[Dana Nielsen]

Hey Pete! Thanks for sharing this with us all! I’ll circle back soon with some helpful De-essing ideas and other thoughts when I have a moment to listen in the studio. 🤘 ⚡️

[Pete Widin]

Awesome, thanks Dana!

[Dana Nielsen]

Man, your post has inspired me to make a de-essing video but alas I’ve been swamped this week and it may have to wait …. meantime, here’s a shortlist of my fav de-essing techniques:

• Massey De-Esser is my go-to. In general, I’d say I hate the sound of de-essers at least 50% of the time, lol. They just make things sound unnatural. BUT … the Massey one is by far my favorite, most of all due to the mix knob. Plus, it’s simple to use, easy to tweak, and to my ear does the best job in the least amount of time.
• Using “clip gain” to manually turn down the volume of intense S’s is very effective. It’s certainly more time consuming than slapping a de-essing plugin on the insert, but it sounds more natural since you’re just manipulating volume, not frequencies.
• Adjusting the volume of S’s within Melodyne. If you’re already using Melodyne to adjust tuning and timing, why not turn down those pesky S’s while you’re at it? That’s what I often do. Pro Tip: even tho Melodyne now has a De-Essing tool, I still find that manually chopping the S’s out of the blobs and turning them down with the Amplitude tool sounds the best for some reason.
• All of the above. Sometimes throughout the course of a mix I’ll end up treating the S’s using all three (or more) methods, little by little, until everything is under control. Our ears are so sensitive to human speech and when those S’s get manipulated even the most casual listener will perk up and feel as though there’s a glitch in The Matrix. As such, I find that stacking several gentle processes often yields a more natural de-essing result than trying to fix all problems by brute force with one single tool.

Hope these tips serve ya well man! I’ll try to circle back with further thoughts on your other mix questions when I can. Great having you in the livestream today!

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[Pete Widin]

Hey Dana! These are awesome tips and so clearly described, thank you very much.
The ideas give me some new tools and really build on my current workflow. I do use Melodyne for tuning/timing so am excited about that idea. I’ve started running my vox through the Manley Vox Box which has helped with some light de-essing there.. haven’t used the Massey before tho.

Much appreciated, and gives me major inspiration to try various techniques here!
The livestream was really fun and intriguing – gonna check out what I missed on the replay.

[Dana Nielsen]

Awesome, Pete – glad to help! Look fwd to hearing more! And, like @-PT , I dig the lyrics!

[Paul Tucci]

Hey Pete, I think you waited too long to put this one up. Perhaps you’ve had this stewing in your head and have got no objectivity left It’s closer to right than you may think. Two listens in and I’ll comment. There’s that choral flavor That happens early on in the intro. That’s a good flavor to utilize fully. That grabbed my ear as an engaging sound but I had to work to hear through to it. I think listeners would like more of that later in the song too. It happens to be buried by the bass synth. I felt like that bass synth was too dominant in both its bandwidth and duration. When the vocals arrived there was no room left for a warm vocal without going too loud on the vocal. I carved out a bit of 145 Hz and that seemed to tame the bass synth a good bit. If you’re feeling that the vocal tone left is too sibilant may I suggest the first verse be a single voice and save the vocal stack for the second verse and beyond. Between the territorially-dominant bass synth and the vocal stack with all the sibilance, intelligibility suffered and whats there sounds almost lispy. Consider low passing all but one of the vocal takes (probably panned center) and see if that gets you happier. When the drums come in later …they sound great, especially the snare. I was wanting the high hat played at that point to sit in with the rest of the kit, not way in the background. That trick worked in the intro, but when carried into the groovier section later, makes the hat sound distant and not as powerful as the rest of the kit. Take what you will. I’m just an old man that still says groovier 🙂 -PT

[Pete Widin]

Paul, these are all very on point remarks, thank you! I agree wholeheartedly, and your descriptions/recommendations help to clarify some things that I could intuitively sense but didn’t have the answers for. This will make a nice checklist to tweak some things. I agree, I waited way too long to post this, kept getting in my own way with thoughts like “it’s too pitchy still”, etc.

[Pete Widin]

I also LOVE the idea of bringing the choral synth element in later in the song.. very cool

[Pete Widin]

Hey y’all! Here’s the (possibly final) mix of the song. The De-essing tips from Dana and awesome insights from Paul were so helpful to give me a laundry list to run through as I cleaned things up.

One thing that’s been a huge upgrade is that I was putting my de-essers AFTER compression in the chain a lot of the time, and that was of course just making it harder for the de-esser to do its work. Also, keeping any given de-esser’s threshold on the lighter side and layering them rather than making one try to tame everything has been a great improvement too.

