decent.

Balance on things are pretty good. Vocal may be slightly too far back - but that's just me.

Low end is strong without being out of control.

Like the way the two guitars play off of each other. The low chugging one on the left, parried by the high droning note type part on the right. I hear what people are saying about them being dark. Probably mostly thinking about the one on the left. To me I thought it works well. But if you want to play around, maybe try a high shelf above 4k or 5K and just a db or to.

Drums are decent. The snare is a little too wet for me. Cymbals are a little hissy.

Overall I thought this was a good listen.

 

[BroKen_H]

...and here I thought they were talking about MY guitars being dark...a bit egocentric of me, I think.

Thanks Trip. Appreciate the comments and compliments. Working on getting the drums to sound better...maybe a surprise or two later. I've got a while before my planned release date, so lots of turd polishing.

Been thinking about Bruthish's offer: You know, it's sometimes tempting to see how someone else would mix a song your fairly proud of, but then that tick in the back of your head says, "Yeah, but then you'd have to come up to that level on the rest of the songs." That really makes it hard. I'm competent, but I'm by no means great. If someone made one of my tracks sound great, I'd have to step my game up a bunch in a short time. Don't know if I have the time to do so.