[Dana Nielsen]

Yooo! Ur en fuego, homey! Love that. 🔥 Gives me “hey mickey” vibes, meets Peter Bjorn & John, and lots of other great influences too.

I just gave a listen on my laptop (recent model MBP) and it sounds vast and “partytime!” I’ll have a real listen in the studio tomorrow (err, later today at this point) and follow up with any ideas.

Here’s one for now:

• The telephone bgvs stood out as a little loud, tho that could have been accentuated by my laptop speakers. Also might be fun to swap the telephone for something more unexpected/fresh … maybe push them in the opposite direction with some sort of woofy grimy dark saturation instead? Little more Strokes, little less Beatles, perhaps — Just a thought! Telephone bvs felt a bit “expected” to me, and those bgvs might be an easy opportunity for something slightly more “experimental” if ur feeling cray. 😵‍💫 ⚡️ 🤘

[Dana Nielsen]

Awesome, Paul! Sounds great, and that is soooo cool about Ozone vocal automation WITHIN a stereo file – those izotope folks are straight-up wizards.

Really nice work on the mix (and post-mix magic-rebalance AI master??? Who knows what to call these new processes… haha). I’d love to hear a bit of the audience reaction before or during the fade-out. Even if the audience is only coming thru the stage mics it’d be cool as a listener to feel that raw, live crowd energy! Just a thought.

Great stuff!

[Dana Nielsen]

Patrick! Welcome, man! I know you’ve been here a while but stoked you decided to share this audio with the community for some creative feedback and ideas. 🙌

Love the piece and the playing and I really dig the sound of this piano – it’s an upright, right? I’m also curious how you mic’ed it as there are so many fun (and sometimes daunting) ways to mic an upright. Just curious – I think you did a nice job keeping things in phase and capturing the stereo width.

My main thoughts are:

• The mix feels overly loud, overly compressed. I would try dialing the compressor and/or limiter back a good bit so that you have a healthy “appropriately loud for a piano” signal, but without audible compression and set your mastering limiter (if using) so that your master fader meters still show a nice amount of movement (i.e. dynamic range).
• Feels a bit left-heavy. This may be due to the range of the performance (hands were playing in the center-left portion of the keyboard), and that all makes sense and nothing wrong with that, especially if the song/performance moves around into the higher (right side) of the keyboard at some point so things feel balanced by the end of the piece. If, however, the whole solo piano performance stays in that center-left part of the keyboard and there are no additional overdubs added to fill out the rest of the stereo spectrum, I’d typically be inclined to turn up the right channel (or turn down the left) until I’m generally getting an equal volume out of the left and right speakers respectively. That way as a listener I don’t end up feeling fatigued in one ear, or off-balance somehow. These are personal creative philosophical decisions tho, and certainly a case could be made that “no, man, I want the recording to represent the natural stereo state of the instrument as it was played!” and that’s cool too.
• Tonally, i think there’s room to add a good bit of top end. Try a simple, broadband, Pultec EQP-1A (or similar) 10k boost and see if you can bring out some of the shimmer-y sparkly top end.

I look forward to hearing how this mix develops! Keep it up, man!! ⚡️

[Dana Nielsen]

Heck yeah, brother!! Can’t wait to hear more! 💜

[Dana Nielsen]

Haha – 1am I’m just getting started … lol. Thanks so much, @Nate!!

[Dana Nielsen]

Ayyyyye! So glad u dug it, man!

Bezos vs. Waves LOLOL! Yeah that IM Pusher is a bit of a sleeper – i never hear it mentioned ever, anywhere, haha, but it’s a handy lil’ tool I’ve gotten a lot of use out of over the years.

And the SoundRadix stuff is very good. Historically, I like to sort out all that phase stuff by ear using the UAD Little Labs IBP so I can sweep around and find what I like. But since getting the SR Auto-align plugin I’ve used it a lot for a quick and easy fix.

Also, there are many times I don’t need to phase align the Trigger and Kick tracks. Sometimes the 180º flips within the plugin do the trick. But depending on the samples, sometimes the phase is in between 0º and 180º and some heftier tools are needed, as was the case in this instance.

I would keep vocals out of the pump chain … unless it sounds cool having them pumpin’ with the track, then leave ’em in! No rules! (well, maybe one rule: you don’t want the kick bussed to the pump aux input when it is the source of the sidechain key input… otherwise you’d be working against yourself) 😉

Keep up the great work!! ⚡️

[Dana Nielsen]

Boom! Lemme know what you you all think. I’m curious:

1. if you’re into the resulting kick vibes
2. your favorite or preferred method of drum triggering, sample replacement, Splice hunting, and/or sound mining

[Dana Nielsen]

Yeah man, wild re different audio codecs for different tiers, right? I knew about this but had forgotten about it before playing around with Streamliner where they let you hear the difference between the free and premium codecs on each platform. It does make a big difference!

Another badass feature is by enabling the “Artifacts” button it will solo the artifacts so you can really hear what’s being lost (errr .. added as the case may be). It’s helped train my ears to hear that stuff and is pretty dang helpful to be able to preview those artifacts while mixing in realtime.

Tidal DOES have a hifi plan, and as of just a few weeks ago they stopped charging more for it!!!! It was such a fun day when I got that email that said “your paid plan now includes HiFi for no additional money” – i mean … gotta love when a company says “here, have more for the same price, you’re welcome”. There’s a whole lot more to love about Tidal too – it’s my fav. I even made a video about it a while back because I’m so thankful they’re surprisingly still the only DSP I know of who display full album credits.

