R/E/P Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6   Go Down

Author Topic: IMP8 mix discussion.  (Read 13638 times)

gatino

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 132
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #60 on: November 30, 2006, 10:39:34 AM »

ATOR wrote on Mon, 27 November 2006 06:55


Gatino
And the price for biggest reverb goes to... I like it. Did you use a separate reverb for left and right or have different delays before the l+r reverb tails? Piano could use more definition and presence. Vocal sounds good.


hehe...

the only verb i used was on the vocal, front and center. there were very short delays (w/o verb) on the vox going left and right trying to make it phat. (i think doubling the vox would be better, but they didn't give us that.) thx for the comments. i've learned a lot from everyone.


Logged

rankus

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5560
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #61 on: December 01, 2006, 02:44:49 PM »

 
j.hall wrote on Mon, 27 November 2006 21:45


i'd like to see people change their lists to "which mixes kept me listening, and which didn't.....AND WHY"  and don't give me a bunch of technical babble, tell me what about it was great or wasn't great.


I noted this in my comments.  I mentioned that "I found this mix engaging" etc. to the mixes I thought captured this elusive phenom.... specifically to address this because I agree with J 100%...

I believe the term used is "suspension of disbelief", whereby the listener forgets they are listening to a recording and "buys into" the song completely. This was my goal with this IMP  (Don't worry J we are listening)  I hope I managed to at least come close (plosives aside)

It would be really nice if others kicked in their comments as J has asked... It may be painful to hear, for the mixer and probably just as difficult for the commenter... but this is why we are here.  Growth sometimes requires some pain, so suck it up you pansies and let me/us have it with both barrels!

Don't let this important IMP go out with a whisper!
Logged
Rick Welin - Clark Drive Studios http://www.myspace.com/clarkdrivestudios

Ive done stuff I'm not proud of.. and the stuff I am proud of is disgusting ~ Moe Sizlack

"There is no crisis in energy, the crisis is in imagination" ~ Buckminster Fuller

ATOR

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 378
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #62 on: December 01, 2006, 05:59:07 PM »

UnderTow wrote on Tue, 28 November 2006 00:16


Thanks. Again that TV voice thing ... There is no automation in this mix. I ran out of time to get the details right. One of the things I should have done is set the vocal reverb send pre-inserts so that the natural dynamics of the singing would have made the reverb more dynamic. Unfortunately that means I would have had to do some processing on the send for which there was no time. I'm not sure what you are hearing. What did you think I had done?

Nope, no automation. Smile I think things might get a bit clearer when I explain everything I did: There is the equivalent of 17 plugins in this mix (although some steps are combined within plugins). There is alot of compression going on.

My intention was to automate the output volume of the vocal track and I think that would make a more exciting mix.



Maybe I was naive in believing human beings normally put one compressor over a vocal Smile There was no way you could have reduced the dynamic range that much and still have it sound good with a single compressor so I assumed you used automation.

I've taken another shot at the mix and this time I put 3 compressors over the vocal and got a big vocal without obvious compression artefacts. Sometimes more is more.
Logged
Pieter Vincenten - ATORmastering

ATOR

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 378
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #63 on: December 01, 2006, 06:52:54 PM »

j.hall wrote on Tue, 28 November 2006 18:18


at one point in my life i was quite the tennis player.  my personal coach was a bit unorthodox, which made for a perfect match with me and him.  anyway, he told me something i've never forgotten that can be applied to this topic.

he said at the peak of my physical ability, "at this point, you will only lose matches because your mind could not keep up.  your body is trained, it's now up to you mind to do the work.  at a certain point, the game becomes 80% mental and 20% physical simply due to the fact that your body has been trained and conditioned for this level of work"

so, assume i'm your mixing coach.  i'm telling you that you've trained your ears in a technical way, and you've focused your auditory mind to a technical one, that is no longer the issue.  NOW, you have to take all that technical knowledge and apply it to the REAL task.  the hardest one there is, art!

it's time to make the technical the 20% and the art 80%

this, is exactly what IMP is all about.


I've been thinking about this a lot and it reminds me of a masterclass I had from guitarist Jim Hall. It was about creating music and getting loose from scales, chords and their functions. We had to completely detune our guitars so we couldn't use our mind or motoric fingerpatterns to find notes. Then we had to play a note and listen to it. Then play another and listen to the sound of those two notes. He basically made us bypass all the technical stuff and make beautiful sounds.

I thought it was bullshit back then, why make it hard on yourself when you know what scale to play and what goes well with a II-V-I progression. I took the technical approach and I guess that's why I never turned out to be a good guitarplayer and eventually quit because playing became boring.

