Old school cowboy country !!!! Need feedback

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 1:12 pm

Had a classic country trio come out and do some recording. I work with two of the members (long time friends). Anyway the first is Texas Plains, which has some very good yodal in it. Second is Jingle Jangle Jingle. They are wanting that classic Gene Autry vibe and I hope its there. The first tune the singer wanted to use his 40 year old Sears vocal mic. Well it really stinks. So on Jingle Jangle Jingle we switched to a Shure 58. Those vocals sound better. These are rough mixes and, basically a practice session for them. It had been a few weeks since they played and the singer was not feeling well. They are coming back in a few weeks to spend the day recording. I just have never mixed classic country. So let me know if the old,old style recording was acheived. That sort of flat type sound (I guess you would say). They liked the rough mixes, so I guess thats all that matters. Theres a little bit of noise (I can hear it), that appeared during the mp3 conversion. So disregard it (if you can hear it). I did a quick render and it can cause artifacts. Anyway enjoy and let me know if I am one the right track. Links below.

Texas Plains
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6684520&q=hi

Jingle Jangle Jingle
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6684539&q=hi

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 1:38 pm

Something is competing with the vocals for space in my speakers.
Makes them hard to define.

Sound is clean as though.

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 2:48 pm

Greener wrote:

Something is competing with the vocals for space in my speakers.
Makes them hard to define.

Sound is clean as though.

I need to try another mic, when they come back out. Texas Plains we used his 40 year old Sears mic Smile

. He wanted to try it. Jingle Jangle Jingle was a shure 58. Might need to mess with the eq on the vocals. Make them a little brighter. Thanks for the input.

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 2:51 pm

Hmm, I listened on my pc speakers (klipsch) and the vocals on the 2nd song were pretty clear. The first tune, the vocals are not very good. The Sears mic was pretty cool looking and was built like a tank.

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 2:11 pm

Well after listening to both examples, I actually preferred the old Sears microphones to the 58. Sure, the 58 is cleaner sounding. That's not what you want. If anything, you could low pass filter (note as I say low pass not high pass) that Sears microphones at 5kHz and add lots & lots of compression on the vocal. Then take those twangy direct plugged guitars and stick them behind the vocal, utilizing some filtering, to bandwidth limit those instruments & some very short time delay to simulate a small room, with a little bit more mono-larity to the mix instead of the extreme left & right stuff. That would prove to sound more authentic. Not many of Gene Autry's recordings had response beyond 5kHz and certainly weren't stereo.

Nothing like that country twang
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:59 am

RemyRAD wrote:

Well after listening to both examples, I actually preferred the old Sears microphones to the 58. Sure, the 58 is cleaner sounding. That's not what you want. If anything, you could low pass filter (note as I say low pass not high pass) that Sears microphones at 5kHz and add lots & lots of compression on the vocal. Then take those twangy direct plugged guitars and stick them behind the vocal, utilizing some filtering, to bandwidth limit those instruments & some very short time delay to simulate a small room, with a little bit more mono-larity to the mix instead of the extreme left & right stuff. That would prove to sound more authentic. Not many of Gene Autry's recordings had response beyond 5kHz and certainly weren't stereo.

Nothing like that country twang
Ms. Remy Ann David

Thanks for the info. I heading back out later to play with the mixes. I'll definately try your ideas. I gonna back off the noise filter on the vocal. The steel could use a little compression too. Some of the volume bursts dont sit right. I know the steel often set the pace of the tempo changes with a volume change. But some here might be a little too much. But less panning and room verb or delay will help. Im gonna post the redo's later on tonight (I hope). Thanks Remy

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