Entourage Jesse Lewis
EntourageForum Replies Created
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Wow Paul! Such a glorious tone — Yes! Way more natural sounding than the last one in terms of the guitar DI.
So you had only one guitar stem to work with and then duplicated and delayed one? – how many guitar tracks in total am I hearing? 2 or 3? I can’t tell that anything has been pitch shifted down an octave. It’s incredible how natural it sounds. I will definitely use this technique on my stuff (I’m specifically thinking about situations where I’m only able to record one guitar track, but with this technique, it seems like I could really fill it out nicely!)
Any chance you could share a small portion of each isolated stem so I can get a better sense of what you all mixed together?
Thanks for sharing! What a cool idea!
JLew
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Thank you for the feedback! I will investigate all of your input, Jeremy!
❤
JLew
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Hey brother!
I LOVE it man! Another Shimmer Island hit! You can’t miss!
I liked the ambient intro a lot (although I did notice when looking at my TC clarity M that the phase correlation dipped negative quite a few times so you might want to make sure that you don’t lose any of that sweet ambience if it ever gets listened to in mono!). Paul’s AI wizardry was also very cool! I think both options could definitely work and if it needed to be shorter, then Paul’s intro might be a cool option! But, you know that I’m always a sucker for an ambient intro haha!
To my ears, the sounds and tonal balance were really nice – and your voice and the sweet melodies took me to my happy place! It’s a great song!
There were a few things that did jump out at me as being a bit distracting and taking me out of the mood that you were creating, which I’ll share with you. Of course, these are just my opinions – but maybe something for you to see if you agree with.
There were two main things that jumped out at me. The first is the kick drum, especially in the earlier part of the song — it feels too “on top of the beat”, like it’s not relaxed enough for the vibe of the song. I’m not sure if you are on some kind of a grid, but if so, you might want to experiment with laying some of those kick drums back by a slight bit to produce a little bit more of a laid-back Beat. I felt the same way with your snare drum, the little marching band drum roll part, some of those hits felt a little bit too on top for me, also. Granted, I spent almost a decade (much of it w/ Dana) living in New Orleans so I’m a sucker for that laid-back greasy drum feel, but I do think in this case experimenting with laying it back just a bit might make the listener feel more in the clouds with you!
Additionally, there is a section between 2:08-2:17 where a few things also took me out of the moment. There seems to be some kind of interruption to the groove at 2:11. I’m not sure if the drums get off or a bass note or something else, but something feels off right at that moment.
In that section between 2:08-2:17 the vocal performance doesn’t feel as strong to me as the rest of the song, I wonder if it might benefit from a bit of melodyne? or maybe its in the groove of the way you phrased the vocal in that spot? But something is happening there that I think could use a bit of attention as well!
Again, all of these comments are just very, very small details that jumped out at me, but I thought I’d mention them in case they’re helpful.
Either way – every song you make is always a hit! I was excited to see you post another one!
Best,
Jesse
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Damn man! what a performance! Beautifully captured, Paul!
I love that final vocal run she did right at the end! now thems are some notes!!!
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Finally got the time to watch this! Wonderful stuff! I learned so much! Thank you, Dana and fam!
Jesse
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ps – i’ve had a lot of success w/ goal zero and actually have a smaller one that I’m using now. I can send details if you’re interested…
JLew
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Joe! I LOVE this! Just watched the video and checking out the album now. Glorious!!! That Silent Night is breaking my heart man! The sounds you captured are exactly how an acoustic guitar should sound, imo! Your playing — NEXT LEVEL!!!
I’m two weeks late to this post- but will be rocking this hard next year for the holidays!
❤❤️❤
Jesse
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As usual @-PT coming in hot with the vibes!!!I know I’m 2 weeks late to the party, but thanks for sharing this! Will have to include this on the holiday playlist for next year! Great vibe!
Happy New Year!
JBear
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Hi Michael!
