Soft Gospel needs advice 2

[Farmer]

Trying again cause the attachment didn't attach! Once again, listen and tell me what you think. I would like to remix but wonder if the instruments, particularly the drum recording, is good enough

[Farmer]

Bump!

Oh boy, I was afraid of this, many dl's and no comments. Is it that bad or that good that there's nothing to say?

Seriously thought, I can take it! Let 'er rip , I'm a big boy, ready to take my lumps. Should I just give up and find a real 'jeourb' or what?



It's totally ITB.
This one was recorded and mixed in TripleDat with Pulsar and nothing else.

The most "esoteric" piece of gear was a Joe meek VC1 mic pre for the voice. Bass and guitar were DI'd.
Converters were a couple of auld ADATs (one black face, one XT 16bit)

Okay bye bye

Andrew de farmer

[NeoVXR]

as nothing else happened, my humble 2 cents:

this song and the singer / musicians are good, so it is worth remixing.
depends on the purpose, maybe not quite a big commercial release, but great for the singer and the community..

here is what I would likely do...

you could take the live vintage/church approach, with more of this lower midrange in the drums, and some over all reverb and delay.

I think it is a case of a couple instances of LinMB ;)

the epiano has a bad decay, it is kind of stumbling down at every note. with its own reverb, and mid-range compressor it could be more flowing.

with the drums, you could softly compress bass and lower mid with a multiband, but not the high bands. then the dynamics can be restored with fader programming.
drum reverb is too "modern" and pop. longer pre-delay, less density and high range (=more roll-off). try "church" setups and make them small enough to keep it transparent...

the voices need an amount of fader automation, too. some stereo delay could make the background voices stronger.
if you detect distortion in the recorded vocals, it will become a swiss knife EQ job. some parts are quite harsh.

I would play around for a while, the sound will not become particularly clean and perfect, but it may develop to a beautiful gospel listening, from the music.

I think, the material is underestimated.

[NeoVXR]

now this is a difference!

I kicked it quite hard, so you can get another hint what is possible.
actually you would have less reverb and do more fine-tuning with the bass.

good focus on the voice could make forget minor problems in the drums.

have fun!

--
file changed: tried to fight the harshness and distortion with a wild FFT filter, bass somewhat tamed
NICE !

[Farmer]

Thanks NeoVXR, that's alot of feedback. I'll up the results of my own remix in a week or so.

What is LinMB?

The version you remastered sounds much louder and helps the voice shine, but is a bit harsh in the hi end on my system. Over all it illustrates your point about multiband compression if I understand correctly.

What did you use to do this?

Okay bye,
Farmer

[jazzius II]

Nice music (even though I'm an atheist !)

The kick is really crappy - sorry!

The vocal is a bit nasaly and distorted.

The snare could use a bit more thwack and a more spacious and expensive reverb.

The track is quite mono.....i'd move some sounds a bit wider with chorus/autopanner etc.

[NeoVXR]

>What is LinMB?
a WAVES multiband plugin

>The version you remastered sounds much louder and helps the voice shine, but is a bit harsh in the hi end on my system.
this is for 2 reasons:
1) as jazzius (who is the PRO here) tells, there is already distortion in the voice and when I enhance the sound so much, this will come out really heavy.
2) I do only demo processing 16bit no upsampling, so there is rounding errors. It wouldn't become a commercially useful version anyway, but rocks the boom box. also mp3 coding a second time (and you used already a very small bitrate yourself) destroys the high end.

>Over all it illustrates your point about multiband compression if I understand correctly.
yes, my opinion is, with less than perfect tracks we can try the automatics at first, before we micro-tweak every other word or drum hit.

>What did you use to do this?
FFT hand drawn EQ, hand drawn HF dynamic restoration, de-esser, reverb, multiband compressor, 30band EQ.
with 32bit/96k it would take much too long...
but this way you can see the end of the tunnel come shimmering

[Farmer]

Yes jazzius it's the kick that bothers me the most. What to do? Never noticed any distortion on the voice though! maybe the MP3 encode?

voice was recorded with 4033 through a Meek VC1.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm quite the atheist myself, but Claire's voice almost made a believe of me

Farmer

[NeoVXR]

what starts as an exciter or a "warm" compressor, soon turns into distortion, when we try to process it again and again, and push the high end.
if you compare, what became of the drum breaks - they were very dull - now much more there, you would expect even more hissy artefacts in the voice.
I did no piece-wise/block editing until now, the louder parts of the vocals would need some damping and softening.

the bass player is quite good, maybe you can hide the kick somewhat behind. it sounds like many times before when somewhere it was not allowed to play loud enough. a trashy "live" sound would keep the "embarrassment" manageable. some single note editing might be required.

are the original multitracked vocals clean enough?

--
fyi: LAME3.92 and 3.95 are good free encoders, easy to tweak with the RazorLame user interface. the first better in the highs, the second more stable and clear in midrange and presence.

[Farmer]

The original voice is clean and the wave file mix has no distortion so I'm blaming the MP3 encoder (an old version of wave lab).

The kick too is clean but a little puffy from what I remember. I wont get to this until next week, as it is more of a personal project and therefore no money... must make money!

Lots of info to digest. Looking for Lin MB thinking about your comments (thanks for that) and so on and so on...

I have the waves L2 now which I didn't have when this was mixed...

bye for now,
Farmer

[Farmer]

Jazzius,

About the snare... you are right, and I remember when doing this mix I kept wanting something like a Qunicy Jones slow soul/RnB snare sound but I couldn't get it. How the hell does he do that? The best external reverb I have is a PCM60.

Farmer

[NeoVXR]

farmer, if you desire a quincy jones / RnB sound, I am afraid you are required to record such a thing. the challenge is to get it as tight, as this picture needs. ;)

what you have, to me sounds like a drummer of a gospel band, trying to play with very low volume...

anyway, I am looking forward to your remix. good luck!
thx for taking the effort and work with such music.

[NeoVXR]

FYI: I replaced my file.

trying to make a statement, that artifacts that are created by technology can be removed by technology.
you will find many issues have been checked out between the two versions. but this needs a portion of engineering.
be encouraged to never give up...

[Farmer]

NeoVXR

Yes, I am very encouraged by your kind feedback and look forward to you hearing the remix sometime next week.

Farmer