Tagged: field recording, freckles, mix feedback, waves R-bass
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Snow Day – Mix Feedback
Posted by Jesse Lewis on at 5:31 pmHey MP Fam!
More new music! I’m hoping you could lend me your ears and let me know what improvements could be made to this mix.
A quick bit of background — I recorded most of this a couple weeks back in the middle of a snow storm here in NY on the banks of the Hudson river. I just kinda improvised on my guitar (an ol’ beater I can take into bad weather) and sang and recorded the meat of it on my iphone. Then I brought it into my DAW and kinda pieced it all together and added some percussion, bass, BV’s, synth, and electric guitar to fill it out!
Thanks in advance for your ears on this!
Best,
Jesse
Paul Tucci replied 1 day, 14 hours ago 3 Members · 22 Replies -
22 Replies
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I love the whole process of this piece. A little snow, grab the beater guitar, improvisation in nature, and then bring it back inside and expand upon it. The muse visits you and we get to here it.
You had me when I heard the overhead geese. Twice a year we get a delightful goose parade on their way to or from Montezuma Wildlife refuge. In the springtime they first appear hard panned right and slowly make their way to the left channel. In the late fall the imagery reverses itself.
For the final version of Snowday I’d suggest fading into the intro.
It’s easy to float along with the arrangement you have. Things are soft and pleasant sounding until the only thing that jarred me reared up from the woods. There’s that metallic percussion beast at 2:35 that sticks out. Its level drops later but that early entrance dominates the mood. I wonder if high passing that thing, dropping its level considerably and slopping it up with a long plate verb wouldn’t make it sound like cracking ice on the river.
The last “hah” of your chant at the songs finale is crying out for that same reverb treatment. I just want to end back where I was when I first heard the geese.
You don’t usually hear me talk about reverb like that so you must know I mean it.
🙂 @-PT
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Love this, Paul! And love your description of Geese migration using stereo pan language, lolol. Amazing.
I should note, too, for anyone reading and/or commenting in the Member Spotlight forum, I always leave my notes before reading anyone else’s. Just in case you’re like, “Dana, I already mentioned the geese and the verb!” 😂
Great minds…
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Jesse!! Here are my real-time unedited notes while listening:
- How beautiful! I instantly love this.
- Turn up the geese!!! More ambience.
- Guitar sounds kinda thin.
- 1:00 – woah the track just opened way up with more production, what a fun surprise!
- 1:26 L/R strum guitars sound real thin.
- 1:46 I’d try making your vocal louder, and more verb-y! by 2:11 the level sound right, but would be cool w more verb
- 2:30 – deeeeyumn! Chills! Love this progression and the soft low end kick booty is wonderful. Love all the claps and snaps and textures.
- 3:11 ending vocals, again more dreamy verb. Vocals in general also sound a bit thin. Try some Waves R-Bass (maybe set to 100-200hz) on the vocal and the ac guitars to fill them out with more body.
SOOOO beautiful, brother!!!! Seriously, what a treat to listen to. Thank you so much for sharing your magic with us all!
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Thank you guys so much for your thoughtful notes. I agree w/ all of them and will get to work making revisions.
As for the reverb on the vocals at the end — I feel that too! I made it dry thinking about the video (I think the video is effective kind of coming back to the raw audio at the end, like bookends) but I’m thinking I’m going to just render two versions — a video version without verb at the end and added verb ending for the actual audio release! Gives parallel processing a whole new meaning!
As far as all of your other comments, they are all things that totally make sense to me! I’m not sure if I can get more geese, because they were just in the actual recording. And Dana – yes I agree that the guitar in the intro seems very thin. It’s a challenge because the guitar itself is a very thin sounding instrument and I wasn’t able to record it with a very good set up obviously. I EQ’d out a lot of of the lower frequencies to reduce wind rumbling, but as a result, I think it makes the guitar sound extra thin. I’ll take another look at it. Paul – this is one of the reasons I found your post about stemming out the acoustic guitar in processing it the way you did to be so intriguing. I feel like a technique like you shared could really benefit my recordings like this one, where I’m not able to record a great sound at the source, but maybe with some of your mixing fanciness, I could make it sound a lot fuller! Very cool! Thanks again!
