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audiokid 17 March 2012

Hey!

JohnTodd has a new album out and there are some great songs on it! He was kind enough to allow me to play with this track "I'll Be There" So below is the journey.

Kudo's John!

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PLEASE NOTE: I'm doing this to engage us all, not to prove I am some mixing god etc. However, I also have some nice equipment so I thought it would be right on if I could help him out by trying to make it a little better. In the process, what a great way to engage people by sharing what I'm doing and to also welcome advice from our members too. I want to see this new forum "Track Talk" grow so I'm diving in ya all, all in the name of learning and having fun.

This is such a beautiful song, I think it would make a great mix contest. But for now, this thread is a continuation of more mix's

The Tracks:

There are 30 tracks. Only 1 stereo drum track, a few guitars, a few keys, and a lot of vocals.

Enjoy!

EDIT

Song completed, Who's Next?

This thread is discussing mixing process with one of John's song. Its also part of the continued discussion I am preparing for with a Mix Contest ( not necessarily with this song).
Most of the reference tracks in this thread have now been unfortunately removed to conserve Dropbox space, leaving way for future projects but my final mix prior to mastering is still online. I ended up using my own drum tracks and finished it off with a few analog goodies.

Enjoy whats left of this discussion.

Topic Tags

Comments

audiokid Fri, 03/30/2012 - 13:16

Don, the link works on my end but it must be coded for me duh. This is the public link. I will update that thank!
(Expired Link Removed)

EDIT: Files removed , onto another mix fest.

I'm sure a few others are going to school me on this soon enough.!

Lets pause and do some track talk here. I would love a few other engineers to chime in too.

I would like to point out something that is REALLY IMPORTANT, that will help you both immensely.

I'm certain both Hueseph and Don's monitors aren't producing low end correctly.
Why do I say this?
How do I know this?
What are the signs of this?

audiokid Fri, 03/30/2012 - 13:35

Again, In the past ( we have a good crowd here!) but things can become nasty so I'm stressing that I'm not thinking I am the best, I'm learning like the rest of us ( ALL THE TIME) but I think I have a handle on this song better than others "so far", because of a few important steps that I am open to share with you.

That being said. :cool:

If you don't hear how extremely heavy the bass is on both Hues and Don's mixes, this means your system is not producing those freq. On my system, both your mixes are very bass heavy to a point I can hardly play it without clipping my monitors.

If you look at the freq of your mix, you will see an exaggerated amount of low end eating up the entire mix. So much bottom end in everything. Thus, making it impossable to get any level and impossible to get any kind of clarity. Its all mud. I know if you could hear it, you would not be mixing this song like this.

The Nail mix is really nice, thank you! But, its muddy and lacks upper mids. At least to my ears. Could it be that my system has too much upper mids and I am mixing with less of that because its too much in my room?

Follow how important our monitors and room acoustics are!!! ?

So, back to you guys on this bass... how do you fix this?

Its not your hearing that is bad, you both are blindly mixing and leaving tons of bass in a song that you cannot hear its there. Does this make sense? So how are you going to be able to mix this any better if you can't hear the bass?

Follow me? Are we still having fun?

audiokid Fri, 03/30/2012 - 14:07

good point and suggestion John!

How do you use this?

__________________________

I want to stretch this out a bit more and make aware how easily people can judge/ "miss judge" a product and give completely inaccurate reviews or recommendations on gear because their listening environment is inaccurate.

Bad monitoring is effecting the entire music business and causing so much confusion on forums like this ( well not our forum :tongue:).

In the day when there were only a handful of engineers in a city, they took the time to learn about all this stuff. Monitoring is a secret of the pro's. We had less gear and had to make the best of it. And there were REAL Mastering engineers that knew how important it was to hear accurately. This is the secret to their business.

Now we have all the editing marvel and hundreds of thousands of us recording in small rooms who talk about gear online. I would guess, 3/4 of the population isn't hearing their music accurately. We don't really take our monitoring that serious. But once you really understand how important this is, and you realize you too can mix songs like pro's and record good music with pretty basic equipment, wow!

duh Is that why I can't get the bass right? I thought it was because I needed a better preamp!

Get your monitoring right and it all become so much easier. Its a no brainer.

Just had to share that with you. Back to the song.

Cheers!

JohnTodd Fri, 03/30/2012 - 14:39

audiokid, post: 387415 wrote: good point and suggestion John!

How do you use this?

Cheers!

I literally eyeball it. I use it only on the 2-bus while mixing, and then again when mastering.

