Member Dana Nielsen
MemberForum Replies Created
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Joe!
I remember this track from before (is that possible?) beautiful!
Yeah guitar a bit loud and maybe a bit bright midrange-y (could just be loudness)
try bass gtr up
distortion on guitar catches my ear – seems a bit agro for the vibe of the song (a darker gtr EQ might smooth this out. AND, it’s fine as-is – it just caught my ear a few times so I thought I’d mention)
snare – maybe try a darker sound with more fat bottom, dark n gut-punchy. try giving that snare a huge 60 or 100hz Pultec boost (medium to narrow bandwidth). ⚡️
You’ve really achieved all the clarity and brightness one could want (love it! Great job! That’s no easy feat). Now, my curiosity would be to warm it all up per the song’s feeling .. more like a “hug”, kinda similar comment as my reply to @jlew‘s recent post. See what it’s like to make all the tones rich and deep as you can without losing too, too much of your nice top end.
Here are a few Nir Felder tracks that come to mind from the albums I mixed for him, which have a similar chill brushes vibe, in case they spark any mix inspiration for ya:
- Longest Star (“III” album)
- Sea of Miracles (“III”)
- coronation (from “II” album)
After my own listening to those references just now, and then listening to your mix again, I think the main thing I’d focus on is the snare sound – getting it fatter, and maybe more depth to the bass guitar. The bass sounds good already, but due to the key and voicing on the bass, higher on the fretboard, sometimes I have to work extra hard to get that deep “root note” feeling to help round out a higher-voiced arrangement. Does that make any sense? 😂
Amazing playing, writing, arranging, man!! Love this!
🎚️🤘
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Paul!! What an incredible story and performance (and clothing optional details lol). Your post feels straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson book. And, man, sorry to hear Mr. Hippo is no longer with us – what a great voice! I love the original you posted and I dig the 2024 version too. I definitely hear some “digital stem separation” artifacts but it’s still a marvel to me what’s possible these days! And I dig the smooth low end you got on that bass/kick. Thanks so much for sharing (the mixes AND the stories behind the mixes!!). ⚡️🤓
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… and a follow-up IG post with some more ideas:
instagram.com
82 likes, 7 comments - mixprotege on August 22, 2023: "Been using a lot of different mic combinations lately to capture solo acoustic guitar. all in the same general configuration, all beautiful results in their own way!".
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Joe! This is so great! Technically, compositionally, musically, and microphonically (is that a word? haha). Bravo, man!
I love me some Blumlein stereo mic’ing! And you’ve captured a gorgeous, natural sound. Here are a couple things I noticed … super minor stuff!
- the stereo image feels ever-so-slightly left-heavy. Easy fix – just turn up the mic fader on the right (or if you’re using a stereo fader you could add a multi-mono trim plugin, unlink the left and right channels, and add a touch more gain to the right channel of the plugin)
- I’d love to hear more body in the low strings – more fundamental, more “note”. You could try adding EQ to boost the low end, but it’s easier to accomplish during recording by adjusting the mic(s) position. Often it’s a matter of vertical position of the diaphragm(s) — … though I’m realizing this is much easier to demonstrate visually than it is to describe in writing, haha. But basically, imagine if your blumlein setup was configured on one single mic stand, 6 inches from the strings, pointed at the neck of the guitar where the neck meets the guitar body. The sound is clear and well-balanced but the low strings sound a bit thin and under-represented. Solution: raise the mic stand an inch or two higher so that the mic diaphragms are more centered vertically on the low strings. And/or wear some loud, closed-back headphones and try moving your body up/down, left/right, fwd/back while you play, allowing you to *hear* the best mic position in realtime. When you’ve found the sound you like, hold that position and hit record!
I have lots of fav stereo acoustic guitar mic’ing techniques (I’ve always considered making a course or video series on that subject). I know @jlew has been experimenting a lot with that too these days, including some Mid-Side acoustic gtr recording.
All in all, I think your blumlein setup is sounding great!
Here’s an IG post I did a while back showing a stereo setup I devised for a solo slide acoustic guitar recording that worked well:
instagram.com
93 likes, 18 comments - danafrio on August 22, 2023: "Here’s the equipment and thought process i used to record acoustic slide guitar with Craig Jameson the other day 🎤 . . . #protoolshdx #atcloudspeakers #dcommand #producingmusic #recordingmusic #outboardgear #soundstudio … Continue reading
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Hey Bar! What a beautiful vibe this piece has. I’m listening on my AT headphones while resting in bed and couldn’t help but close my eyes and relax while the sounds washed over me. Very nice!
My main technical observation/suggestion has to do with the main guitar. There seems to be a low-frequency thumpy rumble that could easily be attenuated with a high-pass filter. At times it almost sounds like 50-60 Hz wind noise but, unless you recorded outside, I bet the mic just picked up some thumpy finger proximity or something. Anywho, should be an easy fix!