❤
JBear
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GesseBear,
Snowday would be the perfect song to utilize this guitar magic and push it even further.
Yes, the acoustic is thin sounding but in the context of the creation of your song, indispensable. I didn’t hear it as a big issue. Are my standards low? I don’t think so. Some men would look at a freckle-faced woman and say “splotchy face ginger.” Me, I tend to fall in love. To each his own.
What if… we could grab the iPhone recording and separate out the acoustic guitar from the critters flying around and your breath and then set it aside temporarily?
Then we take your current project and strip away the smooth electric guitar musings with the intent of using its characteristics to make the acoustic guitar sound similarly?
WTF? you may say.
Part of the AI capability allows imparting the audio characteristics of thing A to be imparted onto thing B. That’s the basic nut of AI mastering software. How does my hobbyist level recording compare to professionally-recorded and chart-topping songs of a similar genre?
What if… we applied that thinking / technique to a single track? The in-the-wild recording of your beater guitar might could shapeshift into some hybrid that sits invisibly amongst the others.
You down?
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Yo Paul!
You’re blowin’ my mind ovah here!!! I’m not totally sure I fully understand what you’re getting at, but I think I’m following! You’re saying — somehow through AI technology you could apply the characteristics of my acoustic guitar to the electric guitar? Maybe I’m not following correctly? I’m more than happy to stem out any tracks you might want to tinker with, and you could show me what you have in mind! You know I’m always game to learn new things! Just let me know!
In terms of timing, I need to finish this song today so I can get it sent out in this month’s newsletter (which you will receive 😃) – so I’m going to do my best to make the revisions that you and Dana suggested and put it to bed. I ended up purchasing R-Bass after @dana suggested using it, and I’m currently trying to figure out the best settings. That’s a pretty crazy tool for bass enhancement, btw!
I found one of the coolest things about giving myself the challenge and deadline of producing one song/video a month for is that, even though the final “product” might not reach it’s full potential, the process keeps me moving forward, learning more, and growing. And then onto the next one! (Geyser was actually supposed to be this month’s song but got delayed – but I’m hoping maybe I’ll do that one next month!)
Let me know if you want any stems to mess around with!
Best,
Gesse
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Yes, it is mind expanding and free of the potential jail time.
I’m thinking I can impart the characteristics of the smooth jazzy electric guitar onto the bones of the acoustic. We lose the thinness that exist.
I could use wav files of the nice sounding electric, A stereo stem of whatever makes up that sound, including multiple mics and verb and subgroup processing, if any.
In addition, I want a raw version of iPhone recording of the acoustic. I’ll do the high passing and treat the geese humanely in the process.
I am super curious to explore this process. I won’t make your deadline but @dana can always replace the audio file if I pay dirt and you want to incorporate it after the fact.
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Awesome! As soon as I finish up a couple things this week I’ll bounce those and DM you – I’ll probably send you a dropbox link!
Best,
JLew
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Awaiting the phone recorded AC guit to proceed with my Franken guitar experiment. My RX-11 doesn’t have the module I’m needing but I can can grab an advanced version free trial. I’ve heard it ake a bandwidth limited voice and recreate the undertones to make it full bodied. Should be perfect on your high passed beater gt.
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Here’s my updated version:
I’m going to include what I did for revisions in case anybody finds it interesting…
DANA notes
1. Turn up the geese!!! More ambience.
I was able to find some birds “in the clear” from when I wasn’t playing the guitar and I layered them in, I think it helps!)
2. Guitar sounds kinda thin.
Agreed. I really struggled with this, because I had to high pass the crap out of it to get rid of the wind from the storm, a lot of low end rumble in general. I tried R-Bass and also EQ, but it just added a lot of low end and muddiness.
3. 1:26 L/R strum guitars sound real thin.
I had hi-passed them a lot and boosted a lot of the high end as well in an effort to put them in a different part of the mix, trying to separate them from all of the other guitar parts going on, but I agree, I think I overdid it. I ended up reducing the high shelf I had going on which mellowed them out a bit. I think it definitely helps!
