What an interesting conversation! I'm learning so much; thank you all for tackling these tracks.
A few points, as the producer/engineer of this track:
1.) I hate the pizz. violins; they're ported straight from the artist's bedroom demo because he's still in love with them. In all my mixes, they're muted. I threw them in because they're there, and I was interested in what you guys could do with them. In general, I've heard some very interesting approaches, but I think the consensus is that they shouldn't be there, and I agree.
2.) The accordion is the same (ported from the demo), but since it's more of a pad, it doesn't bother me much. We'll be replacing this track with an old pump organ I found.
3.) And yes, the banjo is from the demo, too, though it is perhaps the most successful. I've got a banjo player coming in this weekend to record a replacement track. The bells are from the demo, too. Don't really have an opinion about them. They're probably superfluous.
4.) The background vocals are, as I opined earlier, the key to this song. Even if I had prepared a creative brief to outline the vision for this song, I think I might not have mentioned this point, as it is so obvious to me. I was very interested in those mixes that deemphasized them, have listened to them over and over, and just cannot like them as much as those where a wall of vocals hits me in the chorus. Maybe I'm too close to the material.
5.) Acoustic bass. What a nightmare. So very out of tune. I threw it in, really only because it might sound nice on the break. Some of you picked up on that. Others ignored it completely, which is probably what should happen.
6.)
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Straight away I noticed that alot of instruments just kept playing through out the whole recording (or alot of it) and all came in at the same time. I had two explanations for this: 1) They were intended to play throughout the whole track 2) They were played throughout the whole track for practical reasons.
By practical reasons I mean that if you are in the studio, you have everything miked up, the musicians are there and ready to play, why not just record too much and cut out the superfluous stuff later on? It only takes a couple of minutes extra to keep recording at this point while having to add stuff later would take an immense amount of work comparatively. This was tagged as a project on a budget. To me that means maximizing time and resources.
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Yep. Option 2. This is nearly always how I work. I've got the disc space so, by God, I'm going to use it.
Thanks to Under Tow for such a specific description of your mixing process - and documenting the perceived flaws in the source tracks. "I had major difficulties with the way the drums were played." Me, too. But we had two Sundays to track drums for twelve songs, cold. I did what I could. I'm going to go back and source out where that distortion was coming from (if I can even hear it). I suspect the overheads. I'm pretty careful when tracking, so I'm fairly certain there isn't pervasive clipping at the converters, but maybe the mic is squashing, or else the preamps get ugly when pushed. If you have a specific suggestion for tracking these better, let me know.
Overall, Under Tow, I was the most amused by your mix (I'm not being condescending). I found it fun, and laughed out loud at that huge, cavernous drum hit coming out of the bridge into the breakdown. All in all, I felt you brought a "dance" sensibility to the track, which I enjoyed. I don't think I agree with your direction, and that's a matter of taste (so there's no accounting for it), but I will tell you I might steal some ideas from your outro.
Thanks again!
