The Jongleurs Remix Project 6 - Damaged

[Armistice]

Hmmm... I may have rendered this at a higher res than necessary for no particular reason other than not paying attention...

So seeing I seem to be doing one of mine, one of his, one of mine etc, it's my turn. Wo-oh we're (almost) half way there, wo-oh, livin' on a ... Track 6 of 13. 7 to go after this baby.

If you listen to the orig you'll notice the drums are way buried and indistinct - had to do with my inability to get decent sounds from Addictive Drums. Shame, because this song is one of the busier ones that needs bigger drums -particularly in the instrumental "chorus" - to thump it along a bit.

I've spent a lot of time on the vocals - trying to iron out some of the timing issues, levels etc - the nature of Richard's harmonising is that he rarely sings the exact same thing twice, so as he thinks of a new idea on the fly, sometimes the timing is a touch awry. We were right at the end of the recording process by now and his voice wasn't even on this one because I was getting pretty fed up with it all by then, and was thinking perhaps don't bother, but he insisted, and it was a good call. Anyway, I've lined everything up betterer now. And I've unmuted some "oohs" that R did at the end which didn't make the original cut. I figure that's allowed.

The drums were really problematic, because when I moved to SSD4 some of the things I was doing in Addictive didn't really work once you actually turned the damn things up enough to hear them - particularly with the hi hat. I'd do a lot of things to try to get a slight variation in each subsequent hit and it worked OK in Addictive but not in SSD4 and it was less necessary anyway as by this stage I think they put a different sample in for close hits. So I straightened the hats out a lot - as you can't hear them so well in the original it may go unnoticed.

Me on L,R and lead acoustics, electric guitar, bass, drum programming and there's some piano in there somewhere, lead vocals and harmonies - Richard is on acoustic just to the right and harmonies.

This has taken quite a bit of effort so I've overlistened - there could be issues here that I can't hear. Let me know what you think...




v2 - as below - now, with less resolution...



This will be the last mix I put up - feel free to make suggestions, and I may make further changes based on them and what I hear myself but I won't put any more mixes up - I need to keep this project moving along and I've already done another 5 songs... Thank you all..



YouTube original for reference.

[BBvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LzyCJgb-SQ[/BBvideo]

[vomitHatSteve]

So seeing I seem to be doing one of mine, one of his, one of mine etc, it's my turn. Wo-oh we're (almost) half way there, wo-oh, livin' on a ... Track 6 of 13. 7 to go after this baby.

As I recall, at the time you said you sequenced the album alternating tracks. So it would make sense that if you're remixing in order it'll turn out that way.

Wow. The original's drums ARE buried! I hadn't noticed that before.

The clarity is helping this one. I wouldn't mind the drums (esp. kick and snare) coming up even more.

[JD01]

Right from the off the interplay between the guitars is ace.
The bass sounds like its right there too! That's unusual for you.
After the first vocal pass, the guitars come over a bit loud and the drums sound a bit buried, may just turn the guitars down a tiny bit! Its fine with the picked acoustic guitars though, its only when you're strumming away.
Yeah, on the "Man, she was damaged" bit were everything is in. It all gets a bit busy! I fucking hate automation of shit but maybe see if you can either bring down the acoustic guitars in this section or do something to thin them out a bit.

Cracking song though mate... sounds like Mr. Pills' bird.

[Armistice]

So seeing I seem to be doing one of mine, one of his, one of mine etc, it's my turn. Wo-oh we're (almost) half way there, wo-oh, livin' on a ... Track 6 of 13. 7 to go after this baby.

As I recall, at the time you said you sequenced the album alternating tracks. So it would make sense that if you're remixing in order it'll turn out that way.

Wow. The original's drums ARE buried! I hadn't noticed that before.

The clarity is helping this one. I wouldn't mind the drums (esp. kick and snare) coming up even more.

Yeah - I hadn't noticed it either until I started remixing this one and dumped the drums into SSD4 and listened back and thought "jeez, where are they?"

I'm actually remixing them in the order that I feel like - not the album order, and that's not alternating anyway. Plus I have the additional problem that he sings one of my songs, so it all depends upon the categorisation, songwriter v. singer... I think it will work out if I stick with singer.

When we did the album we specifically decided not to alternate but just put them in the order we felt they worked best in - and that ended up, by songwriter: me/him/me/him/him/him/me/him/me/me/me/me*/him

*this is the one of mine he sings

I've got it on my car SD card and I'm driving a bit today so I'll have a listen to the drum levels against the other tracks and come back and do some tweaking later. Cheers.

[Armistice]

Right from the off the interplay between the guitars is ace.
The bass sounds like its right there too! That's unusual for you.
After the first vocal pass, the guitars come over a bit loud and the drums sound a bit buried, may just turn the guitars down a tiny bit! Its fine with the picked acoustic guitars though, its only when you're strumming away.
Yeah, on the "Man, she was damaged" bit were everything is in. It all gets a bit busy! I fucking hate automation of shit but maybe see if you can either bring down the acoustic guitars in this section or do something to thin them out a bit.

Cracking song though mate... sounds like Mr. Pills' bird.

My life is automation... I'll have a listen today and make some adjustments and pop a new mix up later. I noticed a drum not quite where it should be so I was always going back to it... ta.

[Armistice]

Mix v2 above...

I have upped the drums (not the cymbals) - that definitely needed doing. Always amazes me how things can sound perfect on my studio monitors - drum wise - then on a commercial sound system the snare sounds 6dB less. Not sure if it's my monitors, commercial sound systems, or both. To get the snare at the "correct" level on my monitors it always sounds too loud to me.

Did a bit more fluffery with various drum hits - added some verb to the toms - cut down the acoustic guitar clamour at the end, and generally just gave it all a good hard rub with a damp rag. Also mastered it a little louder as it was a bit quieter than the others, and the original - so that automatically means you'll like it better, as we all know.

[rayc]

I actually prefer the album version because I'm used to it...imprinted for good or evil.

[JD01]

The hi-hat that comes in at 1:30 - Not enough groove to it, mate. Try dragging the velocities of the "in between hits" down. Same at 2:00.
Didn't hear it before, but its up loud enough now
Also, in the quieter parts of the song the snare is now a bit over bearing and a little typwriterish in places. Bring these down and humanise them a bit too.

[vomitHatSteve]

I actually prefer the album version because I'm used to it...imprinted for good or evil.

It's interesting that I'm finding I'm about 50/50 on them. There have been a few where I've just thought, "nah, you shouldn't have touched it", but there have been others that Armi's modern, brighter and clearer mix skills have been really good to.

[Armistice]

Thanks [mention]JD01[/mention] - yeah I got a little lazy with those hats... I've gone and done some manual adjusting and calmed the quiet bit snares and worked on the end-of-bar rolls a bit more...

The question [mention]vomitHatSteve[/mention] is why? All my recording life I've been told to "turn the drums up" - now, when I do just that and use better samples, you're not so fond of them. I pretty much can't listen to the originals any more as the murk in the low mids just drives me to distraction and I keep reflecting that I really shouldn't have EQ'd the acoustics in the way I did. Not much else has changed...

Thanks [mention]rayc[/mention] - not much I can do about that, I guess.