4. 1:46 I’d try making your vocal louder, and more verb-y! by 2:11 the level sound right, but would be cool w more verb
I made the vocal louder and more verby as well, hopefully it helped!
5. 3:11 ending vocals, again more dreamy verb. Vocals in general also sound a bit thin. Try some Waves R-Bass (maybe set to 100-200hz) on the vocal and the ac guitars to fill them out with more body.
I added the R-Bass to all of my vocals! What a huge difference that made! That plug-in is so cool! I don’t quite understand how it’s different than just an EQ, but it’s really great and I can’t wait to use it on bass as well! I know that R-bass is some kind of subharmonic saturation or something. Maybe if we ever did a zoom on the subject of saturation you could include a little lesson on how you use that plug-in? I tried putting reverb at the end, but I really missed the super dry raw ending. just conceptually I liked the idea of ending it back in reality! I did try it though! Also, re: Paul’s suggestion – I put a very, very subtle low frequency reverb throw on my last note.
Paul notes
1. There’s that metallic percussion beast at 2:35 that sticks out. Its level drops later but that early entrance dominates the mood. I wonder if high passing that thing, dropping its level considerably and slopping it up with a long plate verb wouldn’t make it sound like cracking ice on the river.
I wasn’t sure exactly which metallic percussion element you were talking about, because there are so many, but there were two in that section that stood out to me after you commented on it — so I address both of them. the first was that loud backbeat swoosh that alternated with the hand claps, and the other is a quarter note metallic pulse from a tambourine. both of them were very piercing around 5-8k so I ended up using multi brand compression on that frequency to attenuate it. basically a De-Esser for the percussion. I think it helped smooth it out a bit. additionally I took your advice and used a long plate reverb on those backbeat swoosh hits. that was a great idea. Thanks.
2. The last “hah” of your chant at the songs finale is crying out for that same reverb treatment. I just want to end back where I was when I first heard the geese.
I went very subtle on this because I tried a big reverb and it kind of bothered me, I ended up creating a reverb that basically just bloomed around my fundamental pitch and if you listen closely, you can kind of hear it bloom at the very end.
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Hey guys
thanks so much guys for all of your great feedback and advice — I don’t know what I do without y’all!
once I finish the video I’ll upload it to this thread as well so folks can see the location, process, etc.
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I didn’t even listen to the new version before this reply to say that you just set a new standard in replying. I think the format you used, quoting the listeners’ comments and then addressing them one by one is superb.
PT
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This reply was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by
Paul Tucci. Reason: spelling
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This reply was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by
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You’ve created a very vibey invocation of sorts. You effectively take the listener on a journey. The use of or amount of verb on the voice is immaterial. There’s a valid experience either way. Different rules apply, it’s not a pop song.
👏 👏
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Jesse,
Sorry to say that the geese did not survive the AI separation process. The new software is so smart ass now that the error message said something about killing two birds with one keystroke.
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Jesse,
I ditched the AI and took another swing at your piece. This time it was all from inside my head.
PT
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haha! Nice! That’s a whole lotta wild life you got in there!! I think I might have heard a UFO too…?
❤️
JB
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Adding the video to this thread as well in case anybody wants to see what it all looked like…
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Jesseeeeee!! This is so freaking gorgeous, musically and visually – it came out amazing!!!
It sounds great, looks beautiful, love the creative vid editing, love all the cool things and hard work you put in on this audiovisual masterpiece! That solo section with once the groove is in with those sweet chord changes gives me a smile and goosebumps every time. 💜
Proud of u, brother! Keep em comin!!
PS – @-PT I’m just seeing your “freckles” tag hahaha. I gotta say, that quote of yours above about freckles and falling in love was genius and hit me right in the heart. I am on the same end as you of the freckles-love spectrum.
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I like that you interpreted the splash as a UFO falling from the sky. I was going for the comedic moment and that was a royalty-free goose related sound effect I found. You wrote the ending better than I did. Gracias.
PT
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🛸👽🦤😂
Very cool, @-PT ! All that is missing is some VO by David Attenborough (or better still given the UFO splash mystery, Werner Herzog!)
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