My first male/female due... Epic Piano Ballad Requires Critique

[garfieldmayor]

BTW can anyone tell me how you embed tracks in the player like I see a lot of people doing eg here?

Any advice much appreciated!

[scottwilson]

There's some noise early in the tune. If that's not from the piano, be sure to trim all of your tracks up to the point those instruments come in to hide... I also hear a lip smack in the first couple of syllables - gotta cut those!

If the noise is from the piano... maybe find where it's coming from and try to get rid of it?

Also, the male vox sounds filtered a little weird - especially when it's exposed? Maybe it's just me, but it sounds like maybe a reflection off of something in the room really close?

Okay, maybe those aren't helping you now, but something to think about.

Up until the drums, it's got good balance. I think I might have gone for a slightly different treatment on some of the instruments, but that's more aesthetic.

I'm sure you want anthemic, but the drums may be a tad over the top? It could just be changing the verb decay and trying to control the tom ringing though.

s

[garfieldmayor]

Hey Scott thanks so much for taking the time to put down your opinions!

Yeah I'd picked up on the noise - I think it's coming from a EQ in 'analogue' mode... Normally I wouldn't think twice about switching this out but I think it's masking some of the nasty HF in the male vocal (my vocal mic is a poor match for my voice methinks). I’ll have a play though and nail it down one way or another.

Can you let me know the word relating to the lip smack? I checked and couldn’t find anything that bothered me - in fact I rode up some stuff to ensure the words were clear – could be one of those lol!

I wonder if the weird filtering you describe relates to the aforementioned nasty HF which I deep notched in a couple of places above 10K? Or it could be a reflection off the keyboard but from (at least some of it was played and sung simultaneously) though it’s a really dry room I have… Or (and this is my guess) it’s just a badly chosen spatial effect… I seem to have real problems choosing reverbs and delays at the moment – I just can’t seem to picture what I want with any clarity. I experiment a fair bit but them always seem to settle on something mediocre! ?

As far as the ambience/anthemic thing goes I think I’m happy with it… I actually like dry stuff but I spent a long time working on the size thing here and having the toms ring longer than a typical pop mix was an important factor in maintaining power in the drum kit whilst still being able to have it in a big space… It was quite a juggling act. However setting aesthetics aside if the toms are muddying things up I’ve overcooked it on a technical level what do you think? I really noticed with this mix how ambience can be like compression or high end – your ear can get used to it and you end up putting in more and more. Like I said though on a fresh listen it didn’t feel swamped.

Thanks again so much and if you do have chance to respond I’d be really interested in your further thoughts!