Your kind feedback is sought . . .

  • Thread starter Thread starter chessrock
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Cool song. The mix seems a little unbalanced to me....with the guitar way on the left and the vox to the right. Kinda distracting. The song's good though and the performance too. Is that you on bass? Singing? Well now, there's some guitar on the right, at the end of that ride. I think the tones are all good.....I'd just change the panning to give a little more rhythm to both sides.
 
Lt. Bob said:
Cool song. The mix seems a little unbalanced to me....with the guitar way on the left and the vox to the right.
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Ah ha! You spotted it, I see. :D I purposely panned it that way in order to leave room for other instruments that have yet to be tracked. Namely some hammond-style organ / keys, which I think the song desperately needs.

No, that's not me on any instruments. And yea, that's my voice, Lt. Bob. How did you spot that one? :D :D I just got my long-awaited sex change the other day.

I did this one for some friends of mine. If you want to hear me on bass, I did do some work on "Dreamgirl," which is the second one down on the nowhereradio page (Half of it's me and the other half is my friend, Jimmy).
 
Chess--bass and kick are weak in the mix, thus it loses some of the possible groove factor. The bass is real nebulous sounding--I can't really tell what its doing. Same with the kick. Its hardly there. All "above the neck" so to speak.

The drums sound pretty good but sorta stark and roomy sounding.

Everything sounds very dry, like a work mix without effects. I feel like the guitars and vocals could use some effect sweetening. I want to hear the voice more in my face. Right now its there but it feels thinned out.

It just needs some fx and compression and bring the kick and bass more into focus. Maybe some BBTTE on the overall mix! (Kidding)
 
Wow, that's some very helpful insight, Crawdaddy.

If what you say is true regarding the weak bass/kick, then it can only mean one thing : My monitors suck serious ass. :D :D Seriously, the low end is going strong from where I'm listening from.

Can anyone else confirm Crawdad's comments on the bass? If so, it will be most helpful to me, as it probably means I have some monitor issues that need addressing. Thanks!
 
chess,

don't have much time but wanted to respond anyway. this sounds refeshingly uncompressed to me but does lack punch in some areas (the snare drum). nice stereo effect. the guitar panning didn't really bother me. i like the sound of the guitar.

I think the background vocals in the chorus could really fly if you added a couple more tracks of that stuff.
 
Chess--I too would be curious to hear about how the kick and bass are coming through on other systems. I listen on the beloved/despised NS-10M's which usually give me a pretty clear picture of whats happening. That very last low octave of bass isn't their specialty, but they do OK.

What are you using for monitors? One reason I am curious is that you seem to like that bass rolloff switch on your condensers. It makes me wonder if you are trying to compensate for bass heavy monitors.

If you come back and say you use NS-10M's, then I'm gonna be real confused!
 
yeah, the bass seems to take up very little room in the mix right now........i don't think it's necissarily a volume issue either........not very full........compression or eq would probably help........the mix is a nice dry mix, i would agree that this is a great foundation and could benefit from some fx (not much though...a little verb, etc).........also, i look forward to hearing it w/ the organ
 
Thanks again for the tips, guys.

Right now, I'm using Hafler M5 reference monitors and and AKG K240 headphones. :D Not the highest-end of monitoring technology, I will admit.

Anyway, Crawdad, I did notice that the low-end is pretty solid on a typical stereo with bass-enhancement / loudness button. :D But I also noticed that it comes out a little weak on the headphones, so I mucked with it a bit more. I used a couple reference mixes; one I find to be bass-heavy and another I find bass-thin, and I boosted the bass on my mix untill it was somewhere in between the two, and now I think it translates a little better. Good call on that one.

I also boosted the bass to the vocal, which I think draws her voice a little closer. Also added some verb, which it probably needed . . . although I've been having this fascination lately with dry vocals.

Erichenryus, good suggestion on the background vocals. I think that would be a great idea. They're good, but they need something.

Anyway, I just updated it, so if you listen again, you might notice some minor differences, based on your suggestions. This has been a great team effort. :D I'm going to have to start calling on you guys for every one of my mixes now. :D
 
I love the song, vox, start, harmonica, drums, clarity, ect...
My only complaint, a little to bright and brash for my taste.

Great job all in all !!!!

Sean
 
to me, this sounds like a playback,when the entire band played together.. so...I suppose, good and bad. ...like it WAS tracked all at once, but minimal on the "polish" on the mix side. I found the panning a little weird at times...the vocals seemed to shift when the bg vocals came in...unaturally so( with the ld vocal jumping to a new location). Also, the jury is still out on the drummer sitting over in the rightside corner...with the HH towards the center? The guitar sound is ok...but kinda uninspired. Like some dude plugged in and just played. Same with the lead gtr sound....and the panning on the lead solo too....like the mixer was just twiddling knobs for no special reason. The recording sounds its best(fullest) during the chorus'. The vocal scatting at the end was a different mic sound too...and kinda unaudible. The band needs to learn how to let final notes fade, and control amp buzz, etc. ..not to mention ending together...but the music is another issue I didn't mean to cover. I think the basic tracks could be there, but need some spit and polish to clean things up. If the band prefers a more 'raw' "rolling stones/gimme shelter" kinda sound, then you might be getting pretty close to it then. But I think that everyone involved would probably like a little "audio impact" to help cement the listener to their chair.

have you considered a little "train station" reverb on the entire mix yet to gel things out:eek:
 
chessrock said:

Erichenryus, good suggestion on the background vocals. I think that would be a great idea. They're good, but they need something.
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Start with having her do the high harmony twice and pan the two tracks hard L/R.
 
