Member Dana Nielsen
MemberForum Replies Created
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Also, FYI, be sure to subscribe to the Events calendar to automatically add upcoming Mix Protégé events directly into your preferred calendar app! ⚡️🤘
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Hey Drew!
What a great question: To be or not to be – be – be – be… 🎤🎶
@-PT raised some great follow-up questions that might shed light on why delay isn’t working for you as expected (thanks, Paul!), and here are some of my own thoughts and suggestions:
1. The “Pro” Advice Conundrum
There are a million “pros” on YouTube these days, and their advice can be all over the place—some great, some… not. I love that you’re watching, learning, and spotting trends, but more importantly, that you’re testing things out for yourself and letting your ear and intuition guide you. That’s what matters.
Keep in mind, these so-called “pros” aren’t mixing your song. They might not even work in your genre. What works in Top 40 pop or R&B doesn’t necessarily translate to an acoustic, folk, or bluegrass mix. Dig?
2. My Approach to Delay & Reverb
Personally, I always have delay and reverb options ready in every mix session—across every genre. That doesn’t mean I’ll use them, but they’re available if I need them.
For a deeper dive, check out my 5-step approach to FX while mixing:
🔗 Dialing in Delay & Reverb—During vs. After Mixing
When mixing vocals, I usually settle into one of four categories:
1️⃣ With reverb
2️⃣ With delay
3️⃣ With both reverb & delay
4️⃣ Bone friggin’ dry!
And guess what? In acoustic genres, #4 is often my favorite.
3. Why I Love a Bone-Dry Vocal
A completely dry vocal can be a powerful choice, especially in acoustic, folk, or bluegrass styles. Here’s why:
🎙 Intimacy – A dry vocal makes you feel like you’re in the same room as the singer, like they’re singing just for you.
💬 Honesty & Vulnerability – Even if the vocal has been comped and tuned (naturally, of course! 😉 See: Natural Vocal Production), leaving it dry makes it feel raw, exposed, and authentic. No fancy reverbs = nothing to hide.
🎭 Contrast – One of the most underrated tools in mixing is contrast. Dry vs. wet, loud vs. soft, clean vs. distorted. A bone-dry vocal at the start makes any reverb or delay you introduce later way more noticeable and exciting. Think of it like an EDM riser before the bass drops—it builds anticipation and impact.
4. The Right Way to Use Delay Without Losing Clarity
If you do want to use delay without muddying your vocal, here are a few key things to try:
✅ Use an Aux Send & Return – Instead of inserting delay directly on the vocal track (which forces you to blend wet/dry signals), route it through an aux send. That way, your dry vocal stays intact while you control the delay separately. Always set the delay plugin to 100% wet when using this method.
✅ Dial it in on Headphones – Mixing in headphones lets you hear the delay in more detail. It also helps you realize you probably don’t need as much as you think! A good sign you’ve nailed it? When someone listens and says, “You should try a quarter-note delay throw on that high vocal line!” And you just smile because it’s already there—subtly working its magic.
✅ Try a Long Pre-Delay on Reverb – If your vocal gets lost in reverb, try adding a long pre-delay (e.g., 250ms). This creates a gap before the reverb tail kicks in, keeping the dry vocal upfront while still giving you that spacious effect. No pre-delay setting? Just insert a simple delay before the reverb.
5. The Verdict? No Delay = No Problem
So, back to your original question—are you a heretic for dropping vocal delay?
Heck no! There’s no “one-size-fits-all” rule in mixing. If your track sounds better without delay, trust your ears. It’s not about what’s “common” or “expected”—it’s about what works.
Hope this helps, Drew! And hope you don’t mind the long (and delayed 😬) response—mixing is an art, and art deserves some deep dives.
mixprotege.com
Dialing in Delay/Reverb in Mix (During vs After)
Do you feel like it's better to add delay and reverb as you go, or getting a good mix without it and then sprinkling in…
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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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What an excellent singer and songwriter she is!
Damn that minor-iv-chord pre-chorus setup is amazing. Great bridge and melodies and lyrics all around. 👏
Love learning more about your processing voodoo! Whatever you’ve done sounds excellent, man.
- 0:30-0:32 there are a couple guitar chords here that aren’t as full as the rest and I bet you could fly them from earlier in the verse if you wanted to. You know … since you have the guitar separated from the vocal, you Rip-X madman!
- Only other thing from me is wanting to hear more of that audience at the end. Turn that applause up loud and proud cause a) she deserves it – and so do you!, and b) it’ll really make listeners go “wait .. woah, that was live?! It sounded like a studio recording!” If the audience sound isn’t as robust there in your 2-track as needed, perhaps you could fly in some audience bits from her stage entrance or exit to supplement, with your 20ms widening perhaps!
