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Old 11-30-2016, 05:04 PM   #352
insub
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Louisville, KY, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lolilol1975 View Post
InSub: balanced mix but too much reverb in my opinion. Drums sound a bit similar to mine.
Thanks for the feedback. I never can seem to get the overall reverb amount dialed in just right. When I think it's too much I pull it back and the response is "mix is too dry." When I put in the amount I like, I get "mix is too wet." So, I'm going to try harder to find the sweet spot for the reverb. I really had a hard time with these drums. More so than usual, and the problem was that I couldn't really figure out why I was having so much trouble. I think I ended up remixing the drums from scratch more than once because I couldn't get it where I wanted to.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thunderbroom View Post
InSub: To me, what makes your mix stand out is your treatment of the lead vocal. It's one of my favorites of all the mixes. And isn't that the goal of any good mix of a song - get the vocal in front and leading. And the acoustic right along with the vocal - nice blend. I think your bass is a little heavy handed and too prominent in the mix, but I think the bass is something with which we all struggled a bit!
Thanks a lot! I had worked pretty hard to get the vocal to sound the way I envisioned, and I'm really glad someone noticed. Your comments are very detailed and elegant. I hope that I can critique the others in a similar way. I knew even before I had rendered my MP3 that I had not given the bass enough effort, but I was simply out of time. Still, excuses aside, that is an area where I seem to struggle and I feel like part of that is my current monitoring method (headphones) with the rest just inexperience.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence View Post
My general observation listening to a few is the lack of a "spotlight" on anything. Things just are where they are and stay there, where maybe elements need to move forward or backward in real time, putting a spotlight on certain phrases.

The way it was explained to me, the concept, is analogous to a theater show where the spotlight focuses in certain places. Most pop music rarely does that, it all just kinda lays there in a static way.
I really like the analogy here, and it's something I had considered, but didn't ultimately spend time to accomplish. In some interview I watched an engineer said something like, "The listener can only focus on 3 things at a time. So, at every moment as the song progresses the 3 most important parts of the performance should be brought to the front."

Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
It is but IMHO much of that should have happened during the composition.
I very much agree with this as well. I didn't feel like this song was produced well. Then I assumed that the arrangement was intentional for the genre and should be viewed as such. But, ultimately...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tod View Post
Yeah I totally agree Karbo, there really wasn't anything to spotlight, at least I had a hard time trying to find anything.
This was how I felt about the performance and production. Not enough was there that made me want to spotlight it in the first place. Particularly, in the first half of the song. There were a couple of riffs in the end that I automated up on one of the guitar tracks, because I thought it deserved to be heard in the mix, but that was as far as I went with the idea.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thunderbroom View Post
Well, I think there is some good in every mix, and yours was no exception. It was really weird, though, how different everything sounded via each session than the submitted mp3s, which is why I held off on responding. Seeing the actual work, and trying to determine why someone made a choice is easier that way.
I really admire your point of view here, and I'm glad you gave my project a chance and a listen. I felt like my mix prior to the Master track was better than my submission.

I want to give my comments in this fashion, by listening to the RPP's rather than the crummy notes I took in the beginning based on the streamed MP3's. It may be a few days before I can get around to it though. I'll try to get started tonight.

Unfortunately, I voted in a hurry, so if something in the mix was glaring to me then I automatically discounted it as a contender. Definitely, the vocal is VERY important to me in any mix, so major mental points were deducted when I didn't like the vocal or its FX. I suppose my voting evaluation approach was very close-minded, but to some degree that is the way most consumers will listen. I will try to listen more attentively and open-minded for my comments. I'm rather glad that I didn't have those notes available to me to post right away. I think they may still have some value as an initial reaction, but not as constructive as they should be nor with appropriate amount of consideration or perspective.
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