Member Dana Nielsen
MemberForum Replies Created
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Really gorgeous, man! Always such a treat to hear what you’re cookin up, and always such a fun musical journey!
Here are the things that struck me while listening at medium-low volume on my living room stereo while the Santa Ana winds blow through an open window at midnight with all the lights off:
- try turning down the whoosh sfx in the intro. I love that effect and the way it pans across the stereo field and sets the stage for the song! But I felt like its volume skewed my perspective once the vocal entered, making the vocal seem too quiet. My hunch is that if u tucked in that effect so that the vocal entrance is big, proud, and upfront as a “you have arrived at your destination” moment, then all will be well.
- If I were producing this (which I am not, so, as with everything that tumbles out of my brain and onto these forums, take or leave as u wish!) I would spend an hour in Melodyne buffing and polishing the lead vocal — in a totally natural-sounding way, of course, per my Natural Vocal Production course, so that your listener cannot tell it’s been worked on. I would also tighten up the timing of the main tom/percussive rhythm pattern that drives the song. It’s a bit rushy-draggy, especially when it first enters. I find that gently, lovingly touching up things like rhythm, timing, and pitch – without going too far – gives the listener a sense of calm and confidence in the record, which really goes a long way.
- As the song progressed I was searching for more “bass instrument”. I was like, “where’s the root?” Part of my auditory confusion was probably due to the resonant notes of the toms that ring out – and are very cool. But I wanted some kind of bass guitar or bass synth holding down the root notes, even louder than the tom notes, to more easily identify the chord changes. I’m sure you’ve got something in the mix doing that, but it just wasn’t coming across at low-ish volume in my living room. So maybe turn up the bass and/or, if it’s a super sub-y bass, try adding some harmonic distortion to the bass which will often create partials/harmonics that accentuate the pitch and perceived loudness of the instrument, helping it pop on smaller speakers or on large speakers at low volume.
Anywho, that’s what I got for ya! Excellent work homey! You AND @nate! This is sounding really cool already, man. I look fwd to hearing it out in the world soon!! ⚡️🤘🤓
mixprotege.com
Grammy-nominated producer, mixer, engineer, Dana Nielsen teaches how to comp, tune, and mix natural-sounding vocals and acoustic guitar.
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Joe! This is such a big improvement, man, great work! Fantastic video too – love seeing the behind the scenes!
I first listened to the audio file and then watched the video. Sounds like the same mix(?) but the video is much louder, which I enjoyed. I felt like the mp3 audio-only file was nicely balanced but definitely on the quiet side, mastering-wise. Whatever loud-sauce you added to the youtube audio was nice!
I love what you’ve done here with the mix. And no, I don’t think there’s too much low end. It is prominent, but in a great way … deep, not overbearing, and evenly distributed on the elec bass (i.e. I don’t hear certain notes popping out with more low end than other notes 👌).
All the instruments feel balanced nicely, the mix is lively and exciting, really well done!
The only mild curiosities I had were:
- Stereo Width: the intro felt wide and exciting, but once the first A-section began the mix felt quite mono-ish throughout the song except for a few occasional splashes of sound into the Left or Right speaker. I would experiment with stereo placement of some of the synthy or supplemental guitar textures to paint a wider soundscape.
- The tom fills, on the other hand, were very stereo! haha. And possibly a touch too loud. Given that the mix overall isn’t super wide, I’d keep the toms panned a bit closer to center so they feel attached to the drums and the band.
- The compression on the snare works in general, as it keeps those brushes motoring steadily and evenly throughout the song. However, I really hear the compressor clamp down any time there’s a snare fill, and as a listener I want those fills to breathe and get louder. I would try raising your snare compressor’s threshold (so the compressor activates on fewer hits) and/or decreasing the ratio (which would effectively reduce the intensity of that “compressed sound”). For natural-sounding snare compression you might try 3:1 or 4:1. Ooh, another option if your compressor has a “blend” or “mix” knob, is to keep your compression setting as it is, and just adjust the compressor’s mix knob to like 50%.
I can’t remember if I shared this with you already, but feel free to check out the recent “Compression Settings By Ear” Zoom in the Live Event Replays forum 🤘
Again, great work on the mix! And amazing song and chops, man!!