Re platform-specific mastering … nah, not that I’m aware of. I’ve worked with tons of heavyweight mastering engineers on big budget records and there tends to be a single “digital master” and not one for Spotify and one for Apple, etc. Several years ago, “Mastered for iTunes” was a big deal and I think you had to get certified (and maybe even pay for the ability to use that moniker?), but in my experience lately that stuff doesn’t come into play. It’s just “digital master” and if applicable “vinyl master” and “ATMOS master”. That said, it’s entirely possible that after I’m done with a project the label steps in directly with the mastering engineer and requests all kinds of platform specific deliverables I have no knowledge about lol – but i don’t think that’s the case.

[Dana Nielsen]

I’m so stoked man!! Hit me up in the private Prep School Forum with any questions, requests, or ideas related to the course and/or downloads! 🙏🏻

[Dana Nielsen]

I love it! So much great progress man – sounding soooo good!

… but the kick lolol …

I’m totally sold on the idea of electronic kick on this track, Odezsa style. I just think this particular kick sample isn’t right yet – and that’s such a huuuuge part of what will ultimately tie it all together and sell the whole concept of the badass acoustic-dance banger it is!

If you’re willing to post 2 stems – mix without kick, and kick solo’ed – I’ll make a quick video demo of what I would do 🤓

But dude … fantastic job. Noodling around with electronic kicks is a piece of cake compared to the daunting feat of blending all those live instruments and vocals the way you have. 🙌

[Dana Nielsen]

right hand / treble feels a bit quieter to me than the left hand / bass. Which, again, is totally fine if your intent was to set your L/R mic pres at a matched level to capture the instrument exactly as it was played in the room (this performance naturally has more left hand / bass action going on than right hand / treble stuff, so it makes sense that it’s playing back left-heavy). But as a personal preference when it’s solo piano with no additional instruments, I tend to work toward an even Left/Right balance for the listener. These are preferences are purely philosophical tho, and there are no “right” answers, so feel free to disregard and go with your gut!

[Dana Nielsen]

Hey man!

Great questions and observations about streaming sound quality when used as reference mixes.

In general, I don’t worry too much about that since I’m not spending much time listening to the references while mixing – I just spot check very quickly, get a blast of quick inspiration about frequency response or vocal/snare balance or low end etc, and then I pop back over to my mix.

I’m also not loading my streaming references into an analyzer like Ozone which can match and apply similar settings, tho I could imagine that’s a helpful tool! If you are doing that as part of your process I understand your concern about the loss of finer audio details in streamed files.

Also worth noting: streaming services always deliver higher quality audio to paying subscribers. For me, as a paying schmuck of like half-a-dozen premium streaming services, I find they all sound pretty fantastic (and I always have Normalization setting set to OFF). If, however, you’re referencing audio from a free-tier or add-supported tier of a streaming platform you may very well hear poopy audio degradation.

For references that I really love and/or are critical to a specific job, I tend to purchase the ref off the iTunes store and drop the full-res file into my client folder where I can drag it into ADPTR Metric A/B or straight into my session timeline.

Another fascinating invaluable tool by ADPTR is Streamliner which allows you to preview your mix in realtime using all the popular streaming platform codecs, both free- and premium-tier codecs.

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ADPTR AUDIO Streamliner

NEW VERSION 1.1 - Codec auditioning, automatic level matching, and state-of-the-art loudness and dynamics metering to get the perfect master for all major streaming services.

[Dana Nielsen]

Haha – Fairy Dust plugin… gonna add that to my to-do list!

Yeah, for vocal processing I always have these aux input chains set up and readily available (pro tools templates, track presets and workflow included in the Prep School course):

• Slap
• Delay
• Reverb
• “Dolby” (silky top-end aux using something like Waves Aphex Aural Exciter. Years past I used a modified hardware Dolby-A unit, which is in my garage collecting dust since going full ITB with my mixes, but the track name remained)
• “Dim D” (stereoizer type processing using something like UAD Dimension D or Gem Mod by Overloud)

I certainly don’t always use ALL of these FX returns on my vocals, but they’re there for me to try out at any time, and I find I can pretty much get whatever sound I’m going for using a combination of these elements.

Can’t wait to hear your next mix update!! And great BGV arranging, @Nate, you bad boy!!

mixprotege.com

PREP SCHOOL

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[Dana Nielsen]

Nice, @Pat! This is sounding clearer, cleaner, less compressed, and less “loud”. Nice work!

I think you could still bring up the right-channel fader to even out the stereo image so that the volume is more or less equal coming out of the left speaker and the right speaker. (Right now I feel like the balance is left-heavy).

Here are two ways I address left-right balance issues on stereo sources like pianos or drum overheads:

1. Adjust gain using a fader: if you recorded your piano onto two mono tracks, one for the mic on the left side and one mic for the right, then you can simply push the Right channel fader up to make the right side louder.
2. Adjust gain using a mono Trim plugin: if you recorded your piano into your DAW using a single “stereo audio track” you might be scratching your head like, “but Dana… there’s only ONE PIANO FADER!” 🎚️🤔 If you’re using Pro Tools, just add a mono Trim plugin and unlink the left and right channels within the plugin so you can adjust each channel independently. Pro Tip: This is also a great way for flipping the polarity (i.e. “phase”) between the left and right channels of a stereo track.

[Dana Nielsen]

Great advice, Paul, on the detailed headphone listening – always a smart move and great for catching those pesky rumbles and unwanted ambient sounds. I hadn’t noticed these things on my studio speakers at low volume, but that’s also why headphones are such a helpful microscopic/QC check! 🎧