Chess, to tell you the truth, I think it sounds great. I thought the mix level wise was very good. I really liked the drums and the space/ambience. The panning was a bit strange at times, it seemed that the snare was a little to the right. I read that you're leaving room for future instruments. What I REALLY liked was the "you fuckers" at the end.:D The guitar was a little stiff but it's such a cool tune and with all the activity that'll be going on I doubt that it'll matter. Great tune.
 
Chess--I listened to the new version and you've really fixed that low end stuff. The bass is now making the song groove and the kick, while not hot, is providing a nice counterpoint. Much better.

Hey, what mic did you use on the female vocalist?

You know all this bottom end discussion makes me think of designing a partner for the revered BBTTE--the BBFAT "Biggest Bottom-FAT"). This new unit (toob of course) will employ a mixture of psychoacoustic and state of the art low end equalization topologies. Included will be the secret Chessrock/Crawdad "corpulent" circuits and the new prototype 12AX7 tube with the Burr Brown chip housed INSIDE the tube itself!

As for controls, I'm thinking of "girth" (probably already used) "lard" "walrus" "mud flaps" and maybe "pizza". Each will conrol an aspect of the low end in a unique and interactive way, while fully complimenting the warm clarity of the original BBTTE. As a pair, they will be awesome.

As a final mastering effect, I'm working on a box simply called "Louder Than Everybody Elses CD's" which I think is fairly self explanatory. :D
 
crawdad said:
Hey, what mic did you use on the female vocalist?
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SM7

Included will be the secret Chessrock/Crawdad "corpulent" circuits and the new prototype 12AX7 tube with the Burr Brown chip housed INSIDE the tube itself!
Click to expand...


You know, the thought of that has crossed my mind many a time. Why not just kill two birds with one stone?

As for controls, I'm thinking of "girth"
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Say, that reminds me . . .

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=66000

As a final mastering effect, I'm working on a box simply called "Louder Than Everybody Elses CD's" which I think is fairly self explanatory. :D
Click to expand...

I think I've heard that one used before. :D
 
I want an SM7! Don't even know why, but I want one!

Ah, Chess...you haven't heard my version of the LTEECD (louder than everybody....). This puppy will give you 20 db more volume than a maxed master up to 0db. Even at nominal playback volumes, hearing protection is advised. I mean, its never loud ENOUGH, is it?

our motto: "Be louder than all competition! Cd's so loud, they drown out nuclear blasts!"

Quote from David St. Hubbins: "I just want to make some eardrums bleeeed! Thats why we use the LTEECD on all our masters. It goes PAST eleven!"
 
Oh my god....the companion piece to the BBTTE....the new LTEECD! I can't imagine the improvement to my wimpy masters. It turns the traditonal 'smiley face' EQ curve into a hidden valley curve. I've gotta have one. Corpulent....YEAH!!! That's what I'm talking about. :D

Wow! I missed the new BBFAT....shoot ...two new units. I've got to start saving.
 
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i thought the mix was nicely done, but i would have done the following differently. i'm basing this on the assumption that you are both the engineer and the producer for the recording and mixing stages:

1) i would have kept the drums down the center. if i did stereo the kit, i would have it panned center-based with no more than like 10% to the left and right stereo spread.

2) i would either lessen the distortion or remove that crunchy guitar from the verses, it is distracting from the singers message and would really give you a feeling of emotional and tempo change going from the first verse to the chorus if you took it out of the verse. alternatively or for the 2nd verse, if the vocalist could have sung the verse in time with the pattern that the crunchy guitar is playing things would swing better.
 
Melissa Etheridge would be proud...

...this thing's got more balls tho :eek: Not quite feminine enough for "Natalie Merchant"... wonder if this chick and her... uh... "Soul Sister" will ever hit up David Crosby for some sperm :D

Anyways... on to the production... very critical (but relatively inexperienced) ears on:

Tiny bit of amp noise/buzz for about a half-second at 0:08-0:09 before the guitars come in full... Guess that's ok -- but it could be a distraction... It's not the "pleasing" type of amp noise, either... more like a boring, quiet electrical hum... more like an insect hum than that cool type of hum... not loud enough to add anything positive to the track... it's part of the music I guess...

Vox seem just a bit "dark", and like they're just a bit too large to fit in the slot you've made... they ride "on top" a smidge... was hearing something between 140-200Hz on vox that conflicted in a minor way with the bass.

Could the BGVs come up in volume?

That's it, really. Nice job.


Chad
 
I like the electric guitar tone and the drum space. A bit of compression on drums, bass and vocals would help the groove. Sounding pretty cool.
 
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