This part of a series of music I had restored from tape written and recorded a few years back. So you could say it's Hybrid recording. This came from a project that was never really finished and with all the time down since March 2020, I had time to finally restore the 16 tracks and drop them into Pro Tools sessions for enhancement and sweetening. I was surprised at the recording quality on most of the tracks. We had a decent little studio at the time although we lacked a few really great pieces in the outboard.
I put this up as a sample of the hybrid way of production but I'll listen to critique as well. You guys have great ears and this isn't quite finished.
The vocals and drums are from the original tracks and all the guitars, Keys, and a new bass track were added this year. (2020). The vocals have been tuned and timed with Melodyne 5. I'm still sorting out the compressor. Right now there's an LA-2A on the track and a multi across the 2 buss. Every element in the mix has a buss. The guitars are an actual stem I had built to send to the keyboardist, Howard Helm, who does all my key work. Anyone needing real keyboard production should hire him! Seriously it's what he does. PM me.
As always, I'll answer any questions about what you hear and why. Thanks and enjoy "If My Heart Don't Fail Me" It's mine and the singers composition from 1987.
Comments
Thanks for that Kyle. That's kinda the way I tend to mix. My mon
Thanks for that Kyle. That's kinda the way I tend to mix. My monitoring is good enough to help me identify sheist when I hear it. LOL.
In this case , because I'm so close to it as both the songwriter/arranger/engineer/producer, I felt a bunch of experienced and picky engineering types should give it a listen and perhaps get me an insight into some portions I wasn't happy with.
I think it's been enlightening.
I have a couple of analyzers in my library and rarely use them. Mainly because I'm lazy. But that doesn't mean that it's not a great tool.
As far as mixing to "competitive volume" Personally I could care less about that aspect of it. As a producer I tend to let my ME take care of that stuff. He's much better equipped for the task than I am. I can get mixes up in volume for clients to muse over and in most cases as this one, that in itself will expose the problems that I might have missed on first listen or twenty. One thing for certain, I know when I've achieved a solid mix with all the glue and the clarity to allow the lyric content and emotional attachment of the performance to shine. I also know if I send my ME something other than "really good" or even "GREAT" he'll send it back with a "try it again homey" note attached.
Davedog, post: 466862, member: 4495 wrote: Thanks Chuck. Do you
Davedog, post: 466862, member: 4495 wrote:
Thanks Chuck. Do you feel that I solved the problems from before on this take?It was just a couple of things at the track level mostly involving EQ's and stacking comps. One very serious change took away the entire low mid wash I was hearing.
Yes, I do, Dave. I think it sounds excellent. I'd actually add a little low end myself, but it's excellent as is and the difference wouldn't be significant.
Did you change the file? The one I downloaded to master did hit as hard as the one up now. The one up now sounds more in "master" territory.
Chuck. The one I put up tonight is the newest 'mix' . The 2 buss
Chuck. The one I put up tonight is the newest 'mix' . The 2 buss has nothing on it other than a Joey Sturgis plug called 'Mix' and the compression section on it is really low. 1.9 maybe and very little color.All of the changes I made came at the track level.....changing some EQ's.....backing off some comps especially on the 2 buss for the vocals. I also added an EQ to my effects buss which I side chain through. There's a Valhalla Chamber and Echo Boy. I was getting this standing low mid wash from this so I added an EQ before the verbs and echo and did a high-pass. Cleaned it up right away. Allowed me to turn her down in the mix even now it seems too much because of the clarity! I high passed the bass which I usually ALWAYS do except this time......derr....and I high passed the kick drum which I usually do. It's a lot easier to add low end than to subtract it @ mastering dont you think...When I had the bass up too loud I was looking for the rhythmic counter in it's figure since there isnt a lot going on in the song. Now I can hear it and it's not over bearing other stuff around it. I dropped the input to my print track by 1.3 db from the tracks earlier but now it's more about "apparent level" due to the clarity......maybe....I hpf the bass typically @ 65hz for the 4 string work and 55hz if its a 5. HPF on kik is usually 43hz to 60hz depending on the material...These numbers seem to translate on my monitors to my benefit
Ok ...yea it was a bit hot getting down to about -12 LUFS, -13 l
Ok ...yea it was a bit hot getting down to about -12 LUFS, -13 long term. I'm not a day to day, pro ME, but it was already "over" for iTunes. At any rate it sounds real good cleaned up in the low/low-mid sections for sure. You might want to add in a tiny bit more low into your high-pass for a fuller sound. I usually have the low of the cut between 25 and 28 Hz. For sure on the adding vs. cutting low end - lowering what is already there is pie.