At times I wondered if the vocal and the bouzouki were a bit TOO hi-passed. They both sound great as-is, but if you’re interested you could experiment with adding a bit more body to the vocal and bouzouki (maybe 3db of 150-ish on the voice, and 5db of 250Hz-ish on the bouzouki? These frequencies and dBs are just guestimates).
As always, take it or leave it! haha. Really great work, both you and @sexton! 🙌
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Joe! I’m sorry I forgot to respond to this till now! Your Invisible Technique site is super pro and looks like a ton of amazing content! Are you u using Kajabi? How’s that been? I’d love to chat sometime about all that stuff and how that’s been going for you — looks like you’re crushing it!
And yeah a stereo guitar course would be a lot of fun – maybe even something we could work on together at some point.
Hope you’re doing great, man!
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BRAVA, Bar!! This came out so beautifully! Really great work. Everything sounds balanced and full and airy and verby and rich and calm, and is a delight to listen to! 🙌⚡️
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Awesome, Bar! This sounds really nice!
The last couple things I notice:
- at 0:40 there’s an odd subtle guitar note on the left side that always catches my ear
- during the final reverb tail fade-out at the end of the song there’s a subtle sound like hands letting go of the guitar chord. I would find a way to remove that for a cleaner ending.
- sometimes I wonder if the lead vocal is a little too loud against the track overall, and possibly a touch too bright. But I also like it a lot the way it is.
- the mix will sound even better with some gentle limiting to get it louder overall! I usually use a Fabfilter Pro-L2 plugin to get my mixes loud and proud (within reason, that is … this is a gentle song, so no need to go crazy with loudness, but I bet you could get another 6db of volume easily)
Again, great work, Bar!! And thanks for sharing with us!
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Nice, Paul! (as always) ⚡️
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Wow, dang… scenario B! That is a head-scratcher then! Keep us posted if you continue hearing this issue (um, without trying to psych yourself out too much lol)
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My pleasure, Nate! And way to persevere and work around those pesky troubleshooting issues! 💪🤓
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I hope your wife is recovering well, Paul! 😌
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Ah, yeah I get it! And true, none of these features are new to me either, as I’ve been making “digital stems” for years now using iZotope RX’s Music Rebalance. Ditto on the other “new” instruments added to Maschine V3.
I think what I’m realizing, however, is that unlike most users, I’ve always used Maschine outside of my main DAW (pro tools, Ableton) and so these V3 updates for me are like, “ok cool, thanks NI!”. In other words, even when I’m composing or beatmaking in Pro Tools, I prefer to run Maschine software as a standalone DAW rather than a plugin within Pro Tools. I just find it to be much more fun to use maschine when it’s untethered from my DAW. This is also why I’m loving Maschine+ lately, cause now I’m LITERALLY untethered from my whole computer! lol.
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YAAAY! Huge congrats on the release, @nategomoon, and great work, man! 🎉
1. For tuning, yeah, it’s hard to get the automatic pitch correction tools to do exactly what you want. Unless I’m looking for that T-Pain effect, I always do everything manually using Melodyne. You can watch my complete vocal Melodyne process in chapters 8 and 9 of the Natural Vocal Production course. Melodyne, to me, is the most flexible, most powerful pitch (and timing) correction software. It’s amazing.
2. Sound quality / Logic bounce: I saw your new thread in the MP Logic forum about this – thanks for posting that there! Curious to hear if other folks have had a similar experience. @michael and I have already weighed in there w some thoughts. 🤘
3. Plugin blips: not sure what’s going on with that and don’t know that particular plugin. But it could be worth making sure you have the most current version of the plugin (maybe a recent update addressed a “blip problem”). Also you could try raising your audio buffer size in Logic’s settings? Sometimes blips like that occur during playback when your CPU can’t keep up with demanding plugins on a low buffer setting.
Hopefully some of these suggestions will help! Keep us posted!
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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Oh, that is an important follow-up question for Nate: @nategomoon, when you notice the difference in high end punch on your bounces, are you listening on the exact same system, using the exact same outputs and speakers?
Scenario A: If you’re bouncing mixes out of Logic, in your studio where you mixed it, and noticing a sonic difference while listening to the bounce in your car or on your home stereo, then room/speaker calibration might be the solve, as @michael suggested.
Scenario B: Let’s say you’re mixing in Logic, in your studio, using a UAD Twin, outputs 1-2. You do a bounce of your mix using UAD 1-2. Then you open your bounce in Quicktime with your computer output set to UAD Twin 1-2. If you play back that quicktime using the same exact interface outputs, listening on the same speakers, does it sound any different from when you click over to Logic and play the live mix session from there? …. if so, the culprit may be in the Logic bounce settings and/or the youtube/gearspace/tedder conspiracy is real 😲😂.