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Jesse!
I just re-uploaded your original mp3 and re-listened, too. Such an absolute priceless gem of a song!
I think the M-S guitar sounds really beautiful, nice work! You might try EQ’ing the Mid mic with some extra low end to help the guitar feel a bit richer and closer (low-end often creates a perspective for the listener that feels like they’re right next to you, listening to you play. By reducing low-end you can also create the illusion that an instrument is farther away). I remember you using a clip-on DPA mic in previous recordings which rendered an unforgettable depth and low-end to your guitar. For future M-S adventures, you might try a combination of DPA as your ‘close mic’ and set your M-S a foot or two away as– not so much a ‘room mic’, but — a stereo ‘mid mic’. Just make sure to move the M-S configuration closer or farther from the guitar to adjust for optimal phase coherence (and/or use your fav phase alignment tool during mixing). Again, these are just some ideas for next time! Your guitar recording sounds lovely here, as is.
For your vocal, I’m really missing some low-end richness. I hear a lot of S’s and mid-range information in the vocal but when your melody goes low I lose the fundamental pitch. Perhaps some thoughtful EQ, compression and de-essing will help richen things up and even things out.
If I’m wearing my Producer hat, I’d say to you: Jesse, this beautiful song with its endearing sentiment should feel like a hug. A rich, warm embrace for your target audience of one, your sweet son. Let the tones be rich, deep, and even on the darker side if helpful to create that sense of warmth and closeness. For vocal mic’ing especially, this is a perfect opportunity to utilize your large-diaphragm cardioid-patterned condenser microphone’s proximity effect. Position your mic a few inches from your mouth, with a good pop-filter in between and listen to the low-end in your voice bloom. Proximity effect (and EQ) is how radio DJs and podcasters get your car’s subwoofer rumbling solely using their voice haha. Some plugins that help me create or accentuate this vocal sound after-the-fact during mixing are Waves R-Bass or Little Labs VOG (Voice Of God). So if you’re not interested in re-recording your vocal very close to the mic for proximity effect, you might experiment with one of those.
Lastly, for extra inspo, this song popped into mind as I was writing and thinking about the ‘warm hug’ vocal and guitar sound. Seth recorded this, I co-produced and mixed. (Tidal links allow u to choose your preferred streaming service, so feel free to click on it even if you don’t have Tidal … yet 😉).
https://tidal.com/browse/track/244397958?u
Keep up the incredible work, brother!!
tidal.com
Seth Avett - I Slept All Night by My Lover
Listen to I Slept All Night by My Lover on your streaming service
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Awe MAN! I LOVE that you guys are in each other’s orbit. I hope to hear a @Nate x @JoeRobinson collab sometime soon! You guys are both cuh-razy talented!
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Jesseeeeeeeeee!!! This is utterly beautiful and perfect and touching and creative and I just love it so much!! What an immensely talented family you have. This video and song and artwork are a treasure; a little time capsule of beauty for your family to enjoy forever and ever 🥰. It’s been a real joy to observe your progress during the mixing phase here in the community!!! BRAVO!!!! 💜
PS – Hope you don’t mind I “merged” your new discussion thread, the one featuring your video above, into this existing discussion thread, cause I love how people can start at the top, read through all the comments, listen to your revisions, and then enjoy the final masterpiece at the end of the thread! So damn cool. Proud of u homey!
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yeah!!! Really great, brother! So fun hearing this song take shape, and great work!
Re your question about the master, I hear what u mean about being a bit mushy, especially when I compare to your fav references. Nuthin a bit of Pultec EQP1A 10k couldn’t fix! Prob set the width to medium (12 o’clock) or wide (7 o’clock) for a nice gentle top end boost. And you know how I roll … don’t be afraid of those knobs – push em as far as they’ll go in order to get a sense of what they sound like, and don’t be mad if your setting “looks wrong” but “sounds right!”
🤘
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Hey Joe! Sorry for the slow response .. been absolutely swallowed up by an intense project, working nonstop. I’m so glad the tips were helpful!! And heck yeah, that Pro-L2 on the youtube sounds great!