Awesome stuff as always, @-PT! Thanks for sharing both your audio AND your process!!
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Can’t wait to hear this, Paul! I will re-upload your mp3 as soon as we locate it in our backup files – so sorry about that! Feel free to DM me the mp3 as well if you don’t see it updated here by the time you read this.
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Holmes!
OK, sorry so late to the party with actual feedback. I’ve been traveling tons and working my arse off lately. Currently in headphones in my hotel lobby in NYC catching up on all I’ve missed here on MP!! K … here are my headphone listen notes:
This Cloud
- Kick could hit a bit louder (layer in something on top of what u have going on already? Perhaps something round and punchy without too much top end, something that can punch thru the mix not too sub-y, that will punch you in the chest)
- 1:12 – love those “cloud” bgvs, nice touch!
- 1:28 – maybe something new for this chorus like a tambourine, to up the ante on the previous chorus
- 2:13 – there’s a momentary weird vocal “ooh” note that sounds out of key, right before or during “mouth is shaking”
- 2:30 – there’s the shaker I was looking for on the previous chorus! Maybe use the shaker for ch 2 and add an additional texture for the last choruses (cymbal crashes on downbeats maybe, and/or additional swing/breakbeat/90s-style perc loop texture). U could also add more movement or fills in the bass during the last dbl chorus for even more “final chorus is bigger than all the rest” type thing.
Everything else feels real nice, man!!! Great song, great production, great work!!
And those suggestions are just that … suggestions, ideas, brainstorms … my ears looking for just a little more subtle “structural” ear candy to keep things ever-building. 🤘
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Jesse! I agree with @shimmerisland‘s suggestions.
Sometimes that sax gets a bit lost when playing along with you and your melody. And is a bit dry compared to the wetness of everything else in the track.
When you and the sax are playing the melody, you both sound a bit over-compressed. Your burning solos sound nice and loud and less compressed, so maybe try that level and setting for the whole song for the guitar and sax and see what that’s like?
The snare is defs very crispy/bright compared to the rest of the instruments in the mix, so it’s hard to keep perspective with my comments. Part of me is like, “don’t change the snare! Add brightness and volume to everything else in the mix to match the snare!”
It’s really gorgeous and fun to listen to and I love the playing and the programming, man!!!!
Just easy little adjustments to bring it on home!
Great work!!
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Yeah dude! Always pumped to peep a new Shimmer Island jam and this does not disappoint! I gotta listen on my real speakers before offering any mix/level feedback, but for a late-night laptop listen it’s sounding bumpin and beautiful. Love that 90s-esque shuffle beat!
Will circle back soon once I’ve listened in my studio, homey. Great stuff, as always! 🤘
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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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🛸👽🦤😂
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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Awe, we missed you, Paul! Sorry I didn’t email ahead of time about this one – was actually surprised/delighted anyone showed up! 😂 I scheduled it on the Mix Protege calendar for my own testing purposes and lo and behold Joe and James must have previously subscribed to the calendar and they were there right on time, which was a lot of fun!
That said, I’m thrilled the “subscribe to calendar” feature works, which means less emailing for me, yay! Gonna try to get into a regularly scheduled Zoom flow via that calendar so hit that subscribe button to sync it with your calendar app and I’ll see your handsome face on the next one!
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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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@-PT I see what you mean, and thanks for alerting me to this (you too, @jlew)! And sorry, @shimmerisland for making your mp3 disappear! I’m looking into what caused this and a few other mp3s to have gone missing from the server — most likely cause is that when restoring the site from a backup there may have been a short window of days (and files) that hadn’t been backed up yet … but we’ll get to the bottom of it! Sorry for the inconvenience.
I built a quick “Report an Issue” form, which I’ll add to the website footer soon. Meantime, you can find it here: https://mixprotege.com/report-an-issue. Feel free to test it out if/when any of yall find a lil gremlin lurking in our midst! 🧟 ⚡️
Also! … @shimmerisland, I just realized that I have a copy of your “This Cloud” mp3! I’ll edit your original post, above, and re-upload it there so at least this particular gremlin will be fixed.
mixprotege.com
Use this form to report a technical issue with the website such as broken links or missing audio or video.
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Very cool intro idea, Paul! I didn’t mind @shimmerisland‘s abstract intro as it was, but I dig your version mucho as well! Curious what Jeremy thinks of your AI/RX wizardry… 🪄🦄