Early Warning

[dante]

http://soundcloud.com/hitfoundry/early-warning-2012

Scope : B2003, Zarg Prowave, DAS ScopeRise Mixer, DAS Brickmaster, DAS MasterIT, SpaceF FAT, PSY-Q, Dynatube Marshall
VST: (Kontakt) Orange Tree Jaco Pastoruis Bass, Neo Keys Suitcase Rhodes.
VST: (Halion) Drums and Percussion
Outboard: Digitech Valve FX, T.C. Electronics Multiband Triple-C Compressor, Yamaha PLG150DR HiHats

Its still a bit of a work in progress so suggestions welcome.

[scopus]

very nicee, got me excited about 2012, great touch with the siren haha, Im prob in the most "dangerous" place at the moment in Israel and i agree i aint going nowhere, great vocals and melodies, loved the guitars. only suggestion is id add a little more processing to the vocals to bring more forward in the mix since gets a little masked by the other sounds in some parts but mayb thats how its intended to be, awesome job, keep em coming

[dante]

Thanks. Hes not a Dylan fan as someone once commented, its just co-incidence that he sings like that, but in fact there is another song where he sounds even more like Dylan w/ the californian drawl

Will put the vocal a bit more upfront w/ the DAS C350L.

[Nestor]

Cool song. I think the same as Scopus, that there is a need to bring the vocals up front, so they cut the mix a little more.

I think there are too many things in the middle, in terms of pan, I mean it is a frequency clash problem in the mid-low end if I’m not wrong. Then there is too much headroom in the hats. Conclusion: Cutting some headroom, fixing the frequencies clash, a little less general reverb too, and the vocals will come up by themselves I think.

[dante]

Thanks I will try those tips Nestor. I do have a tendancy to clutter the mixes with stuff either dead center or hard left/right, and miss out the space in between. Less is more - once again !

[Nestor]

I like what Gary says about mixing and mastering. He says that you must make an effort to come really clear with the sound itself that you intend to record in a given line, instate of trying to fix it later. This is very wise, the problem with it is that you have to know always what to do first hand, and it is not always easy. I see in myself, that inspiration is sometimes in conflict with knowing what to do in the first place, because if you stop and think too much about which sound you should use not to cluster your mix, you will probably not do any music. So it is a middle path for both aspects, the composing one and the mix and master one.

In the other hand, it is amazing how much you can improve your music with a really good mix and master; it can go as far as being 50% of your composition.

Another thought that I have gathered from a professional, which I find truly helpful and inspiring, is thinking about the mix and master process as a creative process that belongs to music composing, and not as something separated. This has helped me to get involved with it with much more interest, and it is true, with the arsenal we have today at our fingertips, we can go far away from the ordinary concept of mastering, and experiment with creative approaches.

Ufff, I can go on and on with this topic, I like it so much!

I have been gathering tips, ideas and really to the core information through the years about how exactly doing the mixing and mastering, and I have achieved some fundamentals:

One way to get to it, it is through imagination “literally”, I mean, using your imagination for real. When you get to the stage of mixing and mastering, you close your eyes now and then, and try to imagine how frequencies are spread in, sort of tridimensional cube, you try to imagine depth, high and low, then left and right, it helps very much while you are listening at your song because it gives you a way to visualize something that cannot be seen, that is, “sounds”, but you can easily imagine where in the field they are, and so it gives you a “grasp” over them, giving you some confidence about where they should be located. Try it and then tell me how it went

[dante]

Well, I did try boosting the vocals, or making more space for them. Then I discovered the reason why I liked them back in the mix a bit was because they were not recorded well, probably the microphone was not high quality or overdriven. Anyway holding them back in the mix sort of covered up that problem a bit.

So the only real fix here is to get a better recording of the lead vocal, better mic and mic setup, higher samplerate etc.

But I like also the idea of collecting record / mix tips, and adding to ScopeRise. And the listening tips, like closing the eyes and visualising the mix in a cubic 3D space.