So, it works for me like this: I have a 'baby' spec analyzer plugin on Winamp, and when I play pro-recorded music, (The Beatles, Iron Maiden, Garth Brooks, whoever), I watch the analyzer and 'learn' what the balance is like for different styles of music. All in all, most of them are very balanced throughout the spectrum. Maiden is actually a little lighter on bass than Brooks, and The Beatles tend to be a little top-heavy. But I know these recordings were made by million dollar engineers in million dollar studios, so I figure they are correct in what they are doing.

So, it takes observation and then practice! I'm getting better at making balanced mixes, but there is always more to learn.

djmukilteo Fri, 03/30/2012 - 15:47

I have SPAN which shows the overall spectrum, so I will take a look at my 2 track.
Do you think I could EQ that bass heavy tone down and help my mix out overall?
Or is it too far gone to bother?

The monitoring chain is truly your final most important link for mixing anything properly! Without that you're just shooting in the dark for sure! No question.

You can have the best ears in the world but if your monitoring is all wrong, forget it. Give it up!
In fact I think if mixing/mastering is something you really want to do professionally on your own, that is the first thing you need to spend your money on. It should be at least as much as you spend on the electronics. Room treatment and really accurate monitors. Then get the good mics, preamps, converters and DAW's.

I don't even have anything close to room treatment or a proper mixing suite. But then I'm just a hobby player with a modest little investment. I enjoy doing what I can with what I have, but I have no delusion as to being pro quality or being able to achieve pro results. I think that's just delusional thinking.

If I ever had a real song or recording contract I would be the first one in a professional recording studio and using professional tracking, mixing and mastering services. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon if ever for me!

If I win the Mega Millions tonight ($640milionUS)...I would definitely move back to Canada and build a lodge and pro studio in one wing on a nice lake with a float plane dock!...Hehe
I'll let you know how that turns out!

Without the accurately treated room and accurately placed and tuned monitors in my place my efforts at this will always be marginal at best...but still fun to listen, play and dream..

hueseph Fri, 03/30/2012 - 15:59

I know for sure that I can't hear anything below 100hz on these monitors. Not very well anyway. My bro suggested an RTA as well. I listened in my car and it is indeed very flabby on the low end. That would be great if this was a Spinal Tap tune but it's not. I think this song requires a bit of editing here and there. There are odd noises that I think could be cut out and some judicious fades might be in order as well.

I'm just trying to get an overall mix right now. The editing needs to come after I have a general idea of how I think it should sound. That's how I work anyway. I don't know if it's right but it works for me. I'm a creature of habit and a bit OCD. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

hueseph Fri, 03/30/2012 - 17:43

I just listened to John's mix for the first time. I've been trying to keep it as true to the recording as possible. I had no vision whatsoever. After listening to the original mix, I can't help but feel I like John's the best so far. It's way more George Martin than I ever imagined it should be. But, I suppose, that is where a producer comes in.

Is it ok, if I try to capture the feel you were going for? I don't think I can improve on what you did. It's your vision and it makes sense now that I've heard it. Otherwise, I'll just keep playing.

audiokid Fri, 03/30/2012 - 19:14

djmukilteo, post: 387417 wrote: I have SPAN which shows the overall spectrum, so I will take a look at my 2 track.
Do you think I could EQ that bass heavy tone down and help my mix out overall?
Or is it too far gone to bother?

I believe we can learn to know what our monitors lack or produce too much of, but its still a crap shoot after a point. But the main thing is to be aware of what they can and can't do and compensate for it.

Don, Its never too far gone. both you and Hue ( IMO) need to go through each track and filter all the stuff that doesn't belong there, even though it does normally. All the VOX need HPF well into the low mids. The vocals are IMO very thick and wooly due to proximity and the mic(s). A better mic choice, preamp, converter and proximity would have avoided the need for extreme measures but thats what makes this song so fun!
Once you clean up the mud, the tracks will start sitting well with the other parts. Its will be easier to mix this and the bass won't soak you.

It will be interesting to hear what REMY and Davedog come up with and what they have to say. I bet they are frustrated lol! smoke

I'm excited.

Davedog Sat, 03/31/2012 - 18:49

I have just started.

Theres is a tremendous amount of low-end on all the instruments and these have been dealt with at this point.

I am not using any of the midi so I dont know what information was on that.

The guitars are a bit out of tune....Is the bass a keyboard? Pretty sure it is.

I am kinda surprised at the clarity of the lead vocal considering the recording path. I wouldnt call it 'wooley' as much as it has some 'rich' frequencies. It responded well to the standard I use which is the LA2A and the Real Verb Pro from the UA stuff. I didnt find any need to EQ this.