I really enjoyed that! Not much to add in terms of critique from me! Just wanted to chime in and say that I feel like that mix rocks so hard! I hope to be able to achieve the clarity in my mixes like that sometime in the future! The balance of the instruments and the frequencies and all the sounds you got are so great!
When the snare drum came in with that dark tone that hit me as being a bit weird sonically, but then you filtered it up to unveil the regular sound, very interesting and cool!
Keep them hits coming! 🔥
JLew
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Yo Paul!
This is so incredibly helpful! Thanks for taking the time to explain it in such great detail! Very smart and cool!
JLew
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Thank you guys so much for your thoughtful notes. I agree w/ all of them and will get to work making revisions.
As for the reverb on the vocals at the end — I feel that too! I made it dry thinking about the video (I think the video is effective kind of coming back to the raw audio at the end, like bookends) but I’m thinking I’m going to just render two versions — a video version without verb at the end and added verb ending for the actual audio release! Gives parallel processing a whole new meaning!
As far as all of your other comments, they are all things that totally make sense to me! I’m not sure if I can get more geese, because they were just in the actual recording. And Dana – yes I agree that the guitar in the intro seems very thin. It’s a challenge because the guitar itself is a very thin sounding instrument and I wasn’t able to record it with a very good set up obviously. I EQ’d out a lot of of the lower frequencies to reduce wind rumbling, but as a result, I think it makes the guitar sound extra thin. I’ll take another look at it. Paul – this is one of the reasons I found your post about stemming out the acoustic guitar in processing it the way you did to be so intriguing. I feel like a technique like you shared could really benefit my recordings like this one, where I’m not able to record a great sound at the source, but maybe with some of your mixing fanciness, I could make it sound a lot fuller! Very cool! Thanks again!
❤
JBear
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😂😂😂
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Hey Jeremy,
It’s such a great song man!
re: phase stuff — you’re in ableton, right? on the utility tool there is an option for widening the stereo field (it’s labeled “width”) If you turn that knob to the left all the way to 0% it will become fully mono and all the way to the right is 400% (crazy width). You could probably put that utility on the offending track and dial it to the left just slightly so the phase correlation goes back into the positive.
Isotope makes a plugin (ozone 11 Imager) where you can check your phase correlation and also make these adjustments on specific frequency bands (my understanding is that the lower frequencies will typically put you out of phase much quicker than the higher frequencies, but @dana or @-PT could answer that better) I’m pretty sure that plugin is free!!!
If not, that SPAN plugin i mentioned in a different thread it definitely free and shows you the same info, and plenty more too….)
Best,
JLew
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That was the best bro! I still can’t believe you flew up there for that! We were babies! What a special time! That studio was wiiiild hahaha
JLew
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Hey Joe!
The battery that they are selling now that most closely resembles the one we used for Endless Field stuff is the Yeti 500, I believe. And we have a solar panel that attaches to it (it folds up and can be attached to a backpack) We used it in Utah and ran an 8 channel UA interface, laptop, etc off of it without any issues. I’ve used it to power live remote concerts in off grid places too It’s pretty sweet. I think it’s about 15 lbs so if you put it at the bottom of a backpack its doable. We also used it two summers ago when recording in Alaska and powered even more stuff on that adventure (music hopefully coming soon!)
Sadly, that battery isn’t in use any more. It gave all it could haha
However, for my personal smaller remote recording sessions I’ve actually been using an even smaller goal zero battery. It’s the YETI 200x. It’s very small and lightweight but I did a recording session recently using an eight channel focusrite interface plus my laptop, etc. We only recorded for about an hour but it worked perfectly and still had some juice left, without even using solar. I really like that little battery and take it everywhere. It’s so small that it’s a good option and I’m pretty sure it was far less than $200.
If you ever make it up to New York, definitely hit me up! I have a little rowboat that I like to go out and play music on, and the little battery allows me to power a speaker and all my pedals, and I can play ambient soundscapes across the reservoir as the birds fly over. Pretty sweet! You’ve got an open invitation and a place to stay!
Best,
JLew