Re: Ready for release?
- From: "Steve M. Mann" <rockermann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 08:51:57 -0600
On 1/12/2008 6:51 PM, Sasquatch wrote:
"Steve M. Mann" <rockermann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4788cd83$0$22657$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[...]
http://steve-mann.com/unlinked/p43/JLMG_master.mp3
It's this radio ready? iPod possible? :)
Thanks for you time and any thoughts you can share.
Steve,
Good job man. You guys did a pretty good job on that. I agree with some of the replies about the vocals sounding a bit thin. I'm not sure what kind of reverb you have on the vocals, but if you could decrease the delay and the level of the reverb it would sound bit better in my opinion. Is the reverb a plug in? I'm really not crazy about the sound of it. Do you have any other reverb plug ins? The Lexicon plug in is pretty good, but a bit expensive.
There's actually no reverb on this track. It's all echo. In the digital domain, it's the same thing maybe, but as you know there is a difference. I was experimenting with a kind of 'answering' echo delay on the vox and that was one of the things I didn't want to point out in my original post so as to not bias any replies. I like the effect, but you're right... it might be a bit too much. I might reduce the level of the effect and see if that cleans it. Or go back to a more traditional reverb.
I'm not sure how old you are but I have two clues that you are over 40.
We have a winner! :)
#1. The tune sounds like it could have been recorded in the 1980's. That's not a slam, I was there and did that scene. I sometimes play with some guys who do 80's type music and enjoy it.
It's coming back, didn't you hear??
Yes, we've been accused of being too '80's' sounding. It doesn't matter. For what we're doing, we just enjoy our songs it whatever final form they take. We have many more modern sounding tunes too. This one does indeed sound a bit 'nostalgic' though.
#2. The emphasis is on the highs and high mids. Us musicians that have been playing for a while lose a bit of our hearing and the highs are the first to go. So when us older farts do mixdowns we tend to exaggerate them to compensate. Hell, it sounds good to us coming out of the studio monitors (which are SUPPOSED to have a pretty flat frequency response) when we turn the highs up a bit. Because I love to go bear hunting and need my hearing keen, I always wore ear plugs at gigs and practice. So I don't have as extreme of a rolloff as most and tend to notice it more.
The latest masters are indeed a bit high-end heavy. I'm using some fairly new processing and I'm still dialing it in. I'm already rolling of the highs to a degree, but I'll probably go back and roll off just a bit more of the top end.
I have been a fan of Tom Dowd and Eddie Kramer for a long time. I guess I'm partial to almost everything being recorded with Shure SM-57's and SM-58's, going into a tube preamp and then to analog tape. The tube preamp will give it a bit of natural compression that will even things out a bit and sound more organic. The analog tape kind of does the same thing a bit by the nature of it's more limited frequency response.
As mentioned elsewhere, we're all located in separate locations around the globe (Finland, Scotland and the US). To facilitate our recording, everything is done digitally. PODs and Boss GT-6s for guitars, V-Drums etc. The vox are the only thing that might have a tube in the signal chain, but I believe they're finally delivered to the PC digitally.
With ProTools or Sonar you can get a pretty decent sound but I truly believe that you can't fix thin sound in post production. You can add low and mids with EQ, run the BBE Sonic Maximizer, and use tape emulator plugins and flesh it out some but you can't eq it in if it ain't there.
This is true. It's not like those TV crime shows where they can zoom in on a minuscule picture of a license plate and magically come up with pixels that were never there. :)
I'd try to thicken up the guitar a bit, drop the overall levels from about 8khz up down a bit to reduce the cymbal sizzle, bring the toms and kick up in the mix. You also have the "esses and thees" (s and t) VERY pronounced. Do you remember the 1980's sitcom "Too Close For Comfort"? The old guy that was a cartoonist that had two hot daughters living with him? Do you remember how the "s" and "t" really reached out and bit you on that show? To the point it was almost annoying?
And I'd fatten up the synth a bit.
All of that was just my opinion. IMHO, the mixdown and mastering is an art as much as the playing and songwriting. It's all subjective and what's good to me might sound like camel farts to most people.
I really want to thank you for the detailed reply. You obviously put a good deal of time into the listening and the posting. It very much appreciated. I'll take your comments and get back to work and see if I can improve our current masters for our new release.
--
Steve
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http://www.project-43.com/
The Future of Classic Rock
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