Now I'm on my way back to making music, this time in mixing, with another J. Hall and I realize I'm being put back at the same crossroads: make technically good music or make inspired music from the heart.

Making music from the heart scares me but this time I know where the other road leads. It's time to detune my guitar Cool

Logged
Pieter Vincenten - ATORmastering

j.hall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3787
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #64 on: December 01, 2006, 07:55:18 PM »

i've been back to back in multiple sessions for a few weeks now.  when i get a chance to dig into a few mixes i will.

early next week looks promising.
Logged

maxim

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5828
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #65 on: December 01, 2006, 09:38:43 PM »

peter wrote:

"...make technically good music or make inspired music from the heart"

both
Logged

gatino

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 132
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #66 on: December 01, 2006, 11:12:22 PM »

ATOR wrote on Fri, 01 December 2006 17:52


make technically good music or make inspired music from the heart.


music is inspired first and technical last. form and analysis comes after the fact! i believe the german sixth (or italian, french, whatever your pref) chord was originally nothing more than a happy accident. know what i mean?
Logged

UnderTow

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 393
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #67 on: December 12, 2006, 06:05:49 PM »

I was hoping for some more comments from J. He is probably too busy so here comes an explanation of what I did.

First up, te recording and performance are very nice. This, in a sense, was more challenging than having loads of tracks to play with. Things had to be right because there was no where to hide.

I listened to the material to get an idea of what to do. I don't listen to much music with vocals so I asked my girlfriend for something. She gave me Christina Aguilera - Hurt. That helped me decide to go for a big pollished pop sound.

Techniques: Tracks loaded into Sonar 6. Piano panned hard left and right and sent to a bus. Room track not used mainly because it was mono and it would be harder to integrate it into an artificial reverb instead of just faking the whole space.

Vocal pre-processing:
First I loaded the vocal into SoundForge and hipassed all the pops at arround 300Hz. I also selected all the big ticks and used the smooth function in SF to remove them.

Vocal chain:
- PSP MasterQ Hipass at 120 Hz 24 dB/Oct. HiShelf at 10Khz + 2.8 dB.
- Voxengo Voxformer in dual band mode. Cross Over at 1.4Khz. About 2 - 3 dB of compression on the low band. 0.5 to 1.5 dB on the high band. De-Esser set to 6Khz about 2 dB of De-Essing. Alot of the "Presence" knob but set to 100Hz. This give back the weight that was hipassed by the MasterQ.
- VC-64 Vintage Channel 3 - 4 dB of De-Essing at 3.3 Khz. 2 - 4 dB of compression quite fast attack, slow release, ratio 1.4:1, smooth mode. Another HiPass at 91 Hz, 3 dB boost at 160Hz 3.4 dB Boost at 5Khz (Q 0.7 in both cases).
- Sent to Global Reverb and Vocal Reverb.
- Output to Master Bus.

I should have done some volume automation so that it started off a bit softer and grew with the song. Next time better.

Vocal reverb
- Wizooverb W2 set to Choir Cathedral IR with 4.2s time.
- PSP MasterQ: Hipass at 60Hz, LoShelf at 840Hz -2 dB, -1.5 dB at 250Hz Q 0.4. LoPass at 7.8Khz 12/Oct.

The vocal reverb goes to the master bus but also to the global reverb.

One thing I should have done is set the vocal send to the global reverb pre inserts so that the reverb gets bigger when the vocals gets bigger. I forgot ... :/

Piano bus:
- VC-64 Vintage Channel: Between 1 to 3 dB of compression (Attack 14.5ms, release 100ms, ratio 1.5:1, mode smooth and optical. Hipass at 30Hz.
- PSP MasterQ: Another Hipass at 30Hz 24 dB/Oct. LoShelf at 700Hz -0.6 dB, -2 dB at 270Hz Q 0.4, +2 dB at 90Hz Q 0.3, +0.7dB at 6Khz Q 0.3
- Output to master bus and send to Global Reverb

Global reverb:
- Wizooverb W2 set to Large Chamber IR with 1.6s time.
- PSP MasterQ: Same as Vocal verb EQ.

There is a short amount of delay at one point on the vox. I just used the Sonitus delay for that.

Stereo bus:
- Waves SSL Stereo bus comp: Between 0.5 - 3.5 dB of compression. (Attack 1ms, Release Auto, Ratio 4:1)
- Voxengo Warmifier set to 6550 emulation. (For fake analogue warmth)
- Voxengo Warmifier set to 12AT7 emulation. (For more fake analogue warmth)
- Voxengo Elephant set to EL-3 mode. Max 0.7 dB limiting on the left channel at the loudest peak. DC filter 18 Hz Butterworth which gives a nice sound to the low-end IMO.


r8brain free for sample rate conversion to 44.1Khz.