I could always hear your mix was excellent it's just, as a visual, I could see the low end leaking over the brim of my cans (what I'm using) while everything else lays perfect in the cup. An overflow, more than a technical mix factor, kinda, if you get what I mean.
Nice stuff. As far as the rather quick master, I pick songs up that I like, and a lot of it is because I want to hear them "that way" ...the "full" effect a few runs. It can be quite fun too. :)
Oh, I should say I'm not a mix engineer. What I noticed usually comes more from a mastering sort of observation, not a mixer's, per se. I know you guys are pretty hard into the mixing side here.
The song sounds alot more cohesive to me now. "Sounds like a rec
The song sounds alot more cohesive to me now. "Sounds like a record" (insert late 70's bigtime NY music producer voice)
bouldersound, post: 466858, member: 38959 wrote:
It's less about mixing to a LUFS target and more about not mixing for competitive volume. If you mix hotter than the LUFS standard of a given platform, they might simply turn it down. That's fine if you mixed it to sound good, but it might be disadvantageous if you gave up dynamics in order to get volume. The disadvantage of mixing quieter is that the platform might apply a limiter to get it up to the spec. I find that when I mix things to taste, they come out to between -16 and -14 dBRMS, which tends to be fairly close to the same number LUFS.
That makes sense, ive always had loudness as a secondary concern, and found i usually seemed to be a click or two below current commercial songs. I adopted the se la vi attitude as a defense mechanism to obsessively optimizing things for each platform.
The algorithms can do some gnarly things to songs with quiet parts and loud parts based on normalizing and rms averaging.
What i love about hd downloads and bandcamp, is you can hear the audio as intended by the production crew and artist. This is the first time in history (i think) that you can get the actual master bounce, with no SRC, or anything like that. The irony is most portable devices can't reveal the difference anyway lol.
I appreciate all the shots taken at this by this community. I RE
I appreciate all the shots taken at this by this community. I REALLY do. Not one snarky comment in the bunch and since that is my forte it's a great thing!!
The next iteration of this track is to pull it all back to a whisper and then run this mix through some of the outboard I have running around at the ranch here. I wish I had paid more attention to the hybrid discussions we had several years when Chris was armed with the ultimate sweetening rig. But I don't have a second capture machine so I'm just reamping for the sound in the various preamps I possess.
In this instance I will most definitely have a critical output type of software up on the aux master before the print track. It's here where that tool for me seems to make sense.
I've done this before in the dark past and have recently gone through all my new pieces to assess their impact on tracks. Some I find would be better as single instrument enhancement and others buss enhancement. Only a couple for entire mix work are clear enough for my tastes especially with this kind of material.
I have a consecutive serial number pair of Burl B1s...a consecutive serial number set of Avedis MA5s...a pair of custom made McAllister P2 pres(holy cow!)..Manley DMMP ....and a True Systems P2 Analog. There are others in a stereo pair but these are the ones I have targeted in the past. I tried this with my Focusrite 428 and it just didn't quite sound right. The ADK AP-2 wasn't right either but that could just be what I loaded it with. You can change the op-amp and the transformer in those. I should mention the Phoenix Audio DRS-Q4. It always makes the finals on everything. It is ultimately controllable with an input and output control and the EQ section is very much taken from the Neve 1081.
It'll be interesting. I can really control the output like this as well as adding that glue thingy everyone talks about.
As an aside.....The Manley ALWAYS wins. And it has fresh tubes.
It's less about mixing to a LUFS target and more about not mixin
It's less about mixing to a LUFS target and more about not mixing for competitive volume. If you mix hotter than the LUFS standard of a given platform, they might simply turn it down. That's fine if you mixed it to sound good, but it might be disadvantageous if you gave up dynamics in order to get volume. The disadvantage of mixing quieter is that the platform might apply a limiter to get it up to the spec. I find that when I mix things to taste, they come out to between -16 and -14 dBRMS, which tends to be fairly close to the same number LUFS.