I’m looking forward to releasing this one soon.. any feedback is still much appreciated. It’s on to the next songs for me here – my next stretch is going to be an indie folk based album, since I’d like to finally have 8-10 songs in the same genre to be able to release and pitch for sync.

Have an awesome week!
Pete

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[Paul Tucci]

Pete, Significant growth in this iteration! The vocal de-essing has greatly improved vocal intelligibility. The music seems to have a better loping movement throughout different sections.

In general, I like contrast of intensity and density during a song. It helps to grab and keep the attention of the listener, and that is paramount. If, for example, a musician plays the same riff front to back of the song it’s boring. Did the world learn nothing from the Beatles? If the musician develops the riff throughout the song, I find that appealing and worthy of attention. On the vocal side, that can be accomplished by using a single voice to convey intimacy, the doubling it later in the next verse to make it different. Different being potentially better. I suggest, you decide. And finally, I don’t know what the song is about, but the middle section breakdown where the drama happens, it seems like you added another (new to this version) line in the protagonist’ voice to further the story and add “flavor.” It works, even if I don’t intellectually grasp the intent. I wonder if you struggled with that decision. -PT

[Dana Nielsen]

Nice, Pete! Big strides here! Good move putting the de-esser before compressor – that does tend to help so you’re not working against yourself (trying to reduce sibilance after it’s been boosted by the compressor). Sometimes I even try a little de-essing before AND after compression if needed. That said, though, if I reach for a second de-esser, chances are I’ll opt to manually reduce sibilance via clip gain or melodyne amplitude tool. Anyway … just food for thought. There are no rules! And what you’ve got going on now is a big improvement!

Here are a few additional quick thoughts:

• the hi hat that enters around 1:30 and stays in the rest of the song feels a bit loud to me
• the whole track could get some louder “mastering”. See this post for some tips.
• extra credit / optional: the timings of various drum/perc elements as well as doubled vocal consonants feel pretty loose, which is totally fine as a stylistic choice(!), but for my ear those things pulled me out of the song trance a bit. For example, some of the hat patterns or drum programming feels like it could benefit from some quantizing. And some of the drum hits (like 2 kick sounds hitting at the same time) and vocal consonances (like 2 or 3 vocal stacks, T’s and S’s especially) aren’t lined up with eachother, which creates a lot of “flam-y” moments throughout the track. I’m not necessarily suggesting 100% quantization if that’s not your vibe. And if you want to maintain a looser more natural feel, you could always do this type of alignment manually, without the use of quantizing plugins or DAW operations. Or you could just be like, “Naw, Dana, I like it loose, brah!” and that’s cool too! Just offering my first impressions to take or leave as u see fit!

🤘

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Limiter/Mastering Question - Please advise

Dearest Mix Geniuses!I have a question that I’m hoping you all can help me understand more clearly.It is my understanding that it is generally good…

[Pete Widin]

Thanks for the encouragement and this extra credit, Dana! I agree with these pieces to tweak – I’m on it! Super helpful re: limiter/mastering Q too. I’ve watched that video you made before and will refer to it again now that I have a specific situation to apply to.

[Pete Widin]

Hi Paul! Thanks for the positive feedback! I’m feeling so much better about the mix, and it’s really getting me into the groove of the song now, rather than being caught up in noticing little issues.

This song started as an off the cuff phrase about eating soup al fresco with the music duo Sleater-Kinney, and just morphed into a song about taking it easy, and enjoying life while being compassionate.

I totally agree about different sections of songs with dynamic differences, arrangement changes making things interesting, and I grew up on a lot of the Beatles’ stuff. I’m happy that my production is getting to a place where I can more effectively put songs together that sound somewhat cohesive with a lot of different musical ideas going on.

That new vocal line is actually one that somehow got muted during a mix cleanup I did, and so I brought it back in. I enjoy putting in quirky adlibs, things just come to me and I throw them in. In this case, I did think about whether I wanted to bring that back into the song, but decided it made things more interesting.

[Paul Tucci]

I stand by my statement that I had no clue what the song was about but I am now impressed you rhymed a line with “Mixing garden bowls and kidneys.” That’s impressive, I trust your talking beans. I agree, the song definitely feels and listens more whole now. Good one! PT

[Pete Widin]

Glad to hear it feels more whole overall, and thank you for the compliment re: lyricism. I think the line you’re referring to is “salad mix and gorgeous garden gimmes” – kidney beans don’t agree with me, lol