Re your questions:
- LUFS schmufs. 😂. At least while mixing, I’m never looking at LUFS (tho w/ my TC Electronic Clarity meter I am always aware of what the LUFS are, at a glance). I do look at LUFS when adding my final limiter to create a loud reference mix to send to the artist, or to upload directly to distrokid/youtube/etc. if self-releasing and self-mastering. At that point, I don’t have a target I’m shooting for, I just want it to be loud and exciting and to jump out of the speakers without limiting artifacts. It’s hard to answer and to teach, since for me the overall loudness of a track should reflect the music. For example, it would be simple to make a ukulele and whispery indie vocal track WAAAY louder than a heavy nu-metal band track because the ukulele/voc track is soft and gentle with not much low end and very few if any transients to contend with like snare and kick hits. But for me, the question is: just because you CAN make it louder, SHOULD you?
- My “small speakers” are more like desktop computer speakers, pushed together in mono and off to the side of the room, not in the sweet spot. They’re Radio Shack Realistic speakers from the early 90s haha.
- Re automation … yes! I love the way you described that … “playing the band!” That’s exactly what I do too man!
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Jeremy! Here’s a link to Chaos to Clarity. I haven’t shared it far and wide just yet, cause it’s kinda a rough draft and I know I can make it better, clearer, more images, etc. Also I wanna have a link in the pdf to @Nate‘s initial Mixing forum post and wonderful question which inspired me to make this pdf — which is entirely based on my responses to Nate in that forum.
But … until I have a chance to improve it … here it is! Enjoy!
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Declutter any mix in 4 simple steps!
Bring definition and focus to any mix with my 4-step
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Awe, that is so cool, @JoeRobinson! That right there is totally one of the main goals of the Member Spotlight forum (and Mix Protégé at large): that by working together, helping each other out, and documenting our progress here, we’re creating a searchable database of helpful mixing insights for all members – including those who weren’t a part of the original discussion but who found it later by searching keywords for help on a specific topic..
(… which btw, is also why I try to tag each of these discussions with related keywords like instrument, related technique, suggested plugins, etc.)
When I read your comment that you found @JLEW‘s progress here helpful for your own endeavors, that brought a big smile to my face! Thanks! 🙏🏻⚡️💜
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Bravo, Jesse!!! As I was listening, this ad from our childhood popped into my head.
(I also thought it’d be a good way for me to test uploading an image, which I’ve noticed has given you and @-PT trouble lately – possibly having to do with the website’s image optimizer plugin 🤷🏻♂️)
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😂😂😂 haha
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Nice work, Jesse! Some great improvements in this v2 version! I made a quick video demonstrating my thoughts and suggestions… 😂
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Love the video, homey!! And excellent question.
As @-PT mentioned, what you’re discovering is gain staging (🥳), which refers to how we manage gain as it is applied (or reduced) at many different points in a signal path on its way to our ears.
Your video example shows one sound source with one send and one return in a digital audio workstation, where we don’t have the typical analog issues to contend with such as Signal to Noise ratio (S/N as commonly abbreviated like in Paul’s reply). As such, the answer to your specific video question is: there would be no difference. Kinda like, “do you get a different answer adding 1+9 vs. 9+1?” Nope. In a perfect, zero-noise digital world, they will both equal 10.
However, even in the digital world, here are 2 caveats that come to mind right away:
- When you’re sending multiple tracks to the same return, each with their own unique send level, the gain staging balancing act becomes much more complex. As a starting point, keep your return faders at 0db / Unity Gain and use the send pots/faders on your individual tracks to achieve the sound you want. Later on, if you feel you like the sound of the reverb but would love a little less of it overall, you can easily turn down the return fader for a quick win. Just be mindful: if you do that over and over your gain staging will get F-d up lol, as you’ll end up wanting to add more reverb to a track whose send is already at 100% cause you’ve turned down the reverb return fader too far over time.
- There are certain situations when I deliberately keep my send levels high and my return level low, even in the digital domain. Any time the effect(s) on the return path have some kind of harmonic distortion element or compression element I want to feed them lots of signal (via the sends). But maybe I don’t want the resulting effect so loud in the mix, so I will turn down the return fader — Or, if the final plugin inserted on the return has an ‘output’ knob I might utilize that instead or in addition to the fader … again, gain staging.
Hope these tips help!
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💜🤓 Woo!!