Alistair
Logged

j.hall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3787
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #68 on: December 15, 2006, 05:06:47 PM »

sorry guys.  i'm running in too many directions to be super effective iin the last few IMPs.

i promise to get more involved to better steer what i want people to learn.

sorta hard to get there when the "teacher" never shows up for class.

HAHAHAHA

Logged

chrisj

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 959
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #69 on: December 15, 2006, 09:55:03 PM »

It's because you're working so actively that your POV is extra valuable, J- don't worry about it- I only hope that by the time you get around to commenting on one of my entries it's worth the comment, and I've been paying close attention and figuring out how to understand what you're telling us.

j.hall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3787
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #70 on: December 17, 2006, 04:19:15 PM »

that's cool chris, thanks for being patient.

we all know that commenting takes a time investment.  i'll make it happen......eventually.

as for understanding, well......i think that mainly boils down to if the comments i give make much sense to the specific approach you like to take to music.

i think many people on here think i over compress.  though, more often then not, i have to tell my clients that's i can not compress it anymore then i am.......yes, i have many people ask me for more.

so, any of my comments need to be weighted against MY work.  my actual work should speaks volumes as to what i might have to say about some one elses work.
Logged

garret

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1012
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #71 on: December 17, 2006, 04:59:01 PM »

j.hall wrote on Sun, 17 December 2006 16:19


i think many people on here think i over compress.  though, more often then not, i have to tell my clients that's i can not compress it anymore then i am.......yes, i have many people ask me for more.

so, any of my comments need to be weighted against MY work.  my actual work should speaks volumes as to what i might have to say about some one elses work.


I don't think you over compress, but I do get a feeling of muscularity from all your mixes.   I can always pick out your mixes from the set... this time around, btw, I listened to the tracks blind... (I imported em all into my daw, hid the track names, and took notes by track number only.)

The thing I'm most interested in knowing is if you think my mixes are ever hitting that elusive magic that you describe so well... personally think I get there sometimes, but I don't really know.

-G

Logged
tomorrow is already here - http://www.worksongs.net/

cerberus

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2651
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #72 on: December 18, 2006, 01:44:53 AM »

i am sorry for not completing my reviews. i don't like to post negative comments, and here's the thing... i know i got some of the vibe i was looking for... but my mix was flawed, so now i can't say how to get the best vibe that it could have. i feel unqualified to complete the reviews.

the ugly truth is that i spent half the time tuning-up the vocal. not even mixing.   i thought it would be fun and challenging to do what at first seemed impossible; and to see if i could pass off this trick in front of other engineers. (now, i expect you can hear it if you know...)

whatever it sounds like... it took a LOT of effort..  [stereo? i ran out of time...i threw a "hail mary pass" at it...] did i say that already?   the tuning part is why.  some of you noticed some oddness.. it does come through on one or two long notes. but i am a little proud of at least that.

some said my piano treatment was less than thrilling, which means i need to improve the compromise more.  but i learned that it is possible to tune these vocals to use  pitch, not just timbre and dynamics and overall low-mid-high balance and stereo... and get away with it.  most of this time i spent was on an aspect of the song that nobody guessed... and.... now i wonder. was it a selfish approach?  wrong for the song?

did it  occur to anyone to actually try and re-tune the vox? of course it soured the piano slightly... that was how ii wanted to make it work.. that it could sound really sad and i wanted just the right amount of tension and drift in the pitch for each phrase and in some cases note by note.   anyone else?

jeff dinces

chrisj

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 959
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #73 on: December 18, 2006, 07:51:09 AM »

Nope, but I peak limited the vocal by hand, including evening out some of the notes that had little volume fluctuations. Helped the mellow bits be mellow... I had no EQ _at_ _all_, everything was the convolution reverbs- a hall on the piano, a bright ambience and a plate on the vocal, and I balanced overtones using those but I didn't have enough predelay happening. Still, I'm happy I'm starting to tap into your musical soul, both with this and with the Zack mastering on slutz. Today Cerberus, tomorrow the world! Very Happy

ATOR

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 378
Re: IMP8 mix discussion.
« Reply #74 on: December 18, 2006, 10:01:40 AM »

cerberus wrote on Mon, 18 December 2006 07:44

did it  occur to anyone to actually try and re-tune the vox?


I fixed a long out of tune note in the vocal but the out of tune piano spill that accompanied the tuned vocal made me ditch it. Instead I doubled the chorus lead with detuned versions to sort of mask the out of tune notes.
Logged
Pieter Vincenten - ATORmastering
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6   Go Up
 

Site Hosted By Ashdown Technologies, Inc.

Page created in 0.092 seconds with 18 queries.