Theres not very much in the way of a drum groove and I am tempted to enhance this though I probably wont....

The backing vocals I will have to spend some serious time to get them like they seem to be written and arranged. There seems to be a bit of a 'round' there....Is that what you had in mind?

I got kinda bored listening to the chimey electric guitar straight up so it got the George Harrison Leslie treatment. Seems to go with the theme and the overall Beatle-y vibe.

I think I would have done much more editing when I recorded this to square up some of the obvious glitches in the playing. There certainly was no need for all the stereo tracks!!! I've kept them all stereo at this point but am being somewhat creative with the panning. If I cant get the clarity where I want it, the stereo tracks will all go bye bye and we'll start again from there.

I will post an early attempt sometime this weekend.

I'm staying ITB for this one. Although the electric guitar tone is bugging me a bit and I bought a new reamp device I'm itching to try. I guess the guitar track through the VHT PittBull 45 wont be all bad......The reamp is the Radial Pro RMP passive. Its very cool.

I just listened to the original.....Where are the rest of the drums? I didnt get any crashes or any of the flourishes in my downloads............

Realize that duplicating the mix and flow of the song in its original content is going to change somewhat with everyones interpretations of the arrangement. It certainly will with mine. I will strive to keep the vibe of what was written and will use the parts as I hear them in the original mix....but this isnt about a mix demonstrating gear is it? I would hope this is about mix interpretation and I would hope that John stays open to this interpretation. I hear what hes done and I see why the tracks are like they are and what he used as part of his mix to create the songs' arrangement. I understand the 'art' comment about the different vocal parts layered over each other with different lyrics and if thats what you intended then good on ya. My opinion is its kind of an awkward part to deal with even though its the artists perogative to add whatever they want anywhere they want.

I'll dink with it as best I can.

Davedog Sun, 04/01/2012 - 01:37

I'm finding that the bass vocal parts is awfully domineering so its been cut a lot. The note really doesnt play a big part in the arrangement as the pads have that same note present only in a much more applicable way. There's plenty of vocals so there isnt a loss in power.

A lot of mixing has to do with what you can leave out without losing the song. Its unfortunate that some composers feel that every note has some value when in actuality theres the assumed note or the suggested note which can at times become a more powerful statement than actually playing the note in question. Acapella vocals is another story as would be a trio or quartet ensemble piece. But a modern rock oriented song with vocals can be cheated many ways without any effect to the reality of it.

JohnTodd Sun, 04/01/2012 - 05:50

Cool stuff, folks!

For the record, these are raw tracks. I always HPF ~100Hz, into a gate on all mic tracks. These mic tracks have none of that.

The bass is a synth.

Sorry for the stereo tracks. Cubase did that; I didn't know it would do that. We are all learning from this exercise.

Everybody keeps commenting on those guitars! Friends, I use EQ a lot on acoustics, and Amplitube on the electrics. What you have received from the download are raw tracks. Those electrics should be reamped, either ITB or OTB.

I love the different sound of the ribbon mic on the intro acoustic vs. the MXL990 on the rhythm acoustics. My mic choice was made like that to differentiate them when the whole mix is going in the chorus. I thought I did good with that - it was a trick I learned here on RO.

As for lo-mid stuff, remember the acoustic treatment in my room is sheetrock with a layer of paint on it. :rolleyes: I only have mic stands with blankets and some pillows to help tame things. Best I can do right now.

But hey, it's a fun challenge for you guys, and a great learning experience for me! I'm all for it! Pick it to death! There is a way to tell someone they need to change something without offending them. Respectfully, politely, and with understanding that I am trying my best but lack experience and certain pieces of crucial gear (ie - treatment). So have at it! Tell me what I can do better! I came to RO to learn. Enlighten me!

Just don't re-record or re-do parts. This is a mixing exercise. Imagine I am a Beatle who emailed you these tracks. Or better yet, imagine you are Phil Spector and this track is one for the "Let It Be" album*. No re-takes, no re-dos, no mulligans, no Beatles available, just miles of tape to wade through.

* (Careful about that tape echo on the hi-hats!)

Davedog Sun, 04/01/2012 - 08:35

Please dont take anything I say as harsh critique. I am only commenting on what I'm finding as I go into this. This certainly isnt the first time I have encountered tracks like this. I think you've done a fine job and you obviously know more about how the song sounds in your head than anyone else. If my comments have been offensive to you I certainly apologize, but understand this a business of getting down to business and there are elements that present themselves clearly and you know about them already. This is great. Honest self-critique is a powerful tool for a self-produced, self-recorded project and will serve you well in attaining high quality no matter the gear or the environment available. The fact that you can recognize these things off the top and compensate for them is a great achievement and one you should be proud of. Your sound is very good and I hope it is the sound you hear in your head when you conceive these songs.

