Your Mom loves your mixes, but are they really up to scratch? Post your tracks here and get the community's feedback to help with the spit and polish. Impress us! We don't bite.
This is close to what I want, I haven't touched it for a couple of days, but I can hear a few phrases in the vocals that need re-tracked, as well as a couple of measures where the drum programming needs a bit more work.
So, what things here would you fix? Bonus internet points for providing the "how" along with the "what".
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The trumpet solo (effected with a Harmon mute) is my teenage son's work. I think he did pretty good...
EDIT 4/3/2018: here's the same file, as an attachment
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Last edited by SweetDan on Thu May 03, 2018 3:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
awesome youtube comment of the day
Bill and Ted time traveled and brought a bass player from 1973, a drummer from 1984 and a guitar player from 1995. Now they're spreading peace all over the world
Something's a little wonky with the mp3 streaming on your site. It keeps on glitching out and resetting playback. (I don't know how much control you have over your Apache configuration, but it might be there)
Seems pretty decent. Vocals feel a little loud and crisp at first, but they settle in more as more instruments come in.
I might pull the trumpet up a bit. It's kinda buried.
Same restart problem for me and I'm on a different continent & hemisphere.
Also had the old "Problem loading page after a minute of play.
I like it.
What -The Farfisa style keyboard may be a little loud.
How - turn it down or ad reverb to "move" it back.
Thanks for listening/commenting, and sorry for the troubles w/my webhosting. I'm not sure what's going on there, but it's cheap shared hosting, so I don't have much control. They seem to go in waves of good or crappy response...next month there may be no troubles at all.
Trumpet - yes, it needs to be louder, or more "present", or something. I'll tweak...
Organ/keyboard patch - noted. Again, I'll tweak.
awesome youtube comment of the day
Bill and Ted time traveled and brought a bass player from 1973, a drummer from 1984 and a guitar player from 1995. Now they're spreading peace all over the world
I think you could add a touch of brightness to the vocal ..... it's kinda muffled sounding to my ears ....... drumbs aren't very present ...... ... nice tune
Nice tune, I think I get the feel you are going after. I visualize a smoky little bar with a little band playing. Something from an odd scene a Tarantino movie.(Maybe way off but that's what I got )
I do think the drums could be a little more out front, the snare is a little dull for my taste. And some of the lead guitar fills are a bit loud.
I like the trumpet a lot, adds to the feel. Also think the song really gels better as it moves along for some reason I can't really pick out.
Thanks Bob & turtle; I'll be tweaking a few things on this mix, for sure.
(And for everyone who's noticing my web hosting has crapped out, once I myself can get to the files, I'll just attach them here. I don't know what's going on...)
awesome youtube comment of the day
Bill and Ted time traveled and brought a bass player from 1973, a drummer from 1984 and a guitar player from 1995. Now they're spreading peace all over the world
The drums are touch quiet I reckon.
Also, there's a snare hit at 1:23 which I don't think should be there. Sounds like there should be a pause there but a snare hit comes in to continue the beat through the gap.
I agree with bob that the vocal needs to be brighter. The organ thing is a tiny bit piercing and doesn't play nice with the vocal - move it back I reckon.
So, another weekend came and went, and I got a bit done:
- dropped the organ level a touch, EQ'd out a bit of highs
- dropped the solo guitar level in a few strategic places
- brought up the level of the trumpet (I still need to go in and do surgical edits where the playing drops or peeks out too far...I did a rough pass at that already, but need go over it note-by-note, phrase-by-phrase)
- finished the drum programming tweaks I wanted to make (plus the snare gaffe JD noticed and one like it in the next chorus - good catch!)
- experimented with EQ-ing the vocal to get better clarity - failed!
- experimented with adding a bit of grit in a parallel track fed by the vocal to get better clarity - failed!
(so there's no change to the vocal in this mix; I may try again when my ears have a rest)
By the time I finished all that, hours later, my ears were frazzled and I was at the point where I'd probably cause more damage by further tweaking. But I wanted to address the issue of the drums being hard to hear. So I spent 3-5 minutes throwing on an EQ and a compressor on the drum bus. I used the preset "drum set" for each, adjusted the threshold level of the compressor is all. And that 5 minutes made the whole thing sound better than the hours of tweaking I had done previously. (Felt like cheating to use presets, lol.) Ack!
But it's coming along; let me know what you think of "mix 2":
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awesome youtube comment of the day
Bill and Ted time traveled and brought a bass player from 1973, a drummer from 1984 and a guitar player from 1995. Now they're spreading peace all over the world
Mate, haven't had time to listening to this - gorgeous day and the surf is pumping! But if you want more grit on your vocal try adding a VST called Camel Crusher (use it very sparingly) start with a preset called "Tube Warmth" and work out from there. Don't use much (if any) "Mech"
Thats much better, mate. Everything sounds like it fits together pretty well now.
Vocal sounds a bit tentative. Why don't you park this one for a while but keep the mix handy, listen to it in the car and stuff for a few weeks, sing along with it and then have another pop at the vocal. I'm a much crapper singer than you and I find this works pretty well for me, get used it and basically practice it a bit.
A better sounds/mix/effort this time.
Vocal clarity can be very hard. I had some probs with a female vocal of late and did all the usual stuff BUT what seemed to push the vocals into a slightly better zone was using the free version of PSP Vintage Warmer 2 - the semi driven tape preset.
This is odd because lots of people told me it wasn't for vocals and tape saturation doesn't so0und like a thing that's work but it did- well the simulation involving eq & compression did. Just a thought.
The vocals on this probably need some automation to be quieter at the start and gradually turn up with everything else. That'd be how I'd probably address the clarity.
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