Gear will get you there part of the way But a lot of it is in the hands It's why everyone sounds different. That's the beauty of it.
And onther one for good measure. This one was done with the DI and impulse responses rather than cab and mics. I also used another guitar, this one (the guitar) has way more bite and punch.
I got a chance to listen this morning to both @Cerb and @fezz parka's mixes, and it's obvious that Chris's mix is superior. Just some notes: The original mix sounds flat and "bunched up:" I hear a whole lot of the same frequencies crammed together in the center of the stereo image. So what Fezz did was to separate the voices, both sonically and in the physical "space," so you can hear everything better. In my experience, most home mixers are afraid of extreme pan positions, but they shouldn't be. Panning and EQ is how you keep everything from trying to occupy the same space at once.
Yes flat, less spacious and lacking punch and loudness. I think you're right about the panning, mine are not panned a lot, I think the piano and backing guitar are most extreme at around 40% on each side. I'll keep working on this. Thanks!
Exactly. Since I was working with the guitar part and the backing, in order to get that separation I had to use the backing on two tracks and the guitar part on two tracks. You can see that in the mixer screen shot. Then the API 560 on 1 and 4 to dial in/out some parts. Gives the illusion that the keys and acoustic guitar are panned harder.
Learned it from Dan Wallin. Dan was the mixer/recordist BITD. I asked him how he got mono to sound so big (I was working on the first real release of Bernstein's Magnificent Seven). He was the engineer at Goldwyn in West Hollywood. He said "Mono sound is front to back and up and down. Front to back is ambience: room mics and reverb. Placement in the sound field. Up and down is EQ. Frequencies. It's part of the performance when going to tape. Pultecs...Ba6a's...660's...And a good crew to turn the knobs while going to tape. In those days, we really were part of the orchestra, except our instruments were the gear, and our hands, eyes and ears." My method is derived from the method of making Elvis Presley Sun recordings 5.1. Making mono into LCRS. And it's all about what Dan said above: Placement and frequencies.
I have all the separate tracks and still have problems making it sound as large as fezz. How do you make it sound so loud though @fezz parka? I have tried using compressors and limiter but it ends up sounding either bad or still not loud. I suspect frequency separation plays a part, having a wide range of frequencies rather than trying to make a few peaks down the middle sound loud? I worked on it way too late yesterday, still heard the track loop in my head when I went to bed LOL. I've panned the keys and rhytm guitar hard left and right and played around with EQ to try to make each of the tracks sound good without stepping on eachother. What about reverb? Is there risk of reverb clashing if I use it on separate tracks as well as on the master? I've tried keeping the separate tracks peaking out at -6dB at the most. Is that too much? The master peaks out at -2dB after compressor and limiter, that seems a bit high right?
Use reverb room emulation on a buss, not on individual tracks or the master. Send to that buss at different levels. Small amount = close to the front. Large amount = pushes it to the back. Check the screen shot I posted. Overall loudness is the L1 Ultramaximizer on the master.
The L1 is a bit of both. Level maximizer and peak limiter. Its the only insert I'll put on the master. Repost of mixer pic:
The L1 is on sale for $39, seems a pretty decent price. Better still, they had a short article on mastering on their site that was a bit of an eye opener.
So one final attempt before going back to atually trying to finish the song. This has been great fun, thank you all!
That sounds much better. One more thing... Stereo...isn't two channels. It's 3. Left....Center....Right. Stereo mixes also contain mono mixes. Some things are in the center. Mostly the kick and the bass. Lead vocals too. Then other things move out from the center to the left and the right. So with Dan's up and down and front to back...you now have L-C-R. Side to side and in the middle.
Thank you! Now that you mention it I think I screwed up the center when mastering it without even thinking about it. I kept the kick and bass in the center when mixing and then made a .WAV file of it and opened a new project to master it. I wanted to EQ the piano a bit and since the piano was panned hard left I duplicated the track, panned one hard left and one hard right without even realizing I'd wreck it. I guess I should have put the EQ on a bus, sent one of the tracks through it an panned the output from the bus left?
A question regarding putting reverb on a bus...I understand the concept of applying the same reverb to each item in the mix and varying how much of it to give each instrument a different position in the room. Would the same thing be accomplished by using the same reverb plugin on each instrument configured for the same same parameters but adjusting the amount of reverb for each differently?
Sure....but it would eat up memory and processor power. You'd be running multiple instances of the same plugin. Why not run it once and send?
OK, that makes sense. I'm typically working with 4, maybe 5 tracks so the computer resource thing hasn't been an issue. I asked to see if going back and reconfiguring my projects this way would magically make them sound better. I will keep this idea in mind with my next project.