I make my commentary as simply a laundry list of what I find as I go without influence from the other posts. I have read the thread completely but I would rather mix this without too much preconceived notions other than a glimpse into your original mix. I havent really listened to any others except fleetingly. So take it for what it is and dont let anything offend you simply because the tenor of the comments are upfront and honest. From my perspective I hope you'll like what I hear and enjoy it.

I will probably use my soundcloud box so there will be the usual degredation in the sound. I will try the dropbox and a 44/16 download but I can only hope it works.

btw....good one on the Phil Spector tape echo on the hats for Let It Be. When I bought my first copy (when it was released btw, I thought WTH???) peace

djmukilteo Sun, 04/01/2012 - 17:22

audiokid, post: 387516 wrote: Well this definitely is a challenge. I have another couple getting closer day by day lol.(I think! duh)

TBH BT to my ears the vocals were very crispy and bright and crackly almost!
The tone in the main vocal seemed really light and brittle as did all the BGV not full smooth sounding like previous versions.
All the instruments were great, nice and full sounding there. Nice bass and drums.
What did you do this go around?....or is it just me?...maybe my ears need some burn-in time!?!...LOL

Ok so maybe it wasn't just me??????

audiokid Sun, 04/01/2012 - 18:21

Damn, I lost half the VOX tracks. No wonder. Erk, going backwards for a few rounds to recover what I did. melodyne didn't like something I did.

Don, use the HPF a lot more on all the tracks. trust me. duh Make a new session and follow some things I tell you. If you don't like it, you can always go back to bass and more bass lol.
I know John said he used HPF on but he didn't use them enough. Roll more than you are. Audition each track and listen to how they sound. Use the HPF on each track until all the mud goes away. Then you will be close to mixing this.

djmukilteo Sun, 04/01/2012 - 18:29

audiokid, post: 387524 wrote: Damn, I lost half the VOX tracks. No wonder. Erk, going backwards for a few rounds to recover what I did. melodyne didn't like something I did.

Don, use the HPF a lot more on all the tracks. trust me. duh Make a new session and follow some things I tell you. If you don't like it, you can always go back to bass and more bass lol.
I know John said he used HPF on but he didn't use them enough. Roll more than you are. Audition each track and listen to how they sound. Use the HPF on each track until all the mud goes away. Then you will be close to mixing this.

That's what I did, but I guess I'm not doing it right or enough and I can't tell if it's working or not...my head is sore and I think I'm done for now!....I will continue to listen to the other examples from the sideline.

audiokid Sun, 04/01/2012 - 19:45

I'll post a before and after to help you.

Until you know what to listen for, its confusing to know how much you have to filter. As John mentioned, he used a HPF but he didn't even come close to enough.
Every song is different and subject to gear, and technique. If John had better gear and didn't sing so close on this track, it would need very little filtering. We are forced to filter a lot in order to get the VOX tracks to sit in the mix and not kill the bass.. The VOX are competing with all the instruments and percussion.
HP Filtering becomes a tradeoff of clarity over body too. We have to decide what are the most important parts in in the bass section. We can't have every track producing 250hz. It become a wall of mud.

In this example I am HPF all the way up to 250hz until all that boxy wooly woof goes away.

(Expired Link Removed)

EDIT: Files removed , onto another mix fest.

( But if your monitors are poor, you may not even hear all that mud): Its in Johns entire mix. He did a good job dealing with this all but he will never get any level out of the master. Its has to be cleaned up. Its why my mixes are so much clearer and louder. What I dealing with now is compromise and phase. Until I get that under control, its hard to get it much better.

(Expired Link Removed)

EDIT: Files removed , onto another mix fest.

Hope that helps!

Davedog Mon, 04/02/2012 - 17:44

audiokid, post: 387572 wrote: First post explain some of your questions regarding error messages 404:http://recording.org/track-talk/52341-johns-track-ill-there-itb-vs.html#post386610

Regarding linking to Dropbox, . can you see the wave file in your Public Folder? https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public

These links work from this post but not from the earlier one. Strange.

The mp3 is in my public folder. Anyone can see it. But theres not a way of linking that to my RO posts that seems to work. I havent uploaed the wav file because I cant get anything to work at this point.

Just listen to the soundcloud. I'm not embarrased by it at all.

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