Entourage Paul Tucci
EntourageForum Replies Created
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Jesse,
I have a question for you first. Did this clap emanate from the vibe players playing position? Or maybe where you were playing from.PT
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Where you been Mix-P friend?
I’m diggin’ the calming tempo, the warm tones, the atmospherics, and even the verb 🙂 Mix wise, I’m thinking two things to make it more vibe-y. One, the percussion feels rigid and canned. Almost like its fighting the guitar/Kb swell that rolls through. I think a vibe-y, half-time, quieter, sedate percussion approach would add to, not draw attention from what you’re playing on the guitar. More of the feel that the high hat player added. Subtle and way in the background. I’d be curious to see how the conflicting vibes change. What could you evoke if the kick drum sounded more like a quarter note cumulus cloud. Yes, I’m implying a verb on the kick. Perhaps the kick only on the 1 for a sparse drone feel.
Two, the snare drum is, there’s no polite way I’m aware of to say this … drier than a popcorn fart.
We should collaborate.
❤ @-PT
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Jesse,
Yes, I’m trying to convey the use of two different instances of the phone audio. One for the ambience of being live in the woods listening to the music so it doesn’t come across bone dry. (Who have I become?) If that stereo phone track needs a little EQ to help it talk with the music better, so be it. Anything that helps the illusion is fine.
The second use of the phone tracks would be as the driving source of the highly reflective/small room plate sound that I’m suggesting be the “unnatural” effect-y ambience sound. Perhaps wider to exaggerate the space. Tonal seasoning to taste but I’m guessing a low passed version here will do two things. One, let the low end of the close miced instruments retain their low end very distinct and intact, and two, allow you to subtly and magically change the listeners perception of the environment when and if the music hits its stride, becomes greater than the sum of its parts, and transports the listener.
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Jesse,
P-$ here.
“I’m a white man, a white man in black socks.
I wear grey shorts; tank tops and dreadlocks.”
No, I’m sorry. I think you wanted the other one…
Regarding your question. Yes, I was suggesting you use the phone mic as an ingredient in your mix of close miced parts. Something to give ambience and support the viewers’ point of view of being in the woods. Slight breeze, rustling leaves, woodland critters crunching the leaves as they scoot through. Speaking of critters, I would avoid the geese motif you used in the rowboat series, that’s so last summer.
I’ve not tried it but I do believe using a separate copy of the phone mic recording, slightly (100 Hz) high passed as the send to a plate reverb (H3000 Tight and Bright) might could add a sense of hearing reflections off the trees. Some sort of plate verb program meant for percussion that includes a bunch or early reflections and small room ( <1 sec) parameter options.
Creating an inviting and believable audio setting first can help you hook your audience before the musical story unfolds, much like the cinematic effect of looking out over desert in springtime bloom but hearing what appears to be a rattling sound. Adios cowboy.
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Jesse,
You’ve definitely opened a can of worms thinking about managing different arrival times, huh?
Your initial though of pushing earlier arrival times back in time (guitar amp/ vibes mics) to coincide with the latest arriving one (phone mics) is logical. It’s how we manage delay tower speakers at festival. Hold (delay) the signal feeding the delay tower until the main speakers have made that trip through the slow medium of air traveling at the speed of sound. As Dana pointed out, roughly a foot per millisecond. The two sources of sound can combine constructively if time and polarity-aligned. That translates to greater intelligibility, and an improved S/N ratio (signal to noise.) More dry signal level than ambient signal level.
I’m really disappointed that the Stonehenge joke in the first reply didn’t land.
Because dropping and dragging start times in the DAW is so easy you can opt to “pull” the late arrivals back to your self declared start time. That’s what we were suggesting. “Pulling’ the phone mic arrivals back to the vibe overheads. Your close mic’ed guitar would be the first arrival time to show up on the DAW session if you’re both playing the ONE! Just pull all the simultaneously struck “ONES” back to your amp arrival. Voila! Signal alignment may help clean up the sound OR not. If there’s not too much other-than-intended-signal in the microphone, the time misalignment may add spatial character which could be a better choice.
I believe it was Aristotle that said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t.” I just added the worms part.
-@PT
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Jesse,
Although I couldn’t spot it, I’m guessing the phone was somewhere on the “desk” on the stand. I was just checking it was visually in front of the band.
As you compare wave forms of the stereo vibe mics and your stereo phone recording we clearly see that the phone recording, which is further away from the noise source, the vibes, displays the start of the sound recording further to the right on the DAW tracks’ display. We’re basically looking at an X-Y graph. The X axis (horizontal) displays Time, the Y axis (vertical.) We’re looking at your handclap. For a white man in flannel, that is a pretty damn funky lookin ‘clap. It arrives at different times because the physical distance from the source to the microphones are different. The phone mics are further away physically so the sound of the clap (vibrations through the air) arrives later. Later shows up as a smidge to the right. View the screenshot… check? CHECK !
I’m going all science-y on the explanation here so as to provide backstory for those that may not yet understand tech. I’ve had 4 kids from the local college sound recording program shadowing me at the historic State Theatre this month and found a groove when I went really basic and broke things down to easily digestible nuggets.
So back to the original question …
The relative polarity of the phone recording to the vibes mics matters, especially if you slide the (later arriving) phone recording to align with the start time of the first arriving (vibes) signals. Find the first upward peak on the vibes, use that as your target. Find the first peak on the phone recording, if is downward facing..reverse polarity and the slide it over to the left to align with the first arriving positive peak of the vibes mic. Realize this is fucking time traveling magic. With the click and drag of a mouse, we rearrange time. Think about the poor bastards working at Stonehenge this weekend. As we fall behind with a quick digital reset, they’ve got to move all those big boulders one o’clock back.
I would first attempt signal aligning the phone recording with the mics, add a healthy level of it to see if that’s good au natural ambience, ie gentle wind, leaf crunching, geese, etc.
Another experiment would be to use the phone recording as the high passed send to a reverb.
re: milliseconds of delay
When combing two identical signals together but one is later, Inside of 20ish milliseconds they sound as one but with some tonal consequences. 50 milliseconds apart the two sounds will start to separate into two distinct arrival times. 100 milliseconds apart and you have arrived at Graceland, ie the “Elvis slap back)
Choose wisely
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Jesse,
Yes, do send me the stems, this could be fun and please include the drums. I’m considering drowning them in heroin, lowering the volume, and then slathering them in reverb. I could almost hear it as I listened to your piece again. You never know …
Like the other day when I was outside being a lawn king on my estate and mulching the leaves. Normally I find the drone of an engine (be it the lawn mower or motorcycle) calming and inspirational. That’s when the muse visited and I heard her say:
“I’m asking of you Jesus, would you help me change my life ? Some better rhyming skills to help me pay the bills and perhaps a younger wife?”
I’m not at all suggesting they would work in your song.
P Money
I’ll DM you an addy
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Bar,
This is moody and pretty already. I was hoping @JBear would suddenly appear vocally and take it further.
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Dana,
Thank you. I learned something here today. I had previously used my unmasker/ducking tool across an ALL instrument subgroup made of a summation of all the individual instrument subgroups. Creating multiple sends off the ducker channel, in this case a lead vocal, to feed multiple duckee subgroups, is definitely wiser and more target-specific so as not to cause heavy-handed ducking on all all subgroups when only one instrument subgroup is the responsible culprit. 🦆 🦆 🐵🐵 🔫 = 🦆 🦆 🙉
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Speaking of VO ducking, it sounds like you’re dropping the full bandwidth of the track to allow the $ VO $ to have the full spotlight. I wonder if there’s a viable alternative under some circumstances.
Is it unheard of to duck only the overlapping freqs of the Voice and music to allow the groove to carry on with a new “lead singer” if you will? I would think it’s product/vibe dependent to compete with the message of the ad.
The UNMASK tool in Ozone is a frequency dependent ducker that clears the overlapping range of the duckee to allow the ducker to own that range. Great for music when the arrangement is too dense to tuck a voice into a mix rather than just overpowering the mix with a LOUDER voc.
Fascinating stuff.
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Dana,
So I’m curious. Did you just hand over your work to the ad agency and cash the check? Did they fit the copy into your vocal arrangement and just duck the ditty when the voice talent needs the spotlight? I’d guess that.
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Nate,
It’s a room alright. Perhaps that room needs a little acoustic dampening to control the resonant 500 Hz area to keep the focus on the actual vocal performance Does the sound of a crackling fire in the fireplace add to your intent?
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Nate,
attached is your dry vocal with a different sounding verb to hopefully illustrate my point
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Nate,
I love that you included the downloadable stand alone dry vocal, the saturated vocal, and the souped up version. That makes the detective-work a lot easier. The non reverberated ones sound clean and great. There’s a beautiful warmth to your voice and it works very well in this musically stripped down piece of hopefulness and positivity. However, the voice in context of this mix is swimming in the soup to my ear. Bear in mind I have strong opinions. I don’t much like reverb at all. Also, I voted for Trump. I don’t think that’s controversial at all. Clearly he was the most qualified to earn my write-in choice for local dog catcher.
I suspect the reverb choice you made is interfering with the tone of your vocal performance. It sounds like a tight and bright percussion plate. (???) The graphic appears to be a frequency response graph with no high pass or low pass filters engaged on an otherwise flat wide-band response. All that lingering high-mid and high end does not compliment the warmth and fuzziness of the song the way a medium-sized hall program might.
As always, go with the suggestions that resonate with you and leave the rest. They’re not all spot on. After all, my boy didn’t win.
