Have not had much time at all in the past week trying to get the mixing done, too much work at work and work at home. Twas ever thus....
Still, on Sunday night I was able to get back to it.
I got the free Audacity wav editor and ripped some songs from different CDs, to see how my mixes added up. This was before I did an mastering, just with the songs as they were.
What I found was that the commercial mixes were more compressed, at the least, then my mixes.
I ran one of the songs thru Ozone and just picked a likely preset and now compared. Actually, I thought my material sounded good, not exactly the same as the commercial stuff, but good anyway.
I shot off a couple of mp3s and got some very positive response from Jay at yourmusicforums.com. Really, is there anything better than having a set of trained ears that don't have anything riding of the result listen to your mix?
To say I was pleased with his response is so understating it. I felt like I was making progress! Ya!
One of the things I have been doing that has proven to be handy is the little spreadsheet I made to keep track of the songs. At least then I can tell what state a particular song is in, and what the solo instrument is. This will make it easier for me to plan the song sequence.
One of the things I thought I could count on was that I wouldn’t have to remix everything, especially the song 120 Days. If you have been reading this blog for some time you will remember the endless struggle I had mixing this song.
I thought I would pull it up just to take a listen and compare it with the newer songs and mixes I have been working. This may have been a big mistake, since it just sucked compared to the newer work.
One big difference is that I recorded all the XL7 parts before I bought my ART preamp. More than any other piece of gear, this is just a lifesaver for me when recording this synth. As I am sure to have mentioned, I usually don’t have to touch the synth tracks at all if they have been recorded thru this little box.
Just about everything sounded weak to me, except for the vocals and the trumpet. I didn’t start from scratch to try and correct the faults, but it was close.
For instance, the drums sounded weak. No matter how I tried to fix them, the sound was flat and lifeless. As you can guess, I finally ended up replacing the drums with Battery drums – but it took me an hour of messing around before I came to that conclusion. Of course I still had to process the drum sounds, but what a difference.
The acoustic bass from the XL seemed flat and lifeless to me too, could not get it to sound right even doubling it and compressing the hell out of it.
What came to the rescue was the Dimension synth included with the new version of Cakewalk’s Project 5. Normally I would use the string bass patch I have in Kontakt, and its great but just brining up Dimension and calling up the patch was much easier. Also, I was able to bring in a touch of tube warmth right in the Dimension patch, which really made the bass stand out. Most cool and easy indeed.
Finally I was making some headway, but what a dam long struggle! I didn’t want to mess too much with the vocals, but still I ended up having to double the main vocals and put a touch of compression on them.
With my trumpet, I found that using the Limi (which is a limiter, natch) from Cycling 74s freeware pack, Pluggo Jr, gave the horn just that bit of presence that it needed to stand out in the mix.
I am still not 100% happy with all the sounds, but short of rerecording all the synths I just don’t think it will get all that much better. Actually, its not like the mix sounds bad; it really feels much more like the rest of the songs on the album, and its important to me that there is some continuity in what I do, even if the songs themselves are very different from one another.
This morning, I was wide awake at 5:00 am and decided to give the song another quick listen – its pretty good now actually, but its hard to believe that the song that I struggled with for months had to be redone – either I am getting better with what I am doing, or getting more picky. Or both I suppose.
Some of the older songs are not all reproducible with the gear I have now, so I have to do with what I have. In one case, all the drums are on one track, along with the synths. I have the trumpet on one track, and the vocals on two tracks. Hey, just like a four track from the dawn of time!
What I did in this case was use three different compressors just to add some body to the sound. Interesting: the trumpet already has effects on it, and the compression makes the effects much more pronounced, really good actually. This makes the whole song work, and while not quite as clear and precise as some of the newer material, I think it will be OK.
Here is the score as of today: out of 10 songs, 2 are mixed and ready for a quick bit of mastering and they will be done. I don’t know if I will get this done by my birthday at this rate…….