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Larry Allen 21 February 2015

Hello recordists! This is my first post, I appreciate having a place to get objective advice about audio.

This song was written by the singer. I arranged and recorded everything, now I'm ready for the brutal honesty part of the process.

[MEDIA=soundcloud]harrellsferry/out-of-the-blue[/MEDIA]

Thanks for listening.

Larry

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Comments

DonnyThompson Mon, 02/23/2015 - 09:48

I agree that it can be a bit of a pain to hide and un-hide tracks. Although lately, I've been creating a folder for the original source tracks, which allows me to close the folder and get those source tracks out of sight, unless of course I need to revert back to them, at which point I just reopen the folder where the originals are stored.

I mostly manually edit tracks that will usually require a little work - for example, with lead vocals, sometimes I'll shift phrases around a few ticks to either sit them back or on top of the back-line beat, or for de-essing, and for that, I prefer to use the Object Editor in Samp for de-essing, as opposed to using a dedicated de-essing processor; I find that these plugs tend to attenuate the pleasing frequencies along with the offending sibilance, and when I do it within the OE, I simply zoom into the sibilance and then attenuate just that "S", leaving the other frequencies that I want to keep untouched.

I learned a long time ago - the hard way, I might add - to never work on the original source tracks, nor to delete them. I always make clones of the source tracks I want to work on, and I don't ever mess with the original audio.

Larry Allen Mon, 02/23/2015 - 10:07

pcrecord, post: 425362, member: 46460 wrote: In Sonar, there is 2 ways to route a track signal to a bus.

  1. the aux send which let you choose the level that you send and if it's pre or post fader.
  2. the track output is usually routed to the masterbus and it is always post fader. You can change the output and route it to a aux bus, when output is used that way, you can't blend the track and the aux signal.
    class="xf-ul">
    But, Aux bus have aux sends and outputs exactly like a track. So = enless possibilities ;)

    Usually, if I have an instrument recorded in stereo with 2 identical mic for exemple in X/Y, I'll probably send both track to a stereo aux bus on with I'll put an EQ and a comp, then I might send the aux sends of that bus to other buses with reverb or other effects..

    I hope that makes sens ;)

Thanks, it does. I'm totally comfortable with the technical and workflow aspects of mixing.

My problems start when it's time to make the 'artistic decisions' you referred to. I haven't learned to trust my ears, and I don't have people I can trust for objective feedback about my mixes. That's why I'm glad I found this place.

Hopefully I'll be able to give a little back when someone needs help. I trust my options about other people's work, it's my own work that gives me fits. I suppose that's common.

Larry Allen Mon, 02/23/2015 - 20:49

Back again. The latest Out Of The Blue mix uses all of the techniques recommended in this thread.

There are still some places where the lead vocals are doubled. The doubling is buried in the original source track, so I've decided to call it a breathtaking innovation. People will be talking about it for decades to come.

I still have a sonic hangover from this weekend, but I think it sounds better. Please tell me if I'm wrong.

[MEDIA=soundcloud]harrellsferry/out-of-the-blue-too

Larry Allen Sat, 02/28/2015 - 11:33

DonnyThompson, post: 425394, member: 46114 wrote: It's a nice song... ;)

I'm missing the upper end though, Larry. This mix sounds dull, in need of some forward presence. Everything seems to be "living" in the same frequency range, and it's kinda one-dimensional.

Just my opinion of course.

I think this one is brighter. The other folks on this thread have commented about the lead vocals not being centered. There were several reasons for that, but I had missed an important one. The lead vocal bus was in stereo mode. When I switched it to mono the vocals popped out in the center.

[MEDIA=soundcloud]harrellsferry/